Nothing random in JFH’S rebuilding of squad
WHEN Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink arrived at the Pirelli Stadium in January he said he would ideally like to have two players competing for each position.
Looking back at the 12 signings he made, we can see that he was as good as his word.
That said, Hasselbaink also said he was not a fans of players playing out of their natural positions but, as things turned out, right-back Tom Hamer spent much of his time at left-back.
In the circumstances – especially since John Brayford remained unstoppable at right-back until filling in in the middle late in the season – Hasselbaink can be forgiven the exception.
The admirable Hamer, big and so good in the air that centre-half would not faze him, certainly proved that he can cover right across the back four.
You would not rule him out as an attacking midfielder either, he gets forward so much, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Returning to the point about making sure there was competition in all places, we can look back now and seen that Hasselbaink and Dino Maamria moved methodically through a team sheet and brought in new players, be it on permanent deals, on short-term deals or loans to cover every place.
The players who were already at the club, on paper, made up a decent team even after the departure of nine players when Hasselbaink came in.
The joke about a revolving door at the club entrance may never have been more apt.
If a few people thought they heard alarm bells ringing, they had some justification. The game’s history is littered with managers who took a scattergun approach to recruitment in January and found it did them no good at all as new players failed to gel with existing players.
Even when they get on off the pitch, it can take time for things to work out on the pitch – time that is not available when you are bottom of the table and eight points from safety in January.
But Hasselbaink and Maamria’s approach never had the hint of a scattergun about it. They had both studied the players they wanted long and hard.
In the case of Jonny
Smith and Hamer,
Maamria had managed both when he was in charge of Oldham Athletic.
Hamer was already there, Smith came in on loan from Bristol City and the pair of them got on like a house on fire. Reuniting them was a nobrainer for the management duo. Hamer and Smith shared a house in Burton during the season and they are off on holiday together with their partners this summer.
Hasselbaink’s first move, as we have said before, was to bring in a centre-half, Hayden Carter, from Blackburn Rovers.
It was a case of Hayden who? for most of us and much the same when Sean Clare was the second man in, on loan from Oxford United, a rightback hankering to play back in his more favoured midfield role.
Announcements were coming thick and fast. Three days after Clare came a full signing, the experienced
The joke about a revolving door at the club entrance may never have been more apt.
Josh Parker, from Wycombe Wanderers.
Another three days and the Brewers had a goalkeeper on loan, Dillon Barnes, from QPR. Did they need another goalkeeper? A shrug of the shoulders from most. Hasselbaink knows best.
Then there was a lull, if you can call 11 days a lull, but the manager had a little time. The next fixture was to be on February 6; the transfer window would be shut and he would have had the best part of a fortnight in which to squeeze a condensed “pre-season” for his new players.
On January 29, we knew Hasselbaink really meant business. Hamer and Smith came in on twoand-a-half year deals, young players with lots to prove; Hamer ready for a step-up from League Two and Smith ready to settle somewhere after Bristol City had sent him out on five different loans.
The pace gathered. Deadline day saw another bold signing, that of Terry Taylor, from Wolves, already a Wales Under-21 international, on a two-and-a-half year deal.
Ryan Broom, from Peterborough United, and Josh Earl, from Preston North End, came in on loan the same day to bring the signings to nine. It was already breathless stuff but, even after the window closed, Hasselbaink brought in three more free agents.
Michael Mancienne might, ordinarily, have been outside the Brewers’ scope but the experienced defender had come back from America fearing he may be stuck there as the Covid situation took hold. He was without a club.
Danny Rowe needed to kick-start his career after being released by Ipswich Town. Mike Fondop was a wild card, a Cameroonian who had come to England to study for a degree and racked up appearances for nine different non-league clubs.
He was handed the chance to see if he could cut it in the Football League.
With Fondop’s signing, Hasselbaink had a different type of striker to Kane Hemmings and he had completed his set – a man for every position had arrived, to go with at least one for every position who remained.
That the squads were so often almost a 50/50 split between the old and the new was testament to how well Hasselbaink integrated the new players into the existing squad.
It was testament to the fact that no bias was shown towards the new men and, perhaps most importantly of all, testament to the extent to which the management had galvanised players whose morale was dented by the difficulties of the first half of the season.
Hasselbaink had all his tools in place and when a they took a memorable win at home to Hull City on February 6, with Smith’s last-minute goal, the Great
Escape was on.