Who do you blame?

[Dave Blue]

Madness. Beating up the guy who got us up out of nowhere and has almost kept us there when virtually the whole world thought we were no hopers.

[Wales-Bales]

The owner. Never turns up and didn't back the manager.
A complete lack of class has cost us

It's not like he lives in Splott I also heard some of his businesses were underperforming, so he is probably focussing on that.

[NYCBlue]

Everyone. The owner didn't spend enough money. The manager spent money on players that didn't play enough.

[Bluebina]

Or would that be a bit mean ?

I think our transfer policy was the difference between staying up and going down.

We seemed to go for it more in January when it was arguably much more difficult to sign players.

The agent and the pilots, with Emiliana we may have stayed up, we needed a Striker that could score a goal.

[Bluebina]

The refs for the Watford and Chelsea games.

Agreed and Burnley

[Don Corleone]

One thing that has kept strong has been the dressing room and while that may not be enough in the end, we may even finish 19th, I think we've had a good season overall and learnt a lot from it. We were told at the start it might be like Burnley's first year and think we would have taken that then.

We shouldn't forget that our captain almost died; our biggest signing sadly was lost; NML, Peltier, Camarrasa, Bamba and Patterson all missed multiple games with injuries and now Ralls is missing the end of the season; we've had a number of decisions go harshly against us in big games especially during this run-in....there are things we could have done to improve things (a back-up RB, more depth in defensive midfield, another creative midfielder, another goal-scorer all to reduce risk of fatigue based injury) but many things have been outside of our control.

Oh, and we're still in with a shout of staying up.

Agree with this, we're still in with a chance of staying up with 2 games to go , albeit a very minimal chance. We've lost a lot of games 23 out of 36 but have given it a go, at least until Saturday. That was very disappointing playing defensively against a team that has a poor defence, as could be seen by the last few minutes of injury time when we could have scored on more than one occasion.

Murphy and Reid were top championship players, they weren't seen as awful signings at the time. I couldn't understand why we didn't sign a right back ( though in fairness to Peltier he,s been fine in recent games in terms of defensive duties) and signing a premier league standard striker was always going to cost money the club didn't have or weren't willing to spend. Reid did get over 20 goals in the championship last season so we should have found a system or way of accommodating him more often as probably the only natural goal scorer we had in the squad at the start of the season.

Despite so many defeats we could have stayed up if we had won on Saturday, in a game that was very winnable

[Des Parrot]

I did a piece before the season started highlighting that goals scored keeps you up (more so than goals conceded). We didn't buy a centre forward last summer, lots of names linked but "we" never had the balls to make the move / splash the cash.

Ward 1
Zohore 1
Niasse 0

No centre-forward, no goals. Simple.

[Fulham traveller]

No other manager would of got tnis squad so near to staying up, defence is decent and no one apart from city has thrashed Cardiff, lack of investment in August has cost Cardiff, i they spent 25m on a good striker would of stayed up, it’s not N.W fault

[blue lewj]

It is a mixture of things really for me.

I am sure Tan could have backed Warnock further in the transfer market but when he did with the likes of Bobby Reid and Murphy they stayed on the bench. The fees might be peanuts in Premier League terms but for a club like us to spend that sort of cash and not improve the starting 11 for the majority of games is criminal.
Did this play a part in our January transfer window? I know if many managers had given funds to improve the team by their chairman and it wasn't they would think twice next time around. That is only natural.

We knew we needed a striker back at the end of last season and dragged our feet then we all know what happened with Sala.
Could the £20 million plus seemingly wasted on Reid and Murphy not have been spent on a striker that would have got us 10 or so goals? Personally I think it could and should have been spent better.

Then there was the tactical side of things. Our park the bus while having a porous defence did not work at the start of the season yet we stuck with it right up until Fulham last Saturday when we had to really go all out for the win.

Ultimately we do not have enough goals in the team or enough quality in all areas of the pitch.
This is down to a mixture of Tan not providing funds (partly due to not trusting Warnock too much with them) and Warnock's tactical shortcomings with players of little quality and a lack of glaring gaps plugged (striker being the main one and right back).

I can't see us realistically being able to go up and stay there until the purse strings loosen and, as sad as it is to say, we go with a progressive manager who feels that there are other ways to play than parking the bus in 90% of your games and hoping to nick them by the odd goal.
Fulham on the weekend was as down as I have been about a performance given what was at stake and how much joy we got when we did go at them. What could have been eh?

[blue lewj]

No other manager would of got tnis squad so near to staying up, defence is decent and no one apart from city has thrashed Cardiff, lack of investment in August has cost Cardiff, i they spent 25m on a good striker would of stayed up, it’s not N.W fault

I've seen you refer to our decent defence a few times.

I'm not sure I share the sentiment. We've conceded only 10 less than Fulham and 8 less than Huddersfield and have the third worst defence in the league. We concede not far off two goals a game on average. I think our defensive performance in the Championship clouds a lot of judgment of our defence at times.

[Bluebina]

I did a piece before the season started highlighting that goals scored keeps you up (more so than goals conceded). We didn't buy a centre forward last summer, lots of names linked but "we" never had the balls to make the move / splash the cash.

Ward 1
Zohore 1
Niasse 0

No centre-forward, no goals. Simple.

Last year I said we needed Mitrovic and Fabianski or above level keeper and Striker, on reflection Etheridge has surprised me and stepped up, but not getting a Striker or the loss of Emiliano Sala has cost us !!!

[Bluebina]

The spine was almost there
Etheridge
Morrison - Manga (Bamba back up)
Arter
Gunner
Camarasa
Needed a goal scoring Striker and back up in midfield was not quite good enough especially for Camarasa when he was out or playing with a knock