Is it f*****g mental? I don't think it is. Portsmouth have been pretty well run for a while now, haven't they?
They signed Bishop on 21 July 2022. For comparison, that was the date we signed Ed McGinty (who absolutely could be a 20 goal a season striker for all we know). 2 days prior to that, we signed Stuart Findlay. Of course we had to wait for that one because he had to stay and help his existing club, or something. Either way it was the height of professionalism from us - waiting around to give an expensive 4 year contract to someone who had barely played on the other side of the Atlantic for the best part of 2 years. And one day after Portsmouth signed Bishop, we announced Yanic. So they were making moves like Bishop, whilst we were pinning our hopes on players with question marks all over them.
Despite that disaster of a summer window, we still (somehow) had Robinson in charge 12 months ago. He was overdue the sack by at least 3 months, but we had invested a lot of time in a leopard changing his spots and Tim was also getting along fine with his bodyguards, so it was deemed that there was no need to try and change anything for a further 2 and a half months.
Meanwhile, the infrastructure of the club had slowly been ripped out, until it started collapsing. Our then Head of Recruitment had been getting ignored for ages and was being lined up by Derby. As a result, with an outgoing Head of Recruitment, Robinson phoning it in and some fairly clueless senior leadership, I don't think it's that much of a coincidence that our January window consisted of the likes of Tyler Smith and Konate.
I think the only serious transfer window we've had, where grown ups were running the show and actually had something to work with, was the most recent summer window. Karl Robinson told a room of people (many from this forum) that it was really hard to sign strikers because 'Matty Taylor is the number 9 here so others are unlikely to come'. He said this whilst Ipswich were on their way to scoring 101 league goals through the rotation of Chaplin, Ladapo, Hirst, Broadhead and others. So that was the sort of attitude we had, and unfortunately it had assumed control of our recruitment for quite some time. So as far as I'm concerned, it's not worth getting too hung up on who we haven't signed in all but the most recent transfer window.
In terms of the summer just gone, it was widely reported we missed out on Marriott there, but we did pick up both Harris and Perkins. Granted, we missed the elusive fox-in-the-box, but we were at least fishing it the right waters. It's a shame that Perkins clearly hasn't worked out and the 'could Harris be a goalscorer at this level?' gamble doesn't look to have paid off, although at least he does offer the team something. We also had a considerable amount of work to do elsewhere other than just up front. That's not to say 'oh well, that's fine then'. I know Portsmouth signed Yengi on 2 July 2023 but at that point, we were still almost 2 months away from getting an actual left back in, after god knows how many seasons without one. Portsmouth ended the season unbeaten in 11, so I daresay their squad didn't require quite the same level as fixing over the summer as ours did, considering we ended ours scrabbling around for points against Cheltenham and FGR.
My point being is that, whilst we can obviously compare the current state of our squad to others, it's a little pointless as ours only started to get properly assembled within the last 6 months. There was years of complacency before then, but I don't think anyone (in the right places of the club) is being complacent now. I think McEachran, Thorniley and Rodrigues all got announced the day the summer window opened, so hopefully we will see something similar in January. We're considerably more organised now, so hopefully that mythical £400k is aimed at a more realistic target than the likes of Evan Ferguson.
