Kelly is a wonderful player but we all knew at this stage of his career we would do well to have him fit for 70% of the time and it is more likely 50% of games. Tiehi also seems to get a few knocks and miss a few games and if that includes this weekend it would be 3 games out of 6, he also missed the end of last season. We lost Lindsay and Rathbone in the summer and they are decent L1 players. McWilliams appears nowhere near the same quality of Tiehi and Kelly.
We left a gap of two players in the squad, more if you think of U21 options. Now i know we brought in a kid to cover us for the club developed criteria but that could have been covered by Hatton who came through the academy, the bottom line we had gaps in the squad.
Evans stated we would replace Rathbone we haven't, he stated that on the last day of the window the options were agreed with other clubs but he didn't want to meet the players demands, why it was left so late. Our COO has stated that the budget we have is very very good for L1 but we still can't fill the squad. All these statements don't stack up, somewhere in all of them someone isn't being accurate with their statements (that is being kind).
We are gambling on avoiding injuries and it is already coming back to bite us.