If you ask me, when we signed Naismith for £7mil or whatever we were expecting goals (plural) for that money. So far he hasn't delivered. Expected Mulumbu to be a key player for us and O'Neil to not feature when the opposite has happened Pinto is also a questionable defender but the money was nowhere near as serious. Pleased with Wes (who gets less game time than he deserves IMO) , Howson, Brady, Mbokani, Tettey and Klose. Some other players who I can't fault their effort e.g. O'Neil, Jerome and Ruddy. The biggest positive for me was getting someone to part with sterling for Grabban
I think Pinto was purchased with the expectation of us getting 2 quality CB's, when we didn't get a second CB he was always going to struggle. Pinto's strength is his attacking ability. We haven't got sufficient quality defenders to allow us to use him to his strengths. That's not really his fault. Buying / playing square pegs and putting them in round holes is never going to work, unfortunately AN seems to have struggled with this concept. You may get away with it in the Scotish PL it is never going to work in the English PL.
Good point Canario. Seems a little surplus to requirements as we already had Martin, Wisdom & Whittaker to play at RB anyway? If Redmond is out of favour or rested, why not start with a naturally right-sided player like Pinto ahead of one of the full backs. Worth a shout instead of deploying Jarvis wide right where he's proved nowhere near as effective as he is on the left? Another example of your 'pegs' and 'holes' analogy
For me the biggest disappointments of the season have been: 1) Failure to strengthen the squad properly in positions required at the time they were needed. For example, we all knew we needed our defence strengthening at the beginning of the season & a quality Centre Back never arrived until the January transfer window. 2) Throwing away 2 goals leads (v Liverpool & West Ham) when in control of the game 3) Injuries to key players such as Klose & Tettey 4) Some of the diabolical refereeing decisions made by refs such as giving the opposition penalties but never us any (e.g. M.Oliver) when we had a clear case for one being given 5) Some of our big name players e.g. Ruddy, Jerome, Martin, Naismith giving under-par performances during the season & not reaching both their own high standards & the standard needed for the premier league
