So all the usual uninformed rubbish getting posted here
1 Neal Ardley did say in an interview the budget was spent. I thought it was a bit of an odd thing to say. Allocated yes, which is what I think he meant, but not “spent” because that makes no sense.
2 Look at Hemmings record, as far as I can see he was almost guaranteed to provide 15 goals a season and was doing it with his previous clubs and got 14 for us, that why he was seen as a valuable player in L2 and why he was wanted back by his previous club. Not his fault we gave him a poor team to be part of.