The transfer window has swung open and as we know open windows results in a lot of wasted hot air. Newspapers and internet sites have been rife with transfer rumour and breathless speculation. Who should Jim buy? When will Norris join? Lauren Robert- have they gone mad? And so it goes on.
Call me a cynic but I neither believe Jim has much of a 'war chest' to splash out on transfer targets - nor do I believe he should do. I base this radical observation on the evidence of my own eyes. The money put into the club was supposed to stabilise it when it is already losing money hand over fist - not create yet more waste. Town already have a very good team - what they patently don't have is a vital missing ingredient - be that good coaching, powers of organisation or the motivation to regularly see the high work ethic which was there in spades against West Brom and Portsmouth. That's easily said - but an elusive missing link on away days. It may even be as simple as playing a settled team.
In many ways I think we have been in this situation more than once before. Cast your mind back to the George Burley era. Year after year, Town were touted as promotion tips, only to start terribly. The answer was not to splash out large sums of money on dubious players - it was to bring in an experienced coach. First there was Brian Hamilton, then Stewart Houston, then John Gorman. All were brought in on the basis that more know how was needed than George Burley could provide. And each time it seemed to work as awful starts were turned into play off places - and ultimately gut-wrenching failure.
Now fast forward to the current scenario. Town are on the fringe of the play off places, in one week out the next, depending on whether they are playing home or away. Just last week in the game against West Brom, the league leaders were outfought, outplayed - and eventually well beaten by a team many would have you believe needs radical surgery. Yet even West Brom's much-vaunted attack failed to breach Town's supposedly leaky defence and I found myself wondering... how exactly are all these mooted signings supposed to strengthen this team?
Ad there is the rub. If you go to just the home games (which the vast majority of Town fans do) the team really cannot be improved. Results speak for themselves. - our home record is virtually perfect. It is away that the team is dreadful - and that is not something that a player here or there will fix. Most of the people who are crying out for new signings probably haven't even seen an away game. They forget the evidence of their own eyes at home games and fail to spot Town's problems this season are not really a lack of players. Something fundamental is missing from Town's approach.
If you believe the myth that Jim Magilton has £12million burning a very large hole in his pocket - and I have to say straight away that I don't, where do you spend it? Yes we could sign a left-sided player, a dominating central defender, a feisty midfielder etc etc. But would they enhance the team or upset it? Would it even have that mythical benefit of 'strengthening the squad' - when we have a whole raft of players who can't (or don't) get in at present - which in turn may be causing Jim's dithering.
Football is a team game and you don't need too many good players to make a good team. A much simpler solution to Town's problems is to park the money that isn't ours anyway and sort out our awayday malaise head on - and that surely means facing up to the coaching issues which can create a fortress at Portman Road and utter shambles away out of the same material. We need to transfer just 25% of our home form away. That's the transfer reality.
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