When this window was still not open, I thought we might clear out some players who weren’t getting games; Gamboa, Sviatchenko and Henderson featured heavily in that list. What I didn’t expect was a growing swell of certainty that others would go too.
This window may yet see first team players leave. The backline, in particular, might be drastically altered beyond recognition. If this is true then Brendan really is wielding the scalpel. We have a manager who is about to get ruthless with his record breaking team.
There is a certain cold-blooded logic to what Brendan is doing here, both with the defence and with other parts of the team. I understand it completely even if the idea of selling Dembele is something I’d make my way to only with the utmost reluctance. But there are changes that need to be made, and the manager is not waiting to make them.
The defence has been wobbly all season long, and in the matches against PSG they were shown up as being badly off the pace. We went up against world class players, but the amateurish way we lost some of the goals clearly left the manager horrified. As the season has gone on, he has more and more found himself highly critical of certain players in it.
The surprise of this window would be the sale of Jozo Simunovic, who I think all of us believed was on his way to being a highly significant part of our squad. But those European games were searing to him. That was the first major sign that this guy wasn’t going to cut it for us. Worse was to follow though, as his injury issues continued to hamper his game time.
In one article last year, I questioned the utility of having “key players” from our squad in such a position where they could be relied upon week in week out. Frankly, Jozo and Moussa are no good whatsoever to us if they are sitting in the stands. Top players must be available for selection, and they can’t pick and choose when they want to play.
Jozo has been a frustrating example of that; not able to play successive matches, not cut out for life on artificial surfaces when they are becoming more prevalent in Scotland and across Europe. Don’t even get me started on that; their one positive selling point was that they were all-weather surfaces; here in Scotland recent cancellations have made a mockery of the idea.
Simunovic has worried me all season long with these traits of his. The manager has been increasingly frustrated by his failure to play more than a handful games in a month. Against Hearts he looked like someone who’s head had completely gone. There are problems in our team right now, and Brendan clearly believes some of them start at the back.
I knew Sviatchenko would go. I thought Gamboa would, but his name is curiously absent from most of the articles about culling the squad. That’s good news, because anyone can see Lustig is toiling and it’s time that he was dropped. I did not expect the manager to so swiftly demote – and perhaps sell – Jozo Simunovic, but Ajer has proved more than an able and if, as we expect, the boy at Dundee, Jack Hendry signs then really, there’s no point keeping him around.
Rumours also continue to circulate about Steven Caulker; if Brendan can get anything out of him his signing, on a free, would be a no-brainer.
That would send us into the second half of the season with almost a new back line.
What’s clear is that Brendan is not messing about here. He has acted more swiftly than I believed he would, decisively, cutting away that which will no longer do.
Expect changes in other areas of the pitch to follow.
We’re gearing up now.
The first 18 months have been quiet compared to the next 18. We’re in for a helluva ride here folks.