Who wanted those players then? Someone else? Three of them are ex-Ajax. Another three for Holland.
Do you think he told them to pull back on Antony when the bidding got ridiculous?
Is he asking for players but not asking what his budget is?
None of what you say makes any sense. Has he asked for players, sat by while the club went and got them and then when they weren't good enough, didn't have any more money to buy who he wanted?
I don't understand what anyone sees in what he serves up on the pitch to justify bending the truth and contriving to absolve him of blame. If Klopp's replacement spends £400 million on players and performs like this then we'd be laughing our heads of.
You're entitled to your opinion but I just don't get it. Whether you think he's the man to take us forward or not, he should take some responsibility for his decisions.
You're missing the point.
With the possible exceptions of Klopp and Guardiola, who have been successfully in post for ages now, managers shouldn't be in a position to request specific individuals, and especially not in their first season or two at the helm.
To use your example of Antony, the brief from Ten Hag shouldn't be (or shouldn't have been allowed to be) "I want Antony", it should have been "I need a right-winger with that can do this, this and this." The scouting team and recruitment analysts should then take that and come back with a list of players that, to varying degrees, match that brief, and have them easily categorised based on how suitable they are and how obtainable they are. From there, you draw up a shortlist, and if you can't get your top target (either because their club won't listen to offers, they aren't interested in the move, or the price is too high), you have a second option to quickly move onto, and so on.
It's quite obvious that we haven't done this for Ten Hag. Even with Antony, we asked at the beginning of the window, got quoted something like £50 million so walked away, only to find ourselves without an alternative at the end of the window so paid an even dafter fee, because the other option was having no one. Similarly, Casemiro was signed because we'd apparently only managed to identify Frenkie de Jong for that role and he was basically the most obviously available alternative.
Even with this, it was never in Ten Hag's control to decide what the max bid was, and it's not in his control how the budget is allocated (or at least not to any meaningful degree). He'll have sat down with Murtough and whoever else and planned the window's transfer strategy, which positions were a priority, etc., and then basically had to sit back while Arnold and whoever else went off to negotiate deals. If he says "ooh, that's a bit pricey" when told what we've managed to negotiate for Hojlund, as an example, and we pull out of the deal to try and keep some budget for a central defender, he's running the risk of us ending up with a Weghorst-type loan deal for a striker and still only getting Jonny Evans on a free for his back line.
No one's bending the truth when explaining that it's absolutely mental for a club of our standing to have seemingly had the manager (and a new one at that) dictate transfers to the extent Ten Hag (and Solskjaer, and Mourinho, and van Gaal, and Moyes) has had to.
Again, there's enough ammo to criticise him for "what he serves up on the pitch" without getting wound up about things that shouldn't even be his responsibility (or at least nowhere to the extent they seem to be).
If Liverpool replace Klopp (who infamously wanted Brandt instead of Salah) and let the new guy spend £400 million on a bunch of players he's picked himself, then of course we'd laugh at them, because it's the exact clown show we've been running for ten years.
