I think Schad could have said no money allocated to spend this January, rather than none available. But that's near enough the same thing, though I get the distinction.
On the subject though I'm happy with it and glad it was the plan for Ralph coming in. We had an overfilled squad of players who have performed or shown potential in the past but have gradually been starved of form and confidence. We've got rid of the immediate surplus; Hoedt, Gabbi, Davis et cetera. We've refocused and elevated talented players that we already had that were astray or not getting chances; Redmond, JWP, Bednarek. Restored experienced bedrocks like Maya and Romeu. And removed the blockade on the youth pipeline to give chances to grow and also continue to pump enthusiasm and energy into the team and dressing room.
If instead of doing that we'd tried to skip ahead of the curve and start building up now... We wouldn't have JWP's resurgence, we wouldn't have Valery, Ramsay, Slattery etc. getting chances to play. The only position we're only really lacking is in the winger department, but we're not using formations that rely on classical wingers. And we've got some young guys like Sims and Johnson who can fill the gaps. Better to let them play like 10% of the remaining minutes even if they're short of quality than buy a player to cover the short term need.
I've long thought that with a positive manager that will give young players chances (Nigel, Poch, Ralph) that we could get by with our reserve players being almost entirely youth. With of course the most promising in the actual team. Build a 17 or 18 man squad (including established graduates like JWP, Stephens and Targett) and then backfill with youth when the time comes. Have the 'next man up' ready at every position. Even if they're nothing special, they'll end up playing a fraction of your games, we know their attitude and desire will be second to none, and the upside potential is huge. Even when we were in the EL I didn't think our squad needed to be bigger than about 21. Instead we had two XIs and spare worth of full pros and most were starved of consistent gametime.
When injuries strike instead of turning to Pied, Martina, even Caulker and Caceres, turn to Ramsay, Slattery, Sims, Johnson, Obafemi etc. Bring in the guys we believe in, give them backing and support, and then reassess when it comes time. Don't constantly change strikers every time you fail to score in a game. Don't have 5 similarly levelled CBs and 6 similar CMs and end up with most of them getting nowhere near enough game time to build any kind of progress. No excess players, and in the contingency situations let a young guy come in with his tail up and give it everything he's got, even if it's not good enough.
