It Displays A Lack Of Forward Planning
No organisation should ever find itself in a “transitional year” when so much detail is known in advance. We are not operating blind here.
Player contracts have an expiry date. Loan players will return to their clubs. Problems which you slap a sticking plaster on will become bleeding sores a year down the line.
It is unconscionable that we have allowed the job of rebuilding this team to get to the point where we will eight or nine footballers to replace those who have departed or who will go. That is a lack of forward planning to a fare-thee-well and near damned inexcusable.
How has it gotten to this? How can we have so wilfully ignored obvious problems?
I mean, you look, too at the situation in the January window; we had to go out and bring in a loanee because we allowed our first and second choice right backs to depart at the same time … what kind of thinking lies behind that?
What kind of strategy is being followed there? You look at this and you don’t see a plan at all, but rather something people are making up as they go along.
When Rodgers was at the club, one of the most important philosophies he preached was for what he called “succession planning.”
When one top player was nearing the end of his time at the club you knew, in advance, who his replacement was and you had that guy in the building – or you tried to – before the other guy left. This was the plan. That plan went to Hell in the window where we missed Castagne, McGinn and others who the manager had identified beforehand and Lawwell failed to sign. We might also have missed out on Edouard had he not put his foot down.
With Rodgers departure the whole concept went out the window … and instead we got the controlled chaos we’re stuck with today.