[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

But despite exploring that middle ground, none of those managers managed to strike an effective balance, a lot of which was (again) down to the players at their disposal. And when results turned sour, they all got sacked. Bunging another fall guy in with the same resources at this point in time is going to be as much of a disaster as it was with all the others.

Recruitment, full backs etc is one definite area where Pulis is ultimately culpable. That said, Jonny Evans looks like a good signing who (I hope) will be one of the necessary building blocks for a stronger defence. But no, I'm not massively optimistic about future transfer windows right now. The worst thing is, given what's happened in previous windows, there's no guarantee it'd be any better even without Pulis. This club has been making some awful choices on new players for a good few years now, and that's the principal reason we are where we are.

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The cycle we seem stuck in:

1. We have some crap players
2. We play a crap system to accommodate our crap players
3. We sign some better players
4. We force our better players to play in our crap system alongside our crap players
5. Our better players turn crap
6. Return to 1, repeat until relegated/consumed by malignant hatred of football