Who is really at fault

The club's decision to sack Bielsa and his team is hugely divisive amongst fans.

Every club that brings in a new man is going to support the new man, but some of the comments regarding his predecessor have not been needed and point to a deflection of blame away from the club for our current position.

Bielsa was the man in charge on the pitch and we've done really poorly on the pitch so it must be his fault, right?

The training methods too hard, the players physically and emotionally spent, it must be Bielsa's fault, right?

So many injuries have contributed to this, it must be Bielsa's fault, right?

You get the gist of it.

And then there is the small squad thing, well that is definitely Bielsa's fault, this is his idea.

But is it?

Initially I thought Bielsa was giving youth a chance, but on reflection I think it was more necessity than them being better than first team options.

With plenty of chance to bring players on for last ten minutes these options were never really taken. Taking cup games more seriously to get more matches and consequently match time for players, those were never really taken.

All Bielsa's fault, this small squad, what an idiot.

But.

Orta made comments this year about retaining the small squad philosophy.

Despite it supposedly being the cause of our problems, the club is persisting with this.

Maybe, just maybe, this isn't all Bielsa's fault.

With all of Bielsa's analysis and attention to detail, does anyone really believe he instructed club to go out and get Junior Firpo?

Bielsa was loyal to a fault, he never threw the club under the bus the way he has been thrown under the bus.

Bielsa was loyal to his players, never criticised them, loyal to the club, never criticised them and loyal to the fans, never badmouthed the club.

We can ALL look at things Bielsa has done and think, "I'm not quite sure about that", persistence with Roberts is one that springs to mind.

But for me, the clubs public stance on retention of small squad strategy speaks volumes, they are not prepared to invest in players and it is this strategy that has cost us.

We all want academy players to do well. But the reality is out of all the academy players that have made an appearance over last few years, only Gelhardt appears decent and he was an acquisition rather than home grown talent.

Soundbites from Kinnear about not buying in players in case it impedes development of our great juniors is another excuse/smokescreen.

I truly believe that you give Bielsa quality players and his system could sweep all aside. But if you look at the team on Saturday v team getting promotion, there has been very little progression about of those newcomers Rodrigo, Raphinha, Firpo, James, only 1 is anything like near a success out of that near 90 mill spend.

The problem for me is clear.....our recruitment strategy.

I've said it before about Orta, the man who claims to have a database of 100 million players and about our owner, who thinks posting videos of himself hugging Radebe will endear himself to fans, the recruitment system and investment in team is not correct for long term on pitch success, but might be if the goal is still as AR has stated a number of times, to develop players and sell them on.

Bielsa would have much more clout with the club regarding transfers than I feel Marsch will have, so we cold well have more the same from the production line that gave us Borthwick Johnson, De Bock, Douglas, Grot, Casilla, Wiedewald, Baker, Brown, Poveda, Sacko, Cibicki and Ideguchi.

Can you see Orta taking responsibility, or can you see Orta saying we brought in the players the coach wasn't good enough.

Shouting and screaming like a lunatic and kicking in club tv screens does not make Orta effective at his job.

Regardless of division we have a massive rebuilding job to be done in the summer.

Go down and we lose Raphinha, Rodrigo, Philips and probably Meslier.

I cant see Lllorente, Koch and Harrison wanting to hang around.

Ayling, Klich and Dallas are getting on.

It's a complete rebuild.

Stay up and we still lose Raphinha, maybe Philips.

We still have these aging players, we still have Rodrigo, Koch, Lllorente etc whom we can't quite seem to get the most out of.

Obviously I hope we stay up, but its a massive, massive summer and I don't feel we're in safe hands if ownership status stays the same.