To replace Jake O'Brien who we sold to Lyon for £1m.

Quick suggestion for Doogie - maybe start scouting the Championship again (and/or start looking at players that have proven Premier League quality but are surplus to requirements elsewhere) rather than spending all your time at Larne/Ballymena signing players for the academy that will never make it to the first team.

The genuinely good signings we've made in the past few years (Eze, Olise, Guehi) have all looked really good in the Championship. It is clearly a fairly reasonable indicator of being able to do a job in a PL team. Playing for Larne? Not so much. Playing for a youth team in Brazil? Also not so much...

Do you really think he isn’t doing this? I bet he has detailed data on every prospect in the Championship.

Do you really think he isn’t doing this? I bet he has detailed data on every prospect in the Championship.

Apologies, my message might not have been clear - it was meant to be slightly tongue in cheek. You'd absolutely expect a scouting department worth their salt to have detailed data on every professional player playing in England, and most other countries too. My view is that the signings have been so bad in the last year and a half (Lerma aside) that we as fans have a reasonable right to question what the hell the scouting/signings team and Dougie Freedman (who is literally employed to oversee the finding of good players to enhance our team) have actually been doing.

I understand Dougie is a Palace legend, but there comes a stage when the inability to sign people to enhance our team has an enormously detrimental impact on the club itself. If we go down, which I think there is a very, very real chance of us doing, I personally will see that as the fault of Dougie Freedman and his team.

Every day that goes past that he misses another good loan or free signing that could have done a job for us (Ben Brereton Diaz, Fabio Carvalho, Ross Barkley, even old Andros, Ashley Young, Asmir Begovic (would've been preferable to wasting half the budget on Henderson), James Milner, Manuel Lanzini, the list goes on), coupled with the fact that the club haven't used either loan slot, or seemingly tried to sign anyone performing really well in the Championship - you have to wonder what he is actually looking at and what he's actually doing.

I would rather see the fan's frustration aimed at him and his team, who have royally, royally shafted the club by doing such a substandard job of adequately manning the squad. The reality is everyone is desperate not to criticise Dougie as he was a good striker for us. Let's call it what it is though - the last three transfer windows (this one included), apart from signing Jefferson Lerma, have been an unmitigated disaster and that is why we are where we are. Do I think Mourinho would be doing a better job with the players available and fit currently? I do not.