Golumless
A bigger deal out west.
So going on from the moving on Matt crouch idea, should the club be putting a time line on it with him, Doedee, McAsey and others OOC this year? Say if crouch hasn’t signed by round X then the club sits him out the rest of the season like teams in the NBA do to protect an asset from injury and also with where the club is at those 10-15 games can be valuably put into a young mid like berry, pedlar, Schoenberg and co rather than wasted on a bloke who isn’t going to be there in the future?
You use Crouch for every game he's available for, barring a massive downturn in form. Doedee is guaranteed to stay and the worst thing the club could do is hurt McAsey trade value, if he goes, it's imperative we recoup as close to pick 6 as possible. Butts, whilst looking like he'll be a good player, just is nowhere near as important compared to that.
The key to this year is to remain competitive, and to limit blowouts whilst we start to pump games into a lot of our youth. Someone like Crouch is necessary this year because the biggest issue we face is how much disparity with experience on our list, in that we could be seriously facing half of our best 22 starting this season on < 25 games. We can afford to take more time on a Berry, O'Connor etc and use them as an addition next year if we have to as a part of the '2nd wave' of youth coming through. Mind you, I would be surprised and concerned if Schoenberg got under 15 games, seeing he all but sealed a best 22 spot last year.