On what topic exactly? Not about Barnes, certainly: the football we're playing at the moment is, despite the results, a vast improvement on the last few seasons, and he's managed to make those improvements with someone else's squad, and with a budget that he's clearly had to cut. I feel desperately sorry for him, and I think it's impressive that he's got us playing very attractive football under such trying conditions. I think he's made some odd recruitment decisions at times, but that's nitpicking and I think he's perfectly entitled to try things out and tinker with the squad as much as budgets allow.
On the board: yeh, I think they do have questions to answer. The decision to give Gavin pre-season and to allow him to sign a load of players on contracts has been mentioned before on previous threads, but it is an absolute stinker, and I think the primary reason behind why we're in this mess.
Did the budget have to be cut as harshly as it has been, when we knew that Barnes had little choice about who to release because so many of the players are contracted? Could we have not given Barnes at least some money to work with, particularly as we know the squad is small and we have no academy to draw players from? Would we have cut it if Gavin had still been in charge? (I doubt it.) Why are we not using what's left of the 12th man money? Has anybody at board level offered to call up every pro-club in a 20-mile radius and ask for a loan or two for Barnes? I don't believe we couldn't have got some players for free or on the cheap.
It's all well and good saying Barnes must have known he had to cut the budget when he took the job, so he/we can't complain now that he can't bring in new players, but we're clearly in a big pickle and we need to do something. The plan was clearly that we could cut the budget and survive, but that plan is now in serious jeopardy and we need to react and change the plan immediately before we undo all the good work that was done over November and December and find ourselves relegated.
