In todays modern aircraft it is important to fully understand the capability of the automatic systems. One of the biggest sins I have seen is a captain disconnecting auto pilot and throttle and announcing he will hand-fly when an emergency occurs!!! That may have been OK in the days of the flight engineer but the FE was got rid of on the basis of system redundancy and high levels of automation, so that automation must be used when appropriate. When the captain* disconnects and says he'll hand fly he is overloading the FO, who has to monitor and react as requested to the handling pilot as well as handle the emergency. The captain has chosen to overload himself by both hand flying and trying to monitor the emergency drills. Sadly there are several examples of a failure to properly monitor due to work overload when the use of automatics would have freed up a lot of capacity to properly analyse and monitor abnormal situations.
Regarding culpability, the manual will always be written in such a way that if an emergency occurs and proper use of the automatic systems was not utilised then the pilot will be to blame, on the other hand if use of automatics was not the best option then the pilot will be to blame! Sod's law, that is the Managerial CYA mode in full operation!
The recent A380 incident in Singapore shows that additional eyes and brains on the FD can reduce the workload, (five on the flight deck), if they know what they are doing.
*assuming captain retains or takes over PF duties.