We are at this moment in time 2 days from kick off in our first Land of the Free game (26 July), 25 days away from the start of our season (18 August); and 39 days from the close of the transfer window (1 September).
It all depends on what someone means by a ‘senior squad’ or ‘a senior player’, but does it seem acceptable to say that our current senior squad is somewhere in the region of 15 to 19 players?
We have already played two pre-season friendlies. The ‘kids’ did not necessarily all get useful runouts. They were needed to pad out the numbers. But we keep being told by reassuring voices:
“No worries.” We were cheerily informed only a couple of days ago that “there’s still plenty of time left”.
“No worries. TFG know what they are doing. They are brilliant Yank corporate business professionals.”
“No worries. The two big appointments for wheeling and dealing, who TFG clearly want and are prepared to wait for, will not be with us until after the window shuts.” But that’s fine, apparently.
“No worries. It will all be sorted out and a cluster of new players will be with us when the window shuts. Calm down. Trust in TFG and David Moyes, or one, or the other.”
“No worries. Deals take time and get complicated as agents shift strategically between suitors. But this is the reality and things will work out in the end. Be patient. Understand.”
But not a single one of these reassuring voices has yet to offer us anything solid, empirical, or sourced to back up their optimism. We can only keep our fingers tightly crossed.
And so I wonder…
Who is making the final decisions on players in and out? We have to assume, in the absence of the two big September arrivals, that Moyes has a larger hand than he might do this time next year. That is, if he is still with us.
TFG have known for all of 2025 that our squad will be on the small (tiny?) side in the summer. As fans, we have known this for a far longer time as we can check when contracts run down. This present tricky and unprecedented state of affairs is partly the parting gift of Kevin Thelwell and anyone else who negotiated contracts in our recent past.
We crossed the ocean this week as August beckons with the most threadbare squad in recent or living memory (I’ll plump for ‘living’). There are players in that squad who are either not good enough for us to move to the next Premier League level or who have not played enough for us to let us make firm decisions. They include: McNeil, Patterson, Chermiti, Beto, Garner, and Iroegbunam. Our big signing so far has not yet played a game for us and is a Premier League newbe. We can only hope.
We do not have as much time as some seem to think. How much can we and Moyes do when the whole operation has shifted over the ocean for a longish stretch of time and we have no idea who is left in Liverpool – or Texas… or anywhere else – to take care of business?
As top-dog corporate business people, TFG were comfortable and thought it fine in the circumstances to delay two key appointments in this most critical of transfer windows until after the window slams shut. I’m sure that there are some who might call that negligent, sloppy, or even unprofessional.
Whatever anyone might say, the highly professional and business-savvy TFG have put us in a very awkward situation as July turns into August. We are now deep into the second half of the transfer window, and I don’t think that I am alone in treating the “Oh, we could not do anything until after 1 July with PSR and all that” with rather less conviction than some others.
I might be wrong – and will be happy to be told so – but, in this transfer world of staggered payments, could we not have fixed the first instalment for July?
Also, while June seems to have been largely spent taking care of out-of-contract and end-of-loan players (which, by the way, hardly takes up a ton of time), what were we doing on the incoming front? Some might say “not a lot” or “not effectively at any rate” as we sit here near the end of the next month with only a Premier League virgin and a cheap goalkeeper incoming.
We are today in a far more stable financial situation than we were this time last year. A question keeps floating in to my mind, however: Has this been, for the most part, to help along TFG’s investment and eventual returns, rather than for squad security in this, quite frankly, desperate or at least unprecedented time? We will find out soon…
Ideally, our reassuring voices are right and, breathing a sigh of huge relief, we thank them for their pragmatism, clear-sightedness, and calm. We kick off with three new signings on 18 August, and we get three or four more before the window shuts.
These signings are not iffy loans, late-career fellas, unproven, journeymen, but signings that spread waves of optimism through the recharged and energised hordes. Leeds subside, Brighton fold. We shall not be moved and the best is yet to come as three or four more lads join us before the window shuts. Hopes are high.
Danny, sadly, but fittingly, spontaneously combusts in the Plaza after the 5-1 win over Brighton in sheer uncontainable explosive and atomic blue exhilaration, joy, and force. He will be missed. His bits and pieces are re-made into a moving mosaic placed on the wall of the South Stand…
No, Danny will not spontaneously combust and will not be missed. “Seriously”, Robert Tressell said earlier this week, “does anyone doubt we’ll have between 3 and 6 new players arriving in the next 6 weeks?”
I think that there will be, Robert. It is nearly 5 weeks now. The clock is ticking. Robert, who I deeply respect, has a view that is rooted quite rightly in hope and belief… but little else. Others are not so sunny. There is not much in our recent past to suggest that we are capable of nailing down half-a-dozen new players in less than 6 weeks.
So, here we are again, we’re off on a pre-season tour and the season is around the corner and we listen once more to our by now regular August chorus: “When are we going to buy … There is not exactly oodles of time left … last-minute blues again?” New owners; same chorus.
You see, Roberet, we might well get six or seven new players, but three is not enough, unless you think that we can rely on the U21s. We might get in half-a-dozen, but (1) Will they be good enough to help us move onwards and upwards? (2) Will they be in the positions that we need? (3) Will at least one or two of them genuinely inspire us? Will anyone be crowing if we smash and grab three last-minute buys to hit the magic ceiling of six?
This all said, I still have a fading hunch, however, that we will somehow patch together a senior squad of 20 or more: buying or loaning Harrison, Soucek, McGinn or Luiz: an Aznou perhaps; Hamer, Hutchinson or Fellows, a surprise, Gallagher maybe. But I’m not overly confident.
The final third of the transfer window is nearly upon us. Anyone who is not concerned is living in suspended reality or cloud-cuckoo land. Is there anyone, truly, who would honestly say that, if they had been told on 1 June that we would be in this exact situation on 24 July, that they would have said “That’s fine, I’m comfy with it, it’s acceptable.” Anyone?
By the way, has anyone else seen those demonstrators in Kyiv in tee-shirts with ‘Beto’ on them? They can spot a top-class accomplished one-on-one finisher… although a little bird told me that ‘beto’ means ‘veto’ in Ukrainian.