Is Salvation Best Served Up From The Past?

That’s what it has come to for our club and the fans. As the football club has slipped into the relegation zone, fans and pundits have resorted to calling for the returns of Stephen Warnock, Alan Hutton, and even free-agent Nigel Reo-Coker. If we’re bringing back retreads from the past, why don’t we bring back Luke Young to play left back? Apparently he would fit into our price-range, free.

As I recall Lambert said he was looking to add in the January window, and then when the window opened he indicated the club had very little to spend. The next day multiple papers ran stories that Lerner was releasing funds to help save the club’s Premier League status. The club has since been linked with a few foreign players that only hardcore fans of the European game or Football Manager addicts are familiar with. Even those links do not seem concrete or immanent.

None of this has inspired much confidence that the club has a plan beyond hoping the players who have failed to this point will improve. Ron Vlaar and Richard Dunne returning from injury should help, but it is a bit optimistic to me to expect the club to flip the switch back to the team that beat Liverpool with the return of a couple defenders.

The football club still has obvious needs: defensive minded midfielder who is competent on the ball and can pass, a left back as Joe Bennett looks to be out of his depth, and a winger if the club has the money and finds the right fit.

Money shouldn’t be an object to fill two of those holes. Perhaps the club had anticipated clearing some wages off the books by now to make room in the budget for new signings. Maybe Darren Bent was going to be sold to raise funds, but his increasing fragility has made him unmovable at the moment.

Still, the football club has £150,000 a week coming off the books after this season as the contracts of Dunne, Warnock, and Stiliyan Petrov run out. If the club has to do what they did two years ago and spend money earmarked for the summer in January just to stay up there’s no reason not to do it.

The only downside is if the club is relegated and spends money that they never get in the summer. With the attacking talent the club has a couple additions is all that the team should need. The time for planning and consternation is over. It’s time to take some action. Times are certainly desperate enough to demand desperate measures.