The difference is

They can throw money at the problem. We, on the other hand, relied on our quality journeymen (Fleming, Edworthy, Holt, Francis, McVeigh, Svensson, McKenzie, Brennan) to come through and added free or comparitively cheap journeymen (Ward, Charlton, Doherty, Jonsson). The few potential touches of quality added, again at minimal cost, were by and large rubbish (Helveg, Bentley).

Anther aspect is that we had a healthy leavening of kids padding out the squad (Jarvis, Henderson, Shackell, Crowe, Smith) again becuase they are cheap.

Combine that with the almost ludicrous injury crisis, and it's no wonder we fell apart in midseason. Take 8-9 players out of the Wigan squad (As we had for 3-4 months) and see how they get on. BUT, come January, they can just go and chuck the cheque book around - a luxury we didn't have.

We certainly didn't help ourselves in many occasions. It was very plainly obvious to me that we needed to invest in a quality centre forward to replace Beaker and a genuine quality central midfielder (A player of Danny Murphy stature). For whatever reason, we failed to do that. I would say that there have been more quality players available for the promoted teams to snap up this season - there really didn't seem to be much worth buying last year.

Posted By: Lister of Smeg, Oct 2, 16:05:23