by Ian Royal »
25 Oct 2009 20:55
Personally I don't think Harper had to go, but I know some more ITK than I am claim he was always off this summer.
Problem is we've lost a lot of our better players, but kept the vast quantities of unnecessary mediocre ones. That's one reason I never would have kept Gunnar, even if his experience could be very useful. We simply had way too many midfielders. And what did Rodgers do? Dump one and bring in another no better.
Federici, Hamer & Andersen
Cummings/Rosenior, Armstrong, Bertrand & Kelly
Ingimarsson, Mills, Pearce, Cisse & O'Dea
Karacan, Gunnarsson & Tabb
Davies, Matejovsky, Harper/Howard, Siggurdsson & Bozanic
Kebe, Henry, Antonio, McAnuff & HRK
Hunt, Long, Church, Mooney, Bignall & Rasiak
31 players is simply way way too big a squad. Even with Davies, Andersen, Antonio, Mooney, Bignall & Henry out on loan. And most of the padding is at centreback and midfield, leaving us ok in numbers but short of quality elsewhere, so sending those lot out on loan doen't really help much.
Personally I think we should have started the season with the ones in Bold. That's 24 players and potentially a fair bit more cash available. And we still could have sent a few more out if needed and got a couple more signings in before the window closed/after the first few games.