To only lose Day and Butler is a massive achievement, and signing Demetriou on for 2 years is the best signing of them all.

Would imagine that some of the Center Backs we have signed are a lot cheaper than Franks so makes sense if we want to play a back 3 to get some back up which means that Bennett can remain in midfield where he excelled last season and not have to cover at the back.

The other thing is the CB's are all good prospects without any of them being totally proven at this level so again makes sense to lessen the risk by signing more, also some of those signed can play a number of positions, Ekpiteta can play all across the back line, I would imagine Nurse can play further forward from looking at his stats.

Roll on the new season

Really pleased with this news. Fingers crossed that we get some more quality midfielders and another striker. If we do, then I fancy our chances this year. Cmon the County.

Percy plunkett wrote:Great news but I'm confused to why Flynny has signed 3 CB's and 2 LB's as well.We are a bit overloaded there now with OB as well.

We've lost Pipe, Poole, Franks, Butler, didn't have attacking LB cover last season and had Bennett sit in the back line a few times. Six replacements for 5 positions if you add Leadbitter, and Bennett will be able to concentrate on just playing DM.

Having not seen much of Ekpiteta, Howkins or Stojsavljevic yet, and knowing O'Brien wasn't usually first choice until Franks was forced to retire, it's difficult to know if we've got the quality in the CB positions apart from Demetriou, but you'd imagine Ekpiteta was relatively good value given that he's joined from National Lge South and it's possible one of them can play DM as well.

Plus Mickey re-signing seems to have been relatively unexpected, so maybe we've got one more player there than we planned for.

We've also lost Forbes, Neuveville and Hillman(?) from defence

Amberexile wrote:We've also lost Forbes, Neuveville and Hillman(?) from defence

Ah yeah, Leadbitter was to replace Hornby-Forbes. Neufville and Hillman played one game between them and basically don't count.

We also played about 60 games last season. Having a couple of extra players to allow us to rotate a bit isn't the worst problem to have.

Amberexile wrote:We've also lost Forbes, Neuveville and Hillman(?) from defence

Hillman plays in Lewis Collins position and also turned 18 so there was probably only one space in the squad.