Very well put and the worry is, that with EIGHT unhappy, in effective players, we cannot get rid of (because let's face it, who is going to want the dross Knill lumbered us with), plus the players CH wishes to retain who are out of contract, we already have a large squad, made up of the same serial bottlers as last season.CP Gull wrote: Well when you put it like that ..... YES! Although, I suppose we should really add Cruise to that list as he is only in effect being offered a "trial" in pre season with no guarantee of a contract offer.
With the likes of Benyon and Harding now added to the "not wanted" list the number of players who have been "listed" has now risen to an unhealthy EIGHT.
What does seem unfortunate is that there is a clear imbalance in the squad in that of those under contract only FOUR out of the TWELVE are deemed as wanted i.e. Pearce and Cameron, together with the youngsters Sullivan and Hutchings. Whilst of those out of contract, we wish to keep as many as SEVEN (Poke, Rice, Mansell, Lathrope, Bodin, Yeoman and Thompson) whilst only releasing TWO for definite (Nicholson and Stevens) or THREE (if you include Cruise) and probably FOUR (if you include Labadie).
It would clearly be far preferable if the MAJORITY of players that were under contract were in the Manager's plans and the MAJORITY of players who were out of contract were not! Unfortunately it is the reverse in both cases, which means that we have an awful lot of players on the transfer list, so much so that I cannot recall a time in recent memory where so many contracted players have been made available. In an ideal world, of course, all those players that Greavsie doesn't want will move on in the summer and all those players who he has offered new deals to will sign up .... but as we know, it is never that simple and I fully expect us to have a fair sprinkling of unhappy, unwanted players back next season whilst at the same time losing one or two of those we wanted to keep.
It is certainly going to be an interesting summer!
I am pleased to see CH taking the action he is - it at least demonstrates he has a vision and some backbone - but circumstances beyond his control may prevent him from realising it, so it may be another year before we can judge him properly, as EIGHT players, if stuck with them, is a big chunk of his budget and squad space.
