I think Speakman is great and has done a brilliant job so please don’t take this as a criticism of him as it’s not but is he irreplaceable?THIS
Speakman is irreplaceable. I'll let people decide if thats a good or a bad thing but we are on a journey that seems entirely of his vision. Lose him now and it sets us back on and off pitch IMO.
He becomes more replaceable once we have reached a certain point and stagnated - be that Premier League mid-table or what I don't know.
To suggest he is implies that we got lucky with his appointment in the first place. I personally don’t believe that’s the case, I think the club now has a clear vision and identity and that enables it to identify and attract the best personnel for various positions. It would be far from ideal but I don’t think it would be terminal if Speakman went, I’d have faith that the club would be capable of replacing him.
It’s the same when people worry about us losing players and not adequately replacing them. We, as a fanbase, are so unaccustomed to having good players that we think we must have lucked out in bringing them in. The reality now is that we have robust recruitment procedures in place and that’s why we’ve ended up with those players in the first place, it’s not a fluke.
If we lose Ekwah, Hume, Clarke, Cirkin etc then they’ll be replaced by the next Ekwah, Hume, Clarke and Cirkin, although it’s hard for us to believe, maybe their replacements will even be upgrades.