Waiting for action

By Kym Smith on Jul 4, 08 12:11 PM in

There's been so little going on lately it has been difficult to find much to write about, so apologies for my lack of waffling over the last week or so.

Seb Larsson and James McFadden continue to be talked about in connection with transfers elsewhere, which would pretty much complete the sale of all of our best players (as I'm assuming that Kapo will be on his way in the near future).

So much for the Board's protestations that they would be keeping the team together. Cynical? Moi?

At the moment I do not have a lot of confidence in next season, or rather, my confidence is rather selective. I maintain that Alex McLeish was a decent choice for us and I think he can make Blues play better football. But (there's always at least one, isn't there?) what I don't have is confidence in are the people at the top.

Call me old-fashioned, but I like people to be honest and keep their promises. I don't like being told what someone feels is what I want to hear. I suspect that makes me similar to a lot of our fans.

After we got relegated, there was an immense amount of anger and it's a long, long time since there has been on-pitch demonstrations at St Andrew's. I think in general, Blues fans are pretty tolerant; we don't routinely bite the (proverbial) hand that feeds us and we have put up with a lot of ups and downs over the years (mostly downs, I have to say).

In the few days following, we had copious assurances that the Board would do "everything in their power" to keep the team together, although it did not take the mental powers of Einstein to work out that some selling would be inevitable in order to buy.

In all, there have been nine exits so far and only Lee Carsley as an incomer. I saw in the press a couple of days ago that McLeish is expecting signings in the next seven to fourteen days, which will at least leave him a little time before the start of the new season.

While I can understand that we cannot force our better players to stay, other teams seem to have better luck persuading people than we do; Jeremy Peace seemed to have far less issue with it the last time West Brom were relegated a couple of years ago. What can he say that we can't? Do we somehow not try hard enough?

If we are to attain David Gold's rather extravagant prediction that we will be promoted as Champions next season, we have to keep the likes of Larsson and McFadden - and in addition to that, acquire a few more players of the right quality to win us the right proportion of the 46 games we have in front of us.

And while I think about it, has someone at St Andrew's binned the "young and hungry" policy? All the players we are being actively linked with are the wrong side of 30. Kevin Phillips is the latest person to be mentioned and it seems quite probable he will be joining us. Natural goalscorer he may be, but he is also now fairly prone to injury and we already know from bitter experience that injured strikers are a complete liability.

I agree that we need a mixture of youth and experience, but we cannot try to get promoted with a bunch of old-timers or we will start to look like Hull City, who with their combined octagenarian front line must be wondering how on earth they are going to cope next season.

What we are seeing at the moment is an awful lot of not much happening and a lot of rumours that our "crown jewels" are still not safe. While I realise that the rumour mill is a place of conjecture, there is often a fair smattering of truth wrapped up in it too.

I'm hoping, really hoping that we can get some transfer deals tied up in the very near future. Pre-season training has already started and the more time McLeish has to assess the team before our first game, the better.

I think we need some real reassurance from events to give us hope that we are not going to be drowned in words.