Time for a long term plan

johnny73

The board have stated pretty clearly that if we didn't go up this year then we would be looking at a lot of players leaving the club. Financially we are know that expenditure on wages and maintenance fees are gradually killing us.

Although I think everyone has given it their best shot this season the planning at the club has been short term. It's gone from get promoted to the Premiership or we're doomed to get promoted to the Championship or we're doomed. This puts everyone under severe pressure (which only makes it harder to get promoted).

So despite the debt is it time to start again? Let everyone go who is out of contract and has a transfer value leave and play the kids.

Could you manage a few seasons where we struggled to avoid relegation from League 1 in the hope we could build a young side worthy of challenging for promotion one day?

What I'm saying is as a fanbase are we all able to get rid of the emotional baggage we are carrying? Can we stop trying to attach blame and look for a way forward?

Can we stop being Parky haters/lovers?
Can we stop nitpicking over inconsistent developing players?
Can we stop looking at the board and thinking 'What the hell have you done'?

I don't know. I'm just asking the questions and your responses might help me make my mind up.

cafcdan18

Sorry to say, I think playing the kids would lead us to being relegated. Ask Saintsfan his views on their team when relegated from the Champ when to the best of my knowledge a lot of the younger players were not ready inluding possibly Llanna. Some of our younger players will need to be thrown in (Tuna on the bench a lot more) but some are clearly not ready. Waggy for example is getting there and is probably one of the better ones but has been very inconsistent when starting games. Mambo and Jenkinson have great potential but placing them in the first team could hinder them a lot more.

Stavinrou is one I have high hopes for if he stays, Waggy will be better for the experience this year, Elliot and Basey will surely be regulars again (maybe time for Basey in LM) but apart from them, the others do not have much experience anywhere.

Scoham

We really only need to worry about the short term at the moment. It's just about the club surviving. If we're taken over and there's investment in the club, then we can have a more long term plan.

"Just play the kids" is a nice idea, but not something we should even consider IMO. They'll have to play their part, most likely more than this season, but as I said in another thread, the reality is most are not good enough to start for us regularly. If they were, they'd be closer to the team already.

At the very least I hope we look to keep players like Dailly. Say Richardson goes, we could get by with a defence of Solly, Dailly, Llera and Youga, but not Solly, Mambo, Llera and Basey. I'm not writing the young players off at all, but playing them all at once could leave us in a relegation battle, without the experience and quality to get out of it. Southampton tried it in the Championship and they failed, has any other club done the same?

As well as us potentially getting relegated if we just had a team of young players, the fans as a whole would not be patient enough to give them time to develop as a team. The pressure would increase if they struggled, I could only see it ending in another relegation.

So like I said, more realistically lets try to keep players like Dailly, Richardson, Semedo, Burton etc if we can, use the youngsters when needed and when they are ready, and carry on signing frees and loans to add to the squad and fill the gaps. Expectations will have to fall, at the moment without investment, a solid mid table finish would be a good season next year and a start towards rebuilding a squad capable of getting promoted. Short term, we need to survive as a club, and not down the leagues any further.

Long term without investment, it'll be about slowly building up a squad like other League One clubs have done, and eventually looking at being promoted. Not that we can think about that too much at the moment.