Just watched the Villa View post-match thing. The chap on there (Dan?) seems to think that the summer signings are the problem, which seems reasonable. I've no idea how much he knows (it'll be more than me!), but he said Smith identified targets, which were inevitably too expensive (Phillips/Maupay, I'm guessing), and so was served Suso's cut price equivalents instead. Might be nonsense but it feels kind of true.