It’s difficult to argue that our signings over the last couple of windows have immediately improved us.
Esse and Chilwell (loan) last January, and Sosa, Pino, Canvot and Benitez in summer.
None jump out as roaring successes, even acknowledging that it’s early days.
You would hope for a better hit rate than this and for players to hit the ground running if the club is looking to immediately improve.
We’ve subsequently bought Johnson and may add more players this month, but the two players we are strongly linked with are young players from overseas who don’t have much experience and none of the Premier League.
It’s a conundrum as you want to plan for the future with brilliant young talent, but at the same you don’t want to take a step backwards while finding out if they are up the task.
Franca and Riad have been disappointing for a variety of reasons and some of this can be put down to misfortune , but with our lesser resources we can ill afford too much more ‘misfortune.’