I think many alluded to this type of situation playing out after the decision to allow Warnock to have another crack at going for promotion last summer.
The squad at that stage required wholesale changes with essentially the spine of the team from centre back to striker requiring new faces and cover at right back and right wing.
Warnock despite only verbally committing to one season was given the option to fill in the gaps and spent over 12-13m on new recruitments. As well as the parachute payments, the sale of Zohore and Reid helped to bolster this transfer kitty, but to allow a manager who was always going to be on his way out to secure new signings on 2+ year contracts was short sighted in terms of future planning.
So with that decision to retain Warnock this was always going to shackle his replacement with a squad that was going to then take more than a season to allow whoever did replace Warnock to put their own mark on it. And the impact of covid complicates matters further, as it would appear that cost cutting has taken precedent over squad depth, unless City plan to recruit and backfill the majority of the positions vacated this summer.
Perhaps as others have stated it's time to put faith in some of the youth to get their chance plying their trade in the first team. But with only two players initially being named as part of the first team, and one of those being sent out on loan already, my optimism to the promise of decent youth prospects being given a shot in the first team is relatively low. Hope to be proven wrong by anyone who is given their shot in the first team, should it come.
A tough year of transition for Neil Harris to contend with, hopefully he can pull it off, and City at least do enough to avoid any worries of relegation battle.
