by SCIAG »
27 May 2022 18:07
Stranded Too many people ready to discard Swift or downgrade what a good player he has been for us. 6 years is arguably too long to stay at a club these days.
We now need to not fixate or finding a player to replace him. What we need to do is find a style that fits the squad we are building so that we are overly reliant on one player so much. Lost count of the amount of times we've said "Stop Swift Stop Reading" or "We didn't play well today as Swift was off".
We need to find a way that shares his output across the midfield/attack making us more balanced and harder to play against.
So Swift leaving is a blow but expected but if recruitment is smart it doesn't need to hurt us - though it probably will.
Early-ish in McDermott's first full season an opposition fan said to me that we needed a Plan B. I said we
had a plan B - give it to Kebe. He asked what plan A was... it was still "give it to Gylfi". Eventually plan A became "kick it long for Long to chase", with the same plan B.
Us losing Swift is equivalent to Spurs losing Bale, Villa losing Grealish, Milan losing Kaka, or indeed us losing Gylfi. We got around losing Gylfi because we still had Kebe and a good squad. Same deal when we lost Long. In both cases we started the season quite poorly as there was a big adjustment.
It's possible to have a system that doesn't just rely on individual brilliance, but if we're entirely rebuilding our midfield and trying to recruit in a few other places (left back) then it becomes harder. If anything I expect us to be more reliant on a single player (Joao), although Meite and Ejara could be equally dangerous.