No, not really. I didn’t complain about it when Smallwood was here. Nor when we had Cory Evans and Meyler in 12/13, nor when we had Livermore and Huddlestone. My only complaint was that Smallwood wasn’t good enough for a top-half Championship team which seemed to be the ambition when Acun first took over.
It’s no so much that we’ve never replaced Ashbee; we’ve never replaced Smallwood. People cling to Ashbee because he was the most iconic player in that position for us. When Smallwood left, we should’ve replaced him with someone better in that particular area in midfield. We didn’t. There was interest in Ndayishimiye and Özdemir last summer but we ended up with Ryan Woods who isn’t that type of midfielder. We got Simons on loan on deadline day but he barely played last season.
Spot on. So when people say "we never replaced Ashbee" it just comes off as obsessed.
We've had one league game. FFS mate.