We are BANG in trouble .....

Genuine question Tarbie other than Wells and Hugill can you name me any players MW signed on loan or permanent have been a success ?

Sparx, that depends on your definition of success. Mine is signing players good enough to make us competitive in this league. Last season I was quite happy with mid table, the squad Warburton put together (on a shoe string) achieved that. So for me, that's an overall success.

If we are going to critique players on an individual basis, then my feedback would be as follows:

Liam Kelly - Good enough for what we paid, probably not a player I see as a long term option as 1st choice keeper.
Todd Kane - great going forward, awful defensively. Not my cup of tea, but suits the Managers style of play.
Conor Masterson - Great centre half in the making.
Dom Ball - Totally disagree with you appraisal. Not the most talented but does what he does well and always gives 100%. Every team needs this type of player in my opinion.
Yoann Barbet - Decent enough at this level. Been caught out a few times, but I put that more down to the Manager asking us to play too high a line.
Lee Wallace - Looks good to me when he plays. Don't understand why he isn't first choice left back.
Luke Amos - Very tidy central midfielder in the making (although I suspect he was a LF signing rather than MW).
Marc Pugh - Past it unfortunately. Waste of money.
Matt Smith - Didn't see enough of him to comment really.
Jan Mlakar - Crap, but I think he was cheap and signed as cover.
Jordan Hugill - Very good loan signing.
Nakhi Wells - Again, very good loan signing. Not sure we can give MW any credit though, given it was basically a renewal of his loan from the previous year.

what would you give him then?
lets just sum it up, promotion was never really likely regardless but we were dark horses for periods of last season. hugill had his best ever goalscoring record under warbs, he scored 7 in 40 the previous season. wells came to life after a dissapointing season before warbs. eze found consistency and earned a move to palace after becoming the leagues best player. BOS finally developed into the winger we hoped for.

we did all of that playing attractive football, being the third highest scorers in the league, transitioning into warbs style with a big turnover on players. oh and we also worked on a shoe string budget and had lost key players in smith, furlong, bidwell, freeman and luongo and to a degree leistner and scowen too whilst replacing them with unknown qualities like ball and amos.

honestly what more were you expecting? how exactly has warbs done a bad job?

Forgot about Jack Clarke, he's an odd one. Head's gone I think. There was a story doing the rounds about him having some kind of panic attack earlier on in the season with Leeds. I suspect there is a lot more to his loss of form in the last year than we are aware of. I'll add that I doubt he cost much to loan, and he was also probably a Les Ferdinand signing.

Interesting that your take on a signing being a success is whether they are improvement on the player leaving. Surely that needs to be balanced against a backdrop of a club policy of reducing wages and investing in youth. If we are actively reducing salaries and the average age of the squad (for the benefit of profitability and longevity of the club), then we should be prepared to accept some level of flexibility in this area? Certainly in the short term.

Surely a better benchmark is the league position at the end of the season. That has to be the ultimate benchmark of success, doesn't it?

If the results don’t pan out James it won’t be the 3 or 4 that you suggest are involved in transfer targets it will be MW and his coaching staff.that will exit.
i would agree the entertainment is better but ultimately I would put results before it.

I've got absolutely no worries about losing Hall, Leistner and Rangel. 

Issues with the back 5 for me would be massively improved if we moved Lumley on and got in a proper seasoned keeper.  Wallace at LB and Manning at LM would make a huge difference too.

I would agree the end position in the league is above all criticism but I don’t feel it’s justified to say it’s not MW fault we had a bad season because he did not have a good transfer budget...he’s had a fist full of loans which were mainly wasted.

There are much better players available than what MW has shown us so far.

if MW had given a contract to a full back playing non league it would be easier to accept if the player turned out a dud.
Giving Todd Kane a four yr contract is a truly terrible lack of judgement of a player that quite clearly is limited in basic football ability.
Most people don’t part with a clapped out car and buy something even less reliable.

Most of those goals came down the left side, didn't they Maids? So not Masterson and Kakay's areas (and Kakay btw played very little last season anyway). But remind me who played LB again? 😉

The same Todd Kane that Frank Lampard tried to keep at Chelsea before he signed a deal with us?

Looked a good signing on paper, and all of us were happy with the transfer at the time. Personally I don't think he's a bad player, he's just not a defender. Probably needs converting into a winger. But again, it seems to be the managers philosophy to have very offensively minded full backs. 

Going by the interview it also sounds like we have to make do with Dykes and Ramkilde as the only strikers this season. That sound`s really alarming imo.

Bit aggressive innit?

Neither can defend for toffee, I'll give you that. Worst full backs we've had at the club? Depends on your perspective I suppose. I can personally think of many full backs we've had here that were about as bad defensively and offered close to nothing offensively.

Survival,mediocrity is the benchmark.
As dull as3 yr old white socks

I mean we could start with John Curtis and Gary Borrowdale! 😂