A wasted summer?

Most of Curbishley's successful signings in previous years have fallen into clear categories:

1. Promising youngsters not getting first team football (eg. Luke Young, Jerome Thomas, Danny Mills etc..)
2. Established players with requisite experience and purchased from clubs with a similar or lesser status (eg. Clive Mendonca, Mark Fish, Andy Hunt, Claus Jensen, John Robinson, Graham Stuart, Jason Euell, etc..)
3. Bargains (eg. Matt Holland, Hermann Hreidarsson, Keith Jones, Chris Perry etc..)
4. Promising players from lower division clubs (eg. Mark Kinsella, Dean Kiely etc..)
5. Players with something to prove generally (eg. Paolo di Canio)

I believe the club's record when purchasing from foreign clubs is poor generally. It's not clear to me yet whether, of the current squad, that it could be argued that Bartlett or Kishishev represented 'value for money', and it remains to be seen whether Rommedahl, El Karkouri and Andersen do.

It is too early to assess the signings in full but I am concerned that they do not obviously fit into the categories above, which have served us so well. Two players in particular have not seemed especially hungry and their body language has suggested this (Rommedahl and Murphy), whilst Jeffers has had his problems and does not strike me as a 'Charlton-type' player. The fact that every single one of the new signings has been dropped at some point suggests something is not right.

The summer represented a once-in-a-generation chance to improve the squad and instead most fans would argue it is clearly weaker, the club unable to prevent key departures as well as unable (perhaps) to sign key players. Most fans, if asked in early summer, would been aghast at the thought of seeing the likes of Lisbie, Kishishev, Stuart, Fortune, and Bartlett appearing, not just as occasional squad players, but as regulars. It is this failure to progress during the summer which concerns me the most.