Sell your best players, have money in the bank...

Be in the Championship after a successful promotion year, win a cup at Wembley, that's how to impress potential new owners into your circle. Then, once in, say ooops, we're not actually a very good team but we've got lots of money. Wonder if Mr Lee and co have had second thoughts about this and now see relegation as a distinct possibility.

 

Do you have an alternative strategy? There is nothing wrong with the plan. It is the only way forward for us. It will have peaks and troughs as we go through replacement cycles but without overstretching ourselves to compete with people we cannot compete with I don’t see an alternative. That’s not to say we don’t need to refine it and adapt it and get better at contracting but in essence we have taken the only option.

 

While they can influence the January window I would say they are still in play, after January they are unlikely to be as keen on a team heading for league one. Feel sorry for Hecky.

 

Maybe but why didn't we shop at league one level after we got promotion?

 

I guess we did in Bradshaw, Moncur and Mowatt. Our more successful last season were transfers were MCDonald and Yiadom maybe this influenced our decision making this year and we thought we could get better value lower down the pyramid. Not saying I agree but you can see where the thinking came from.

 

A takeover this week and promise of a few quality signings for Hecky in the window would give everyone a much needed pick me up. Sadly I fear it will be the same old story.

 

One tweak for me would be to have a couple of players over the age of 24 in key positions. Centre half centre midfield. I agree we have limited options but we do have options. We seem to have take "the plan" to the absolute extreme.

 

I think you have to consider also that the sold players wanted to go. Would you expect them to give 100% to a club that wouldn't release them and keep them on a much lower wage?

 

The plan is not fit for purpose in the Championship. Our luck has ran out in trying to unearth gems from the lower leagues. I am so frustrated as to why we don't just stick our necks out just a little to enhance our chances of staying in the division because without serious strengthening in January we are gone. We need a keeper, an experienced centre half, two experienced midfielders and two strikers one of which has a chance of competing in the air as we seem to like pumping the ball up to dwarves just now. The last five performances have been horrendous

 

Takeover won't be completed until the new year at the earliest.

 

Speculate a little and spend a bit on better players. Risky but increases the continuation possibilities in the Championship. Continue this failing gem hunt from the lower leagues and that is where we will end up. Heckingbottom saying the same thing time after time. Many of our current crop are simply not good enough for this level.

 

Spending isn’t the issue. Wages are the reason we can’t attract established players.

Loan market?

Get Matty James, Kevin long, Jacob butterfield type players who know the division with parent clubs helping us out on wages and then maybe we can stabilise. We are only heading down if we don’t.

 

It is fit for purpose in the Championship, however we're still recovering from our success of the calendar year of 2016. We have had to rebuild the entire squad once again. Anyone who expected anything other than a long old season this year was a little naive in my opinion. We signed 17ish players in the summer, almost exclusively made up of players without Championship experience. They're all learning their feet in this division. The problem for me is that the players we had in existence at the club prior to these signings haven't necessarily performed. Yiadom at present looks a shadow of the player he was, MacDonald has been poor, Davies is out of form, Moncur appears to have reverted to the 'luxury' player he was at Colchester which Hecky tried to mould.

We need to ride out this storm, add a couple of players in January who can make an impact (considering January signings should be match fit already), and chop and change a few in the summer. By this time next year, the core of the squad will have been at the club for almost 18 months, will have at least 50 championship games under their belt, and hopefully are performing more consistently.

The "plan" is a long term cycle. It's highs in theory should massively outweigh its lows.

 

You know that how?

 

Then we simply play in the lower leagues and be content with that. Lose half of the regular 9 or ten thousand supporters lose the small amount of tv revenue because nobody wants to watch us now and sit mid table in league one. Or recruit better. 1 million for Thiam or 500k for Waghorn. I know what I would choose

 

Radio Sheffield. Sources close to the club say that a deal certainly isn't dead and are confident it'll go through. Not until January at the earliest though.

 

Thanks for the update, wonder where that leaves Hecky with his planning?

 

Not sure. Gauthier Ganaye said in an interview when asked about the surplus from transfers over the past few years, that a healthy budget will be made available from that. Make of that what you will.