Last season was this squads last hurrah. That is as good as it gets and in truth the decline from here might be quite rapid and steep. Keeping the squad together does not get promotion.
There are hardly any of squad under contract that I wouldn't at least consider selling. In most cases there is no good reason for not doing so. However there are two bad reasons for not doing so
1. We haven't got the recruitment infrastructure in place to manage a major rebuild and even if the right staff walked through the door today they really need a season to bed in.
2. If their next club had to match their current wages most of squad couldn't be moved on a free so they can't be sold for the most part.
The default position is the squad that is under contract is still going to be around next season and unless some of the half baked riumours turn into offers that will be the case.
The legacy of our previous short term approaches is what we are dealing with now it is important that we don't repeat the same mistakes
Sadly, I fully agree. When we look at the players we are considering selling (which is most of them if rumours are to be believed), some fans will believe that “It’s good that Diangana/ Swift/ Furlong/ Okay/ BTA is going, we can replace them with someone better or more consistent”. The reality is, if you replace someone on £25k pw with someone on £5k pw, they are very likely to be worse, not better. Football isn’t a perfect market and sometimes players can exceed expectations or fail to live up to them (we’ve plenty examples of both) but on average, you get what you pay for because every club at our level is looking for similar things, great players on the cheap. If we find a right back on half of Furlong’s wages, chances are that he won’t be as good and that applies across the team. We are going to need a great scouting set up (which is better than other scouting set ups in other championship clubs who are also trying hard) or be luckier in order to have a team as good as 23/24 again next year.