The Murphy signing got me really thinking, who could play where etc.... 1 England GK Scott Loach 2 Wales DF Elliott Hewitt 3 England DF Aaron Cresswell 4 England DF Luke Chambers 7 Trinidad and Tobago MF Carlos Edwards (captain) 9 England FW Jay Emmanuel-Thomas 10 England FW Michael Chopra 14 England MF Anthony Wordsworth 15 England DF Tyrone Mings ready? 19 England MF Luke Hyam 20 New Zealand DF Tommy Smith 22 Northern Ireland MF Josh Carson ready? 26 England FW Paul Taylor 31 England MF Byron Lawrence ready? 34 England FW Jack Marriott ready? 35 England FW Frank Nouble -- England MF Cole Skuse Add Murphy to the list potentially!? however, not yet a done deal! Same with McGoldrick! We currently have a squad of 17, yes 17 !!!!! Of that 17, 4 are very young/ how ready are they for a full season? So you could argue that brings us down to 13 players ready to go. Then, we have to take into account Chopra/ JET being made available for transfer!!!!. Shows how littered with loan players we really were last season!!!! Realistically, we have ELEVEN players ready to go. Should be a massively busy summer at Portman Road!!! Our current lineup, based on what we have, looks like this....! Loach Hewitt/Smith/Chambers/Cresswell Edwards/Skuse/Hyam/Wordsworth Nouble/Taylor I just wanted to illustrate the point really, just to highlight how light we are. Obviously should we add McGoldrick/Murphy, that's a strong start. Tabb rumoured to be coming also, and we clearly won't start the season come August anywhere near this light. However, the past few seasons ( bar a good start under Keane in his second season ) we have made VERY poor starts. To say I'm worried right now would be ridiculous, as I trust McCarthy, who is for my mind the best thing to happen to us since Joe Royle. Who is on their way one wonders!?!?
I think it's a point worthy of highlighting but at the same time I think most of the league are in a similar position to us. There are soo many out of contract players around at the moment. I think we shall be fine come the start of the season or we'll just have to play some youngsters, which might not be a bad thing, remember the days of Royle and Magilton where we used youngsters because we had depleted squads and they probably stepped up to the mark more than the players we bought for millions of pounds since!! But saying that actually looking at the list you've written if you take JET and Chopra out apart from the back 4 which looks really promising (but no back up) the rest of the squad doesn't look that great. If we sign Murphy and Tabb I'd then like us to try and sign some real quality/creative flair players.
I don't think this is a huge shock to anybody, considering how many loans we have had over the past few years. I truly believe you could make a very good championship squad without spending a penny on transfer fees this season given the number of quality free agents. I trust in Mick that he will find quality players on a small budget.
