Walsh gets lots of [Poor language removed] while it was obvious he wasn't running things (Kenwright was). For instance do you really believe it was his idea to sign three #10s in one window? Lookman and Gueye are players I'm pretty sure he picked, Bolasie maybe. And we were really unlucky with Bolasie, he had like five assists in a few months, mostly for Lukaku before getting injured and never really getting over it. Keane, no idea who signed him ultimately and while he has been crap for long periods he will have been at the club for 10 years when he leaves which is not very common these days. He has played over 260 matches and scored 19 goals. Pickford likewise, no idea who signed him but Walsh was DoF at the time and he's one of the best signings in our entire PL history.
Of the poor signings Sigurdsson was so obviously a Moshiri vanity project. He overpaid by about double what Sigurdsson's worth was just to make a point.
Williams, Schneiderlin and Klaassen were total wastes of space, and I would bet the last one was on Walsh for sure, the other two probably. Vlasic was the #10 he obviously signed (Kenwright brought back Rooney) and IMO was a decent gamble for 10 million. Onyekuru was a joke of a signing and Sandro was really odd if it really was Walsh who signed him (scouts usually do more than just see how many goals someone scored last season). Walcott and Tosun were signed by Allardyce.
Walsh was not good by any stretch but his downfall was summer 2017. Two of the players signed then are still at the club while we made huge losses on Sigurdsson and Klaassen. Vlasic, Onyekuru and Sandro cost a combined 20 million and you'd hope that outlay had some sort of impact. Overall he made some good signings, some so-so and some terrible but it's really hard to distinguish how much the circus at the club affected. Same as with
Brands who famously complained he was not really in control. Not exactly the first time in Premier League this has happened, or is happening that owner meddles in things he should not. Worse still, we had previous owner doing the same.
It's funny how in one message we should sign Brighton's and Bournemouth's scouts but in the next we shouldn't do what they do. The point of this model is to find the correct types of players. There are at least a hundred right-backs who could do a job in the PL. How do you sort through all of them? Send scouts to watch each and every one of them 20 times? And this is just one position. And of course what Brighton does is finding the players that are not necessary on bigger clubs' radar yet. They don't do that by having a scout in every match played in South America.
