They do have someone filling James Smith role currently, Lee Sargeson, until he can take up his post.
There seems to be a divergence of opinion at present where if you can't get your first choice, then you have to settle for a bad player, out of desperation.
That should never be the case. It shouldn't come as surprise to them that we are a hard sell. That's immediately obvious. It was in 2016, the summer of Witsel, Mata, and Coulibaly.
We're a decade on, we were not an attractive option then, we are not now.
I would have thought that between them, they could come up with a list of 25-30 players that are promising/decent and would cover most bases. Is the net spread wide enough? Have we looked in Asia / South America?
It's not that we sign like Burnley - a list of cheap unknowns that you know won't be good enough. But I really do find it hard to accept that they can't find players of a certain profile that would offer us enough scope to improve.
We have so much scope to improve, and many players that will find us a very good option.