I get your point but I feel, considering their large salaries, they were a major disappointment because they couldn't even lead us to average. It's absolutely on the coaches to lift performance of players, but good players can also lift up a club.
They were four experienced forwards on big salaries who basically got dominated almost weekly in the forwards. Their defensive work was mostly really meek. They looked like professionals, but ultimately I don't think results really mattered much to them and none really had the sort of character to push themselves.
I think Bateman was the best of them, Papalii was also decent but never looked fit enough, Stefano didn't seem interested in the hard stuff and Klemmer was always professional and decent but almost seemed like he had his stopwatch on to ensure he wasn't spending a minute longer on the field than his allocated time. Just had no agro in his play and didn't see much energy.
Also, we really looked no worse when all of them were out and we had a bunch of fill ins playing instead of them. I think we even nabbed a couple lucky wins in that period. I just think they're replacement level players and we did very well to offload most of their contracts despite their lack of form.
At other clubs I think Papalii will be the best, Klemmer would do a decent job at someone like the saints and Stefano could still be anything, but I predict he'll just be stefano, and I think Bateman will struggle at the Cows.
