But indignantly demanding that someone you're disagreeing with post the particular stat that supports your own position isn't petty? If you've got an argument to make, make it yourself.
The basic disagreement between the "Lambert apologists" and the "Negative Nellies" mostly boils down to their interpretation of what rebuilding entails and what's the best approach in the long run. It's clear Lerner, Lambert and Faulkner all agreed it's best to start from scratch with young (mostly), hungry, passionate players on similar (mostly) wages to bond and get the high-earners out the door. This approach required spreading the transfer kitty and salary funds among more players, with the obvious sacrifice in quality and greater risk of signing flops. It also means risking relegation for a season or two until ther funds can go to quality vs. quantity. But if the plan works, the club is in a good position financially and can start rewarding the players who did well with better contracts and replacing those who didn't with better quality at higher wages without blowing the wages out of the water again. If you accept this approach, then the club's record since Lambert took over isn't necessarily the most important measure of success at this point in the project, as long as the club stays up. At the moment, you could argue that Lambert has been successful, if only by a margin, against this measure. If the rest of the plan plays out (relegation is avoided, money from clearing out dead wood is made available for better players in the summer), next season is the real test of both Lamber and Lerner. Football style and results need to be significantly better and showing signs of continuous improvement.
If you don't agree that a total clearout was necessary, as a number of you don't, then of course it's hard to view Lambert as being successful. As you've argued, the transfer funds could have gone to fewer players of higher quality and results likely would have been better to date. The question is whether the club would be better posed for a resurgence after this season under this scenario. You clearly believe so. Team togetherness and the ability to build up from a good foundation, both football-wise and financially, would probably not be as good but maybe results would be similar without having had to go through 2 seasons of relagation risk and unattactive football. We may never know.
Lambert was clearly brought on board to do the job in a particular way. Slate him for choosing to go along with the plan if you want, or slate Lerner for hiring a manager to take this approach. But given the job he was asked to do, I don't think Lambert's been too bad.
Thanks for the advice but as regular readers of this forum would tell you I have continually put my argument forward and that argument is not exclusive to just the above stat. If however you feel that asking the said poster to be balanced in his argument by producing a stat showing Lambert's overall record with us is petty please avail me of another stat showing Lambert's overall performance which in your opinion, isn't?
Secondly it isn't clear at all that the Chief Executive, Chairman and manager made a collective decision on a policy of youth. What is clear though is that the Chief Executive has already stated that Lambert was given a budget and it was up to him how he spent it. That is further substantiated by who we've been linked to and who we've signed this season. The fact is that with one relegation battle behind us under Lambert and losing six out of the last eight this season Lambert has realised that his youth policy has failed and is now targeting more Premiership experience which he should have done from the start. Several posters on this site including myself stated that under this policy we would struggle and I don't think to date we have been proven wrong. playing poor football I agree, looking over a short period of games looks bad but struggling we aren't. Half way through the season which is a fair reflection of us because we had played each team once and we were 11th in the league and that's with missing Vlaar and Benteke for major parts of it. That's improvement on last season and 11th isn't struggling.