floyd__streeteHoop Blah Percentage football has it's limitations yes, and the fashion is to love away from it as the game evolves and so should the tactics you employ, but, having said that, if McDermott had made his limited style of football work, as Pulis did at Stoke, then he wouldn't have got the sack.
Of course, goes without saying.
If only the signings had been better, eh. McCleary & particularly Gunter performed poorly in terms of higher-end value signings. BMc & Hammond take the wrap for that. And then in January we spent (IIRC) £300k on Akpan and a little south of £1 million on Blackman. Absymal signings, but does AZ really expect us to believe in hinting that we had more resource available ("we should have done more in the transfer market" - his shifty and immortal words when unveiling Adkins) that the manager somehow chose to go for bargain-basement crap instead? I somehow think that AZ had given up the ghost a little by January tbh and you can understand why to an extent given how far adrift we were.
Bottom line is: signings weren't good enough. But neither was the budget sufficient. Stoke meanwhile invested heavily to get to their level of comfortable survival.....includings, ironically, several million on Kitson and Sonko....
It was either one end or the other.
Ridiculously hopeful or opportunistic signings (Blackman or Akpan) or spurious (and maybe even dubious) punts on the likes of Ince and Siggurdson, FFS.
Surely there is somebody in the middle.
The thing is, I honestly don't think anything has changed - so really how much does the manager, any manager, have his hands tied in the market? Discussing transfer records when answering "Brian: The right decision?" is a grey area for me. I agree with what you are saying, though. Its more than one man's decision. I would throw in NH as well as AZ as culpable.