Quote Originally Posted by BudMill90 View Post
100%

Look at 2015/16.

Players that left:

Keith Watson
Calum Butcher
Jarek Fojut
Rado Cierzniak
Nadir Ciftci

Players we replaced them with at the start of the season:

Zwick/Szromnik
Donaldson
Durnan
Bill McKay
Aaron Kuhl
Darko Bodul

There are more but I'm about being sick just typing those names.

If the players that left all stayed, we would never have been relegated in 2016. We could have lost Nadir and still stayed up, but losing Butcher, Watson, Fojut and Rado were a nightmare for us. Then you have Paton, Dixon, Erskine all getting major injuries that ruled them out long terms at the start of the season and we were always right up against it.

Benji, Edwards, Fuchs and Shanks are our most important players (by a country mile btw) so if any one of them leave, we CANNOT rely on anyone else at the club to replace them. We need to recruit players close to or above their level.

As for the rest of the squad, I feel all other players who were in our 'best' 11 all have fairly able replacements already at the club. Full back for example, Freeman and Sporle aren't miles away from Smith and Robson.
Losing a spine of the team either leaving in that summer or being out mainly due to injury was more of the downfall for our relegation than the SA/GMS saga imo. Losing those 2 were massive for that season but the following season we had the chance to move on from it. but by not replacing that spine meant the team was poor and had nothing about it to get itself out of the problem we were in. We resorted to chucking in youngsters who weren't ready or not good enough and signing loans/free agents to get us out of trouble