I am not sure about that. There's more in play. We have a

pretty massive squad as a result of some not working out, but mostly the massive injury list. And not only last season - there is also a bit of a knock on from last season, where injuries also hit us - that meant we brought in players who were not expected to play as much (e.g. Schwartau, Fisher) who then did enough to unexpectedly jump ahead of some others when they were back from injury.

So basically we need to shed a lot of players this summer, without weakening the squad. Players like Marcondes are a no brainer to leave (in his thirties so also very difficult to drastically improve a la Slimane who is only 24). Marcondes is also less disciplined positionally and very flick, fart, fanny without the result and we saw how Clement reacted to Maghoma doing that in his first game.

Marcondes (and Slimane) were brought in to fill gaps in an emergency last season and they achieved that. Slimane was also nailed on to leave until his recent reinvention as a 10. It's just a shame he is so slow, because his vision is fantastic, he is very creative and has a fantastic shot on him, but so often in when a ball breaks in the 10 area, he is second to it.

Depending on contract situation I would expect Marcondes, Duffy, Springett, Long, Kvistgaarden, Schlupp and Jurasek to leave whether released, sold or loaned.

Will be interesting to see what he does with Topic and Crnac - do we have the squad space to have Clement work with them first and make an assessment or will we just write them off (as we had to sign replacements for both) and sell, and buy in more Clement players? Also wonder about Gibbs. He's OK but he's never really shown where the hype came from. I'd say squad player and if we find one better then let him out on loan.

I think we might also see a few surprises in the outgoings. Happy for them to stay but wouldn't shock me if we saw players like Stacey, Slimane or Darling leave.

Posted By: Legacy Fan on March 20th 2026 at 10:08:52

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