These are some of the players that I was considering for my Summer Tombola list. My thinking was players who could form the basis of a solid young Championship calibre squad in anticipation of a relegation next season. Oh, and potentially cheap, since we have no money.
The players I associated with significant transfer fees, by the standards of our current finances, constituted another list. However, the relegation has made that names on that list even more unlikely as possible signings than the names in these tables.
Amongst them are a number of players that would have been difficult signings for us to pull off, even if we had stayed up, along with a couple that have questionable elements attached to them.
For example, Florian Grillitsch and Amos Pieper were being linked with bigger clubs than us the last time I checked on them. I suggested going for Pieper last Summer along with Wallace. A small fee could have probably secured the signature of Wallace last Summer or maybe even early Winter at a push. I think signing him in the next window would have been a struggle even if we had stayed up, because I imagine he will be attracting quite a bit of interest on a free transfer.
Cristian Pavon was recently suspended for an after match incident involving the whole Boca Juniors team and the police, which doesn't suggest the best character. However, even without the conduct questions, I suspect he will join LA Galaxy if they have room in their salary cap for him.
Riechedly Bazoer is a bit of strange one. Hugely talented, but his career stalled due to his desire to be played as a creative forward midfielder, despite having obvious attributes that make him more suited to the role of a central defender or defensive midfielder. Vitesse locked him into their left sided defensive slot and he has been excellent for them.
Some of the U22 players on here are ones for the future and not knowing how we are going to set up to play made it hard to suggest wingers. It seems obvious that over this season we have had it in mind to do away with the classical deep cross approach of Dyche and transition towards the same goal orientated inverted wingers that a lot of other clubs favour.
Moving forward I think that the decision to change to a 4-2-3-1 or a 4-3-3 system has already been taken. Hence my inclusion of some inverted wingers in this list. That said, Solbakken can do it all on the left or right side. He would have been a very good player for us, along with Berg and Andre Bjorkan who left FK Boldo Glimt in the Winter window..
I could go on with summaries, but I think that most of these players are now beyond us. I would have liked to see us look at Pieper, Solbakken, Pepelu ( a bit slow and a bit sleight, but very talented ), Bijol, Bazoer and Kofod Anderson from the foreign contingent. In respect to the domestic market Mitchell, Barlasser, Swift, Ralls and maybe Flemming would have been near the top of my further investigation list.
In terms of a Pope replacement I would have gone with Daniel Iverson, but I suspect we would be hard pushed to attract Michael Cooper from Plymouth now, never mind Iverson.
It is hard to see what we could put forward as a viable lure to attract players to the club in the next window. Pace and Co have pretty much bungled away every potenial draw factor we had. At least the recruitment team will have a valid excuse for failing in the next window and the media team can work overtime to generate the false positives associated with our plight.