The midfielder thing I think is a real conundrum. Our usual midfield obviously lacks quality on the ball. Weirdly, we have a few very good passers that we've signed in the last year in Huddlestone, Moncur, Walsh (apparently) and even Cannon who I thought looked good on the ball when he played in the autumn. None of them play very much at all, because they don't give us the energy that Honeyman, Smallwood, Docherty and now Slater do, and that energy in winning the ball back is a big part of our game.
Whenever we bring one of those guys in, it seems to go badly and they end up getting quickly taken out again with the more energetic midfielders restored. But that still leaves us with the glaring lack of quality on the ball. Presumably Walsh was signed with a view to giving us an option with the best of both, but he's disappeared after one disappointing half. It makes me wonder how we actually improve this team. I guess the answer is by buying a seriously good quality player who can do it all by paying really decent money in the summer.
And I'd hope we give it to them. Never understand clubs that are happy to shell out a transfer fee + wages to bring players in when they could re-sign players already at the club for similar or less money. We went through years of penny pinching on contracts only to then bring in players who surely would have ended up costing us similar to what the player at the club was after.
Transfers falling out of the Premier League were haphazard to say the least.