Quote Originally Posted by The Lone Gunman View Post
I’m not sure what the manager did or didn’t say, so I have no opinions on that, but I think the paragraph I’ve quoted above is nonsense.

The individual circumstances of the players you’ve mentioned would have been no different pre-Covid. I’m not suggesting they were free transfers because they are no good, far from it in most cases, but out of contract players have been moving from club to club in the Championship for many years.

Allsop has had 12 clubs and has never attracted a transfer fee. Romeo had fallen out of favour at Millwall and was on loan in League One last season. Sawyers wasn’t in West Brom’s plans last season and it was no surprise at all when he was released. Ojo’s release by Liverpool was fully expected. Bristol City decided against triggering an extension to O’Dowda’s contract, and while Reading would no doubt have liked to keep Rinomhota, he was out of contract at a club that has been lurching from one crisis to another in recent years.

City certainly seem to have worked well in the transfer window this summer and appear to have done some good business, but I think the gist of your post is nonsensical.
It becomes nonsensical if we were always going to get all of those experienced and able Championship performers for nothing whether Covid happened or not. I think there was absolutely no chance of that happening. There is no way that we would have been able to perform a rebuilding job of the scale we have done this summer on the budget we had and ended up with a squad which could compete at this level were it not for the higher number of players good enough to play at Championship level available in the free transfer market because of the losses clubs made during lockdowns and periods when the grounds were closed.