Opinions have been divided on this matter. Many fans believe that selling our ‘star’ players has confirmed our relegation, where a minority of fans can see the logic in it.
In my opinion, we have to stick by the club and respect their decision to look at the bigger picture. It is easy to criticise as a fan paying money to watch the poor situation we are in, but sometimes it has to get worse to get better.
The way I see it, our hand has been forced to sell some of our key names. Both Shaun Maloney and Ben Watson were out of contract at the end of the season, so cashing in on them now was the right thing to do. They would have walked for nothing otherwise in the summer.
Also, in the six months he has been here, Adam Forshaw hasn’t had the impact we thought he would. We have had a solid bid off Middlesbrough, to make back the money what we paid for him.
Then there’s the case of Callum McManaman, a fan favourite ever since his heroics in the FA Cup winning run. However, when you bring a player through the youth ranks and a Premier League club wants him for £5 million, the pull is too great for both player and club.
There’s two ways you can view it. View one is that we lack ambition and the belief we can stay up, because we are selling our stand-out names. View two is that we’re simply slashing the wage bill ready for when we’re in League One next campaign.
The way I see it is win-win. We make money on players who will either leave on a free in the summer or aren’t fully committed to the cause. That way we will have a squad, which may not have bags of quality, but will certainly fight for our Championship status.
Also, if we do suffer relegation, we won’t be in a financial mess. Malky Mackay, or whoever the manager may be next season, will have a squad that can compete at League One level. Not only this, they will have money to spend on building their own squad in order to start fresh, because we cashed-in at the right time.
Judge it as you please, but I’ll still be supporting them next season, whether it be at Wolves or Wallsall. We have been down and out before, but we always come back fighting.