The stranger

It has been a strange summer.

It wasn’t, however, a surprise. I was prepared for the number of departures, having convinced myself round about the time of Javi Gracia’s sacking that most of the squad were already working out where they would be playing the following season. It would have been delusional to believe, even for a moment, that most of Victor Orta’s failures would be willing to debase themselves by playing in the second tier of English football. I knew that we wouldn’t see Tyler Adams going toe-to-toe with Barry Bannan, or Brendan Aaronson stepping out at Home Park to be knocked around by second division players, when there were perfectly good Bundesliga opponents to do that to him. For a brief moment, admittedly, I allowed myself to wonder if the likes of Max Wöber or Jack Harrison might just stick around to help get the job done, but when the allure of Mönchengladbach or the prospect of playing football under Sean Dyche comes a-calling, there’s only one answer you can possibly give.

It was a hard, emotional balance to strike. Here were the useless lumps that had taken us down after a season of rampant underperformance. By all rights, I should have been delighted to see the back end of them, and — in most regards — I absolutely was (unlucky, Roma, but we aren’t having him back). But that said lumps were given free reign to simply wander off, happily posing in their shiny new shirts in their shiny new clubs, after plunging us back into the icy depths of the Championship, just refused to sit right with me. With each bland, meaningless, vacuous statement, my incredulous anger grew tenfold. I wanted them gone, but not on their terms.

⬢

To read the rest of this article, you need to join TSB+ — members get access to this plus extra podcast and video episodes, all podcasts advert-free, can read every issue of our magazine online and much more. You can join or log in below.