Steve Wigan
Player Valuation: £35m
In light of the recent criticisms of Brands / Silva I feel that we should look again at the number of players still needing to be offloaded.
The players whose contracts should be assessed (in my view) are Gibson / Sidibe / Keane / Kenny / Bernard. The rest of them I believe will be gone over the next 4 windows:
2020
Stekelenburg
Martina
Niasse
Baines
Gibson
Sidibe (loan expiry)
2021
Walcott
Schneiderlin
Besic
Sandro
Bolasie
Dowell
Pennington
Connolly
2022
Lossl
Keane
Sigurdsson
Holgate
Coleman
Tosun
Delph
Baningime
Bernard
Kenny
Over the next 2.5 seasons there are 24 players whose contracts (unless extended) will be leaving the club.
Of those 24 players only 5 or 6 I feel have any chance of getting extensions.
Out of the remaining 18 or 19 players, lets say 14/15 of them will be departing having been on 1st team squad wages.
If we actually look at the current size of our squad without those 14/15 players;
GK
Pickford
Virginia
RB
Sidibe
Kenny
LB
Digne
CB
Mina
Keane
Gibson
CM
Davies
Gbamin
Gomes
AM
Richarlison
Bernard
Iwobi
CF
Kean
Calvert-Lewin
Even some of the 16 above players may not be kept on, so it shows how much of a job Brands and Silva still have on their hands.
If we actually drill down further, these are the players who have shown consistently (in my opinion),or it is expected that they can stay in the squad over a long term period:
GK - Pickford
RB -
LB - Digne
CB - Mina
DM - Gbamin
CM - Davies / Gomes
AM - Iwobi / Richarlison / Bernard
CF - Kean / DCL
Arguably thats 11 players 'expected' to be in Brands / Silvas plans for the long term.
So, in defence of the management I would urge patience when claiming that the manager has 'his' squad or even 'his' team.
That is clearly not the case.
Over the last 3 windows we are about 50% through the squad rebuild.
It is my view that we will be able to see great strides made at the end of summer 2021 with the full effects of the rebuild in 2022.
Our goal over this period should be to finish 7th and above and push for a cup win. Any higher than that and we will be over performing and any closer to having 5 new long term players in the first team squad per season will also be over performing.
We will need to be patient.
I read that twice and now I've got a headache.