Stones was a shambles at Everton, and they were happy to get rid before his performances damaged his early hype and value any further. He had one purple patch of about 3 months here in a team that was absolutely flying, besides that he's been gash. Toilet. A more polished version of the dodgy centre half that was at Everton. This wasn't hard to predict. He was a homegrown signing that was a punt, predominantly based on nothing more than his ability to play it out the back and the hope that Pep could turn him into a competent centre half because he was still fairly young. Hasn't happened, to the surprise of few.
I don't even want to get started on the others but the Stones signing is a good example of how we've taken punts on these big signings at the back, when there were clear question marks over them already and we just seemed to hope Pep could work miracles with them.
Our recruitment deserves criticism. It's been piss poor.