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My view is that we have kept the nucleus of the team that finished the second half of the season strongly. We are down doucoure and Harrison who I think even ardent supporters of both acknowledge we needed to improve. DCL swapped for Barry. Keeping the back 5 plus Gueye together for me is the most important bit of business we’ll do.

This all in the backdrop of competitors losing key players. West Ham, wolves, Bournemouth, Brentford, Brighton have all lost at least one of their top 3 best players (I’m excluding United and spurs and despite their poor performance last year, they operate at a different level to us).

Yes, we need to pad the squad for the season but we still have 4 loan spots to utilise which I 100% think we will but those are much more likely to come late on. Also the free agent market which again will be late on.

As it stands, the priority is a RW/AM and a CM to more or less go straight into the first team. Those are the two that’ll take time and I don’t think we’ll see the squad bulk out until those positions have been secured. My feeling, especially as it’s gone quiet, is that we are working on McAtee and Luiz and pushing for both before the first game.

Young, fairly cheap full backs (ie anzou etc) plus 4 loans signings will come before deadline day.

And I think, rather than thinking ‘stress free season’, we’ll be having an eye on a push for Europe and a cup run.