Beard's plan maybe?
- stay up this season
- justifies deeper investment for next season
- next season is about development/consolidation
- certainly challenge for Top 4
- challenge for title season after
Two years before serious champions contention isn't impossible - with the right investment.
Soooooo many variable of course, not least who'll be footing the bill as soon as (if the rumours are to be believed) the WC ends.......
Still. The only way up is to invest. Beard has the experience and the quality - he needs support to create the team he knows he needs in order to compete back at that top level.
It's great to see more people getting actively involved in this thread too - hopefully it won't be too long before we have a dedicated sub-forum, with special topic/individual player threads and sub-forum mods to keep it tidy etc.
Instead of just one single thread on the whole site 
The women's side of things, as I understand it going off what are admittedly now out of date accounts, is relatively self-sufficient. Or that is at least the game plan. Which makes sense given it is FSG's general approach to running the club. Our losses were very minimal, pennies compared to some. So whoever ends up owning us next won't have to give too much concern to how much of a money pit the women's team currently is, they can simply decide how big a money pit they would like to make it. And however big they might choose, it will still be spare change down the back of the couch.
I have no idea if the self-sufficient model dictated Beard's squad building going into this season. You have to think it was a factor to some extent. We were pretty much one out/one in positionally, with loans adding some of the depth. But at the same time, I do think he favoured squad consistency and wasn't going to make sweeping changes even if his cheque book was blank. Teams who have done that in recent years really haven't had a good time of things.
If I was going to guess the squad changes we might see for next season, I'd have to say the defence needs the immediate attention. Performance aside, it's ageing. Same could be said for the squad on the whole, really. We're the oldest in the league, with most of the age being found in the defence. Fahey (35), Roberts (32), Flaherty (31) Matthews (turning 30), Campbell (turning 30). That's in addition to Furness (turning 35), Laws (32), van de Sanden (30), Stengel (30).
Maybe the imminent need to overhaul through the squad also played a factor in Beard's building of it for this season. It probably does make more sense to spend 22/23 making sure we don't go straight back down and then make all those disruptive player changes for 23/24 once we have a WSL season to our name to use as both a foundation and a statement to prospective signings.
