This time of year can feel like going fishing though. And I don’t just mean sitting for hours on end waiting for a bite.
Enjoying your break? It’s funny to think that the season ended about a week ago and yet it seems to be like ancient history.
Other AFCW-related media outlets are hanging up their microphones at least for a few weeks, and SW19 will likely be sporadic for a little while.
The trouble is, there’s not that much you can say right now. There’s no games to look forward to, there’s no fixtures coming out, and there’s only so many bullshit transfer rumours that have yet to be created.
Hell, at the time of writing they haven’t had the first legs of the playoffs, let alone the finals.
And yes, you can close your eyes and remember a certain Saturday night this time last year. An evening where it all started to come together.
For now, though, the main news this week was of course the released list.
It’s always a strange one, when it gets released (no pun intended), because it makes you realise just how fickle being employed as a footballer actually is.
Fans demand loyalty from players, but at the same time they expect their respective clubs to shove the very same athletes onto the scrapheap as soon as the final whistle blows.
No wonder footballers treat playing football as a job and not much more.
Anyway, the first thought I had when this got released a few days ago was how many players we’ve still got.
Thirteen under contract, and four more with their options exercised. Which is a massive difference to just a mere decade ago.
If I’m being honest, I’m in two minds about this (non) released list. Given how we ended the season, there’s a good argument for breaking the squad up.
At the same time – our slump in form coincided with the Great Injury Crisis (TM), that legitimately derailed us from March onwards.
Much of our squad were carrying something or other (and I don’t mean a dose of the clap, although…) and it’s to their credit that they kept us up.
From that side of things, perhaps they should be given another chance in L1 next season? Don’t forget we had some very good purple patches under the same squad members.
We might already be addressing what proved to be one of our major failings in 25/26, which was strength in depth.
It’s possible that the regular starters last season (and we can say “last season” now) may end up featuring less next time round.
One suspects a number of the ones staying, like Foyo, McCoy-Splatt, Horan and Leach, will likely go on loan.
Perhaps most attention has focused on the ones who had their options exercised.
Which is basically a contract extension being triggered because a certain amount of conditions have been met, like number of appearances.
Or if they haven’t, the club decide to want to keep you on anyway.
Which is why Jake Reeves is still an AFCW player, though the reaction to that has been, well, mixed.
I think he’s here because of the amount of appearances he made, which is kind-of the risk you have to take with players and contracts.
I’ve no idea whether we do 1+1 deals any more (as in, we have the option of a second year with a player when he signs), and wasn’t he on a 2+1 deal?
So the question is, what do we do with a player who visibly declined as the season went on?
Rumours abound that he’s going to be a player-coach, and perhaps we’ll see him less and less next season.
Maybe he’ll go on loan somewhere, though I’m more inclined to believe he’ll be on the bench and we’ll use him to slow the game down.
Though in a good way. If that’s possible under him.
There’s also the notion that we’ve taken up options on players who we know will be going, to get a fee and therefore (presumably) transfer kitty money.
Hippo apparently is under that category, namely somebody is going to get him in the summer and we’re after a fee.
From a financial point of view that makes sense, and your editor remembers how many fees we missed out on in the past because players kept going out of contract.
As usual, given that we have a transfer budget of 99p, anyone remotely decent who is leaving will do so.
I fully expect Hippo to be at Leyton Orient or somewhere next season, and I think Browne will probably be off too.
Which would be a shame, although both are a bit injury prone and in the latter’s case – he did come through the PFA Training Squad.
As for those definitely gone (so far), you would hope that Seddon and Maycock sign new deals.
I hope – and expect – the one they call Steve will do so, although I’m not so sure about Maycock.
You would hope we can sort something out with Tilley too. He made a big difference when he arrived, and I don’t think his injury in March resulting in our big slump in form was a coincidence.
Wycombe don’t want him, apparently, and some players just “fit” into a club.
If Bauer and Lewis don’t re-sign, I wouldn’t be that bothered to be honest. The rumour mill is suggesting we’ve offered less money to the latter.
Our back line, which was the biggest strength this time last year, was our biggest liability, and I’d happily see it torn down.
I guess JJ and co believe that too, and maybe that’s where the focus will be.
Reading this list, it’s surprising how few loanees we’ve had in 25/26. While I don’t think we’ll see Asiimwe or the lesser spotted Brodi Hughes again, the others who aren’t James Tilley may not be gone forever.
Stewart gave the usual thanks on social media, and he replied “never say never” to somebody asking him to come back.
Whether that’s possible or not I don’t know, but I thought he showed legitimate promise and could do with a proper pre-season.
Nelson is the interesting one, because he reached the end of his contract at Luton and has been released.
Was he a try-before-you-buy? I wouldn’t say “no” to him returning, assuming he doesn’t smash the transfer budget.
As for those actually going, it’s a shame there hasn’t been a fanfare for Hutchinson, given his playoff-sealing goal was scored in the same game as he had a heart attack.
Whether he was the elder statesman of the squad I don’t know, it did seem a bit of a wage drain (in the nicest sense of the word), especially given his dodgy ticker and lack of game time.
Perhaps Reeves will play that role next season? Without the health issues, of course.
As for Josh Kelly, that too was a shame. He had so much promise from Solihull but it never quite happened for him.
Maybe the step up to the EFL was too much for him, though if he’d put some of those chances when he was one-on-one in…
I expect this is only part one of the transfer dealings this summer, and there’s a few more going out the door in due course.
And of course there’s probably going to be some coming in too.
One wonders how our squad will look by the time competitive fixtures start up again. My guess is that we’ll try to get about three or four legit L1 level players.
Yes, we need more. But it’s obvious why that’s not going to happen.
That would be a decent nucleus alongside those who will be with us next season and who are any good.
I would guess we’ll go for more loanees too, and snap up any promising youngsters as well.
One thing we do have is time, which is something we were desperately short of twelve months ago.
Pre-season training doesn’t start much beyond the first week of July, so there’s about six weeks that we’ve got off.
Clubs need to make decisions, ditto players. Look at the released lists of not just ourselves but other L1 clubs too, and there’s a lot of phone calls being made to agents right now.
Nobody can afford to dawdle, but we are in the nice position where we can be a bit more patient.
Last season, we bought Daniel Orsi, and that kind of signing was a shit-nobody-else-is-available one. This time round, we have more time to be selective, within reason.
This time round, we hopefully won’t need to do that. True, not all of our signings will be gooduns, but as long as most of them are fine that’ll do.
At this time, the best thing is to be patient, and not let any lack of movement bother you.
Yes, I know that there will be some in our fanbase who will be panicking that we haven’t signed anyone by, well, this time next week.
And needless to say, whoever we sign will quickly be labelled by others as shit, or cheap, or more likely both.
But one of the under-appreciated aspects of close seasons are the transfer rumours that are clearly bullshit but are treated with undue reverence anyway.
As for how we’ll pay for them, I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the club are pushing the bond again, not to mention I expect one of our benefactors to “suddenly” put a bit more money in like John Green and co did.
With AFCW, I expect it’ll be the usual case – we don’t have as much as we need, but we probably have a bit more than we let on.
It’ll be tight again, but at least we made a big step towards actually being a professional football club a couple of months ago.
Wonder how many regret that we didn’t vote for 50+1 first time round?
Anyway, the next SW19 update should be the 25/26 season review, which is always nice to do when it’s not a completely shit season.
That assumes fuck all else happens before then that’s worth putting fingers to keyboard, although I’ll be glad if it doesn’t.
After all, in football generally, sometimes the best thing to happen is absolutely nothing…