Patience is a virtue

Saturday, August 22, 2020

The first pre-season friendly, just moments after the end of the last, and the first game under new head coach, Aitor Karanka.

One – one. Same result as at the end of the last season when the injury time equaliser from Jukey saved us from the ignominy of a trip to League One.

Same result but very different personnel involved for Blues. For starters, no Juke, injured already, leaving us with no senior forwards, just kids that you had just about heard of or barely heard of. 

This was the tip of the iceberg when it came to lack of squad depth, the only arrival being Karanka’s old friend from Middlesbrough, Friend. Balanced against losing players like Camp, selling Harding and Bellingham, and loaning out Trueman, allied to the previous release of the likes of Stockdale, Mrabti and Maghoma, leaves the squad threadbare. On Saturday we weren’t even able to field a goalkeeper with a senior appearance to his name, England under-19 international, Jeacock, played between the sticks. 

It’s fair to say that there were as many raw youngsters on the pitch as seasoned pros as Blues fielded two different sides in each half, save for Jeacock who played throughout.

As is continually pointed out on the #bcfc Twitter feed, as if it’s some kind of revelation to the rest of us, we need players. The main difference of opinion is how quickly we need those players.

“Player recruitment is the latest in a line of panics of the last couple of weeks”

For many on Twitter, we need as many as possible as soon as possible. A distinct lack of patience is evident. But maybe that’s the nature of Twitter. Player recruitment is the latest in a line of panics of the last couple of weeks; where’s a manager? Where’s the kit? Where’s the interview with the manager? Where’s the backroom team? Where’s the new goalkeeper?

But as even Dong was forced to allude to at Karanka’s unveiling, which did happen eventually with a bit of patience, mistakes had been made in the past with the supermarket sweep of Harry’s reign. Not only did this land us in hot water with FFP, but also left us with an unbalanced squad rammed full of midfielders, but with hardly a striker in sight.

Twitter’s premature ejaculators seem to be suggesting that we do the same again, do something, anything. But the feeling coming from the club is maybe we need a more considered approach this time, one that may take more than one window. We can already field a team, we showed that against Charlton, two in fact. Let Karanka do his job and build it slowly, it took him a year or so to put a promotion challenging squad together at Boro. And Friend’s signing suggests that character will be an important part of the recruitment policy.

Are we prepared to give him the time? Does anyone have the patience nowadays to wait and see?