Hmmmm
Where am I backtracking?
Where have I argued against younger players?
That’s simply untrue as I suspect you realise.
Indeed I’d love to be pleasantly surprised (‘proven wrong‘ if it makes you feel better) if In this window together we were celebrating 5 new signings all aged 23, all from the UK with 50 plus games experience in the PL or championship. Love to. But my opinion is that it’s just not realistic .... unless we’ve found £25m from somewhere.
Therefore I judge the recruitment based on the resources we have, versus the needs of the team. There are still some areas we need to address- a RB/CB, a pacey CM and 2 quick wingers, so I hope the job is still unfinished. And there are so many factors involved that influence the recruitment apart from pure funds- quantity and timing of bids for our players and being able to remove the bomb squad to name but two obvious ones. But when all is said and done, ‘on paper’ I am happy to reiterate that so far I think they’ve made a pretty good fist of things.
But of course football isn’t played on paper as someone once said. It’s too early to tell if the signings will be a success. Some will I’m sure; I think Taylor will prove better than Grabban, The Greek might just surprise us and a few others will all prove that dad’s army lives on beyond Ian Lavender and Frank Williams. At the same time, some won’t Be that good and some will be utter cack; but that’s the gamble. For every Bong there is a Ribeiro Sow Samba and Silva signed for peanuts but able to contribute.
If they aren’t a collective success then the owner will pay for it financially and the manager with his job. (I would have thought that would make you happy.)
In the meantime I will assess realistically and try and debate sensibly where points of view are put forward based on an appreciation of the financial situation we have and not where the default assessment is that recruitment is a failure because we don’t meet a strict criteria list including age or nationality (like has beens or never beens) or because we don’t like the owner or manager.
