- Mar 25, 2019
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- AFL Club
- Carlton
In what world are quality KPPs and inside mids easier to fix than outside players and small forwards? Essendon have some great outside players but still lack in many of the most important departments, we have the key areas sorted but our outside run and class in need of a rejig, mainly due to our options being injury prone or very limited footballers. Sometimes both.Carlton are in no man's land and I can see Essendon winning a flag before them. Carlton's list is too top heavy with the gap between their top 6 and bottom 6 players being enormous.
Carlton also lack depth when it comes to rucks, outside midfielders and small forwards, while having an abundance of inside midfielders and back flankers along with their two key forwards.
It's ironic because I remember their 2009-13 teams being stacked with rucks, outside midfielders and small forwards while lacking depth when it came to inside midfielders and key forwards.
Essendon's list is far more balanced and while Carlton are having salary cap issues, Essendon have plenty of cap space and will have even more if Parish leaves as a free agent. I'm not confident that Essendon have enough star power to win a premiership, but you'd rather have Essendon's list deficiencies as opposed to Carlton's list deficiencies as they're far easier to fix.
I've said I expect a list rebalance come end of year, expecting some or all of TDK, Mcgov, Fisher, Dow and maybe Kennedy to depart as a way to clear some cap, get some more picks and possibly bring in a few players in roles we lack. No real reason why that should be overly hard to achieve. Essendon in contrast need to develop some quality KPD, KPF which can take 3-4 years for them to come good and are at risk of losing Redman and Parish come end of season (which I hope both stay for their sake).
We have imo a 4-5 year window with Curnow, Mckay, Weitering, Cripps etc all being in their prime age brackets and some quality youngish players underneath them in Cerra, Walsh, Boyd, Young, Durdin etc.
I believe our list is 1-2 draft/trade windows away from contending with some good list decisions. We've got all our spine players sorted at either end of the ground and simply need to cut/reshape our list a bit. There are heaps of half forwards and small forwards out there that could be available which wouldn't cost us a lot but still be big improvements on our current options and then we probably still lack 1-2 just solid contributors with good skills and some speed to rotate through the middle and the wings.
I don't think that's really too grim a prospect to have.
Cutting/trading someone like Dow or Fisher and having a swing at an Alex Neal-Bullen as a FA on the same 4-500k contract would instantly make us more balanced team without really costing us anything. If TDK is to go to Geelong we could try and get Brad Close back in a trade by including a pick too or something along those lines.
We don't need to bring in a big fish on a big contract anymore, just shift and shuffle some ordinary players on inflated contracts for some players who will actually benefit the team in positions of need.
(Edited - Just saw ANB re signed for another 3 years with the Dees but point remains the same)
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