Rebuilding job starts again

ATHLETIC are at the work-in-progress stage once again.

And manager Lee Johnson reckons it is the THIRD time he has been tasked with imposing his structures on a squad virtually from scratch.

From the beginning of his 18-month stint as boss up until now, the exit of William Gros last week means Athletic have shed 45 professionals with first-team experience from SportsDirect.com Park.

The Preston game last week provided an illustration of just how much chopping and changing has taken place in the past year.

The televised fixture between the same sides at Deepdale on September 2, 2013, featured only two players in the starting line-up who began Saturday’s game — Joseph Mills and Danny Philliskirk — with Jonson Clarke-Harris, Genseric Kusunga and David Mellor on the bench for that first meeting.

“We just had to rebuild too much, for whatever reason,” Johnson said.

“It would have been interesting had we kept the group of last year, playing so well at the start of the year without getting results, going into this year. That was the original plan, to take the young group and add two or three at a time rather than a complete overhaul, which is what we have had really.

“We have probably had that three times, which is not ideal.”

New-look Athletic are awaiting a first win of the 2014-15 campaign. While conceding early in games and finding the net at the other end have been difficulties that have characterised the early season, Johnson appears to have gone some way to bedding in a central midfield which looked a little porous on the opening day at Colchester.