The blame game

[The Dog 16]

there are lot of fingers being pointed in all sorts of directions after what has been another at best (rose tinted glasses) very strange transfer window for us and at worst (pant wetter) a dam right incompetent transfer. Here''s my thoughts/musings:

- the board need to take an element of blame but I personally feel they did make the money available. It''s not there fault that Alex Neil decided to splash £8 million on Pritchard, a talent player there is no doubt, but in a position where we were completely overloaded already.

- our nett spend is considerably higher (circa 25 million) than Newcastle.

- I would love to know who is responsible for trying to move deadwood out the club, I assume it''s a combination of Alex Neil and the chief exec. But that''s a guess. As Whoever it is has had a very bad transfer window indeed. Our policy of off loading players seems very muddled to say the least. I get the impression we tried to play hard ball and clubs just said no thanks and moved to the next target. This in turn has not helped with bringing players in.

- Alex Neils lack of knowledge in the English market and not being a well known name does not seem to help us get deals over the line.

- Ricky Martin & Lee Darnburgh - I still dont really know what these two actually add to the party. Neither seem to have a good reputation and they don''t seem accountable for anything. What do they do?

- does Alex Neil know how to build a new team. I fear not. He seems to jump from one idea to the next normally after opening his mouth first to contradict himself. He said Maddison was not going out on loan then we send him to Scotland.

We chased McCormack for weeks a small diminutive striker who would not enjoy playing in a lone striker role which worried me a lot as whilst Ross McC is a great player at this level I could not see him fitting into our system without a big change in formation from the manager ie. Going to 2 up top which he has shown no signs of doing in his tenure so far. The fact we signed Oliveria who I don''t know enough about to pass judgement seems strange as I am led to believe he is a completely different style of striker again. is there any real joined up thinking with what the manager what''s in terms of players etc or is it simply a case of we''ll sign him and think about tat later? This is backed up by the debacle that is/was the Naismith signing. We chased him for not 1 but 2 transfer windows only to not know how or where to play him or get anything out of him. It also appears he has no interest in being here.

In summary for what it''s worth I don''t think anyone person is solely to blame however given that he himself has said he had final say on all transfer matters I''m afraid the manager has a lot to account for. It''s not true that he has not had money and ultimately the buck stops with the manager.