I'm sorry but you can be critical of Txiki regardless of this Ronaldo saga.
Did anyone watch Pep's press conference today? He was clearly disappointed and stressed, and yes part of it would have been the Mendy situation, but the transfer questions clearly touched a nerve. I think he's fed up of not getting our targets.
Grealish took far too long to conclude. Kane took far too long to not sign. Messi saga consumed last summer and rolled on throughout last season. The Ronaldo saga (though never going to happen) is embarrassing, despite the fact we never actually bid for him, because the club allowed the press momentum to build whilst it weighed up things, until dropping out as soon as united became interested.
The question is clear. Does the club need a striker this window, or is it happy with our team if we don't get one? Pep said the latter today, but why then have we put bids in worth £100m+ for Kane this window? Why not shut down the Ronaldo talk 2 days ago? Now I fear the club has genuinely no targets left for that position, and it doesn't know what to do.
We have possibly the greatest manager of all time under contract for 2 more seasons, and we're going to make the most of that by giving him a squad without a recognised striker for half of that (and who knows, maybe the same will happen next summer?). Even when we had the false 9 Gundogan run last year, we all knew we needed a striker.
Striker and Left Back required in 4 days. Let's see what this guy and his team are made of. If they thought we could make do with Delap, Torres and Jesus and they said that at the start of the window, that would have been more palatable. But to say that now looks really weak.