Waggott is obviously an incompetent chancer but im unsure why you seem to view Broughton as almost flawless. Mind you, all these people are just symptoms of the real problem as had been the case for 13 years or whatever it is.

The recruitment team headed by Broughton are certainly not flawless enough to trust them implicitly, even allowing for a pathetic transfer budget.

Is being unwilling to change your principles and make changes upon such a bad run a positive thing?

I didnt think that the back 3 worked well against Huddersfield and against Wrexham it felt like a case of just far superior players winning as opposed to the tactics. Neither Sigurdsson or Dolan thrived as wing backs and would clearly struggled against better opposition. It was a back 4 today which surprised me considering the 3 CBs brought in. 2 of them only signed this week and lack match fitness but O'Riordan is not lacking match fitness and has been here for a couple of weeks so I was surprised to not see him start.

An absolutely appalling perfomance befitting of the overall appalling situation of the club at the moment. The McGuire situation is a further embarassment and there is justified criticism of the board and crucially at the owners who are as always the culprits of this mess. Tomasson is gaining kudos for speaking up and rightly so. It was proved that he isnt perhaps the unpopular opposite of the supposedly unquestionable Mowbray and people thankfully realise that the problems lie above him. He has been left with a shell of a squad although he shouldnt totally be exempt from criticism considering our horror run. Performance wise. Moran is shocking and his performance led to Tronstad struggling too. Wharton was shaky too and Rankin Costello was well below his normal level. Szmodics was off colour and Dolan was ineffective too. Chrisene was better than his debut.

Why i put once i have no idea. I meant 5 times 😂 still not many

Quoted but similar point to @tomphil regarding sales/plan We have signed and/or developed some good players. The issue as touched on is the owners, the footballing people regularly mention Brentford/Brighton model but its all massively hindered by the owners. They reject bids, they dont reinvest, there is no continuity so we cant consistently generate profits, reinvest and continue to improve Rhodes - big sale - not reinvested Armstrong - big sale/profit - not reinvested Cairney - big sale/profit - not reinvested Gestede - big sale/profit - not reinvested Rothwell - owners rejected potential for huge profit - left for free Brereron - owners rejected potential for small profit/huge fee - left for free Kaminski - excellent cheap signing - considerable profit on investment made - fraction made available (and wasted to be fair) Wharton - need we say more And 47er I do agree that we have signed many more that werent successful but you will always get some wrong, especially when the majority are freebies/loans (quite a lot of success there) or for 6 figures. A number would fit into between useful and good there too rather than being all hopeless. The above list would more than soak the rest of the freebies etc up anyway, if we had normal owners. Am I right in thinking weve spent over a million only once in about 10 years? I may have missed players. But they are Armstrong who scored loads made a huge profit, Brereton who scored loads and should have made a profit, Gallagher who was overpriced but not as bad as some make out, Szmodics who has scored loads and Hyam who won player of the season. He is a LB signed for 500k and spent his first 2 years being a steady and reliable member of teams finishing in 8th and 7th.

This is perhaps the most depressing summary of the Venkys regime you could ever wish to see. If we havent had a midfielder up to the standards of such a bang average player in all these years. The likes of Szmodics, Armstrong and Dack werent good signings, they were all outstanding for the money paid. I do appreciate that we cant let standards drop but you are overly harsh with your judgements of signings. They arent just the odd good signing. The likes of Tronstad, Hyam, Kaminski, Rothwell, Pickering and a few others also range from good to very good signings under the last 2 tenures, and there are more.

I think a solitary international call up sometimes does more heavy lifting than it should. The squad contained only US based players when he came off the bench. Wahlstedt has a solitary cap and look at him. Mind you, if we are comparing to Telalovic he would have to be bad.

The model has never and will never exist with these owners.

Probably will be waiting a while for those jobs.

Even post window, wannabe ITKs seem to be desperate for the limelight. He might well be off and I dont think its an outlandish guess to speculate that a clearly unhappy manager might go. But I think many of these people are just making assumptions and/or echoing one another.

He would have to be pretty bad to be worse than Telalovic.

Last season he certainly made mistakes, his team like Mowbray's the season before (albeit not as drastically) did drop off owing to the small, inexperienced squad. He also did make some weird decisions during the decision. This season has shown more worrying aspects even allowing for the budget cuts, the set piece record for and against is a symptom of poor coaching. And our style has been partially responsible for our horrendous defensive record. But he has had his hands tied behind his back with the budget cuts. It doesnt mean he should receive no criticism this season or that he is exempt from it but it would certainly be a further huge blow if he went. The squad would be a challenge for anyone.

Hopefully he will be truthful in what exactly has gone on and what the owners have said in regards to why after a record sale, he had to work with his hands tied behind his back signing frees and loans.

His reputation will go up with many should he leave out of principle. Lambert's did with people then forgetting he wasnt a good manager, and he repeated the trick a couple of times more. Tomasson isnt perfect and there are question marks over him but hes far better than Lambert. That being said, the Venkys apologists will no doubt turn it onto him should he leave. Not that he will or should care.

Hes a chancer.

So if we didnt get a somewhat unexpected late window club record fee, then what would have happened? I am not suggesting going on a massive spending spree.

Why would you stick in a job where the goalposts have moved and promises have been broken, especially if you feel like you can get another job and the current job might further damage your reputation? @Groundhog Signed your fabled striker? He asked for proven goalscorers not a 22 year old unfit MLS loanee.

I know the issue is Venkys. Thats where my blame all goes. We were told this week that things were ok financially. Ish. Fast forward a week and we cant even spend £2.5m of a record fee to buy a striker. Dont spend any money and the team ceases to be competitive in the league and goes down. Investing in players is also a way of making money by selling on at a profit. Its not similar to buying a car whilst you dont have a job. Its similar to not buying a bus ticket to the job centre because you dont have a job.

Theres a game tomorrow. He could easily say who is available, preview the game etc or even get Remy to do it. Todays press conference was not intended as a transfer one.

Didnt Broughton say that we couldnt spend any fees? I am not 100% sure if he specifically said he needed to slash the wage budget in that interview but equally I would be personally skeptical ( @islander200 again just my opinion) that we offered such a deal in the summer. And then renewed it after the "project changed."

There had been cutbacks and then further cutbacks hence why fees were off the table and Ayala, Dack etc were let go.

How do you know he was on 18k a week at CSKA? No way did he offer him 15k amidst the cut backs.

Low expectations dont justify people not being annoyed that weve pocketed a club record fee and not spent any. The window will have absolutely nobody looking on enviously. Lost our main talent and our captain, lost a key CB and our full backs to injury, lost a good loanee. In come a soon to be 37 year old, a 32 year old who has had 2 serious injuries, a young lad from Crewe, a young striker from the MLS only on loan and 3 loanees that have had underwhelming and limited loans spells and are miles away from their parent clubs squads, that scream making up the numbers. Its not as if the new players are the target of the venting, they are a by product of the situation. But if people arent happy with the quality of players, they should be able to say that they dont think they are good enough, as long as they are open minded to change that opinion if they exceed expectations. Take Szmodics, criticism upon signing, now incredibly popular and always praised. And its not just a "negativity" thing as weve had plenty of new signings praised upon signing that have turned out shit. We dont always get it right but equally we should be able to pass comment. And how again is venting on here "kicking the club down further."