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I seem to recall last season you defended the club’s decision not to sign anyone. I believe the phrase you used was “maybe there is method in the madness”.
Yeah, and I don’t think I’ve denied that now we are in a downturn either?
I think maybe I am just a different type of fan to many. If I see that we have talented people in post, a strategy, and a clear path forward, I’m genuinely ok. I’ll obsessively watch us in terrible form because I will think that the club is in good hands long term. The periods in recent years where I’ve still watched but have been slightly less obsessive were the season Harry was hired and the season Sherwood took over. Because in both instances it felt like we were just saving ourselves to get back on track, even if we won games week to week it was clear we were recovering from a serious misstep and were outside of our plan.
But in all of Poch’s time in particular, I’ve felt like we’ve had clarity and strategy and that we are on a good path. But I also recognise that it is not always going to be easy, it is not always going to be a smooth ride up the curve without any bumps. This idea that for someone to be doing good at their job they need to effectively have no downturn over the long term is just unrealistic. Particularly when you are trying to pull off what we have pulled off, but without then just considering that other teams will be in upswings at times that we will be on downswings. I think in sport you can benefit by not being too influenced by the swings that naturally occur.
Regarding last season, I am just the type of person that appreciates that there are no perfect answers, just situations, context, and things to deal with, some that will be outside of our control. And that it won’t always be optimal just for us because we are in a competitive sport. So Poch clearly likes the alchemy of the squad to be that if anyone has a place, they will be expected to play. If a senior player is going to be here, they need to have games, they need to be called upon. And if we couldn’t shift the players we wanted to shift, would it be worse overall if we ended up signing players who who would then make it so others wouldn’t be used? That’s what I was arguing. It’s that the choice we went with may not have been perfect, but the alternative may have been worse, or it may have been someone else’s strategy, not the one we were going with. And maybe that method meant that we maintained a top 4 finish. Maybe if we signed say 5 players while not shifting any of the current ones, we would have finished 6th? Maybe the CL final run was the dying embers of mentality for a squad that liked and respected each other and knew it was their last chance to do something special before the rebuild?
Of course we wanted to move players out last year too and bring new ones in, but I always argued if we couldn’t do that, the best thing was probably to go with what we had. It represented clarity of thought and clear strategy. Things won’t always be perfect for us. And because things won’t always be perfect, it doesn’t mean the people in the leadership positions are doing bad in what is a competitive game. We could have made different choices, but there is no guarantee we would have benefited in the same way as we did from the ones that we made.
