While this is all true and I am in agreement, I would say are that it wasn’t just the first few days of this window where the club was making those kinds of noises, it’s been all season. Coupled with the undervalued sale of Baptiste (I know this can be disputed, but it really was), it seems to me (famously, no expert) like something came up late on in January that had not been anticipated (Someone on this thread of the Jan Trf Wdw thread mentioned something about an outstanding charge to Eales needing to be satisfied in the near future?). So this wouldn’t make the initial noises misleading, as they were true at the time, but does raise questions about organisation behind the scenes. I don’t think KR, for example, would have made these comments about ‘big club’ and long shortlists of players had there really been no money to spend, and indeed by all accounts it does seem like we tried to spend on players.
Also, I wonder if we would be having this reaction as a fan base had we had an absolutely stonking January and were still in the auto places. As football fans we’re extremely reactionary and I suspect had we just seen off Rotherham, Ipswich and Newcastle we’d all have waved off Baptiste with good graces. It’s the fact that we’re now a good few positions lower than we were at the beginning of the window (despite having probably a better squad) coupled with this perceived lack of ambition that is fuelling this backlash.