Complete rubbish. If all the players Bilić signed were sold we would have more money than he spent. You may not have picked this up but Bilić was reluctant to spend most of his miserly budget on Diangana, he thought he could get him on loan later on in the window and wanted to spread the cash around. Steve Madely had a detailed article in the Athletic last week. It was Dowling and the board that pushed the transfer through on the basis it would be a good long term investment. What really goads me about your statement is how unfair it is to expect every transfer to work and to work instantly. Overall Bilić recruitment was impressive. All signings are a risk. Alex Ferguson made plenty of mistakes. It’s easy to beat the manager if your holding him out to an impossible standard. He worked a miracle to rebuild that squad and engineer promotion last season, when he was given peanuts.
He didn't work a miracle last year, we had one of the strongest squads, wage bills and still had parachute payments. Us getting promoted was about as miraculous as Liverpool's multi-million pound squad winning the greed league. Unexpected, maybe, miracle, certainly not!
What he did do was enforce that advantage in regards maximising our superior players, which just about got us over the line, despite being weak defensively.
What he didn't do was adapt to life in the greed league and failed to address the flaws in his squad and his approach, hence we are left with a squad that has no ability to play on the back foot, but is not good enough to play on the front.
Of course the useless recruitment team and board are culpable but Bilic was in charge of team affairs and got it spectacularly wrong. If you don't accept that, and purely blame Dowling and Lai, then you cannot blame Allardyce, going forward, as, if it wasn't Bilic's fault, it can't be his either.