Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
Hang on a sec, if you're not willing to accept the widely reported fee we paid for Bacuna, how can you claim that Warnock only had a "shoestring" budget in 17/18? How do you know that? It seems to me that any manager who can afford to make a signing like Gary Madine (with his reported fee of £6 million) is hardly operating on a shoestring budget.

As mentioned earlier in this thread, Warnock was very good at a certain type of signing (Bosmans, usually from lower division clubs) and woeful when it came to players bought for significant fees and when he did sign one who has been a regular in the Premiership this season, he kept on leaving him out!

As for Bacuna, I think that, if he was really seen as a replacement for Gunnarsson, he's been a poor one because he has little of the tactical discipline that Gunnar did and he certainly doesn't possess the same leadership qualities. I do feel sorry for him this season though because he's been shifted around from pillar to post. He was struggling at right back in Neil Harris' latter days here and I'm not convinced by him as an attacking player - for me, his stamina and running power makes him a natural box to box midfielder and I agree that he might be worth a try as a right wing back.
Warnock got us into the Premier League whilst spending around £10m including the Madine fee. If that's not a shoestring budget these days, I don't know what is. Also, I didn't say that the fee for Bacuna wasn't £3m, it might have been but it was undisclosed, as are his wages and I was challenging the previous posters opinion about Warnock wasting money on him. In order to ascertain that, you would need to know exactly how much he was earning and the exact fee, which no one does. Another point I would make about some of Warnocks signings (especially Madine and Bacuna) is that any manager trying to bring players in during the January window is going to have to pay an inflated fee and accept longer and more expensive player contracts. Its just a fact of life nowadays, as most clubs don’t really want to sell and players aren’t keen to uproot themselves either, at that time of year. Continually criticising Warnock for his signings ignores all the good things he did for the club and is unfair in my opinion. PS. I wouldn't play Bacuna at right wing back in preference to NG, Sang or Osei-tutu. To me he is an ok squad player but thats about it.