Was doing some googling this morning (mid early morning, early wake up due to hangover!) and was having a think about what Wasps as a new entity could look at in terms of pulling a team together quickly.
I started to review the players currently on the market/leaving prem teams as we speak. Considering that we are most likely going to spend mid/top end of champ and Ealing averaged ?1.3m per year on squad with a top end players earning ?75k.
So I will make an assumption that we will spend somewhere around 850-900K ish? Assuming we have no large sponsor and assuming we have a 30 man squad (plus some loan players) doesn't give a huge wiggle room on who we can sign etc and would mean a 30k average per player.
So looking through who has been released, my assumption is our squad will be built of mainly youngsters and loanees, with a few older heads.
Players i'd be interested in include:
Darren Atkins, Max Green, Tom Doughty, Gabriel Hammer-Webb, Will Spencer, Frankie Read, Jordan Venter (Bath)
Sam Lewis, Henry Purdy, John Hawkins, Sam Jefferies, Peter Carter, Jac Lloyd, Tom Wilstead, Aaron Thompson (Bristol)
Jack Maunder (Exeter)
Rhys Litterick, Conor Oresanya (Quins)
Riley Williams, Horsea Saumaki, Kini Murimurivalu, Chester Owen, George Loose (Leicester)
Charlie Smith, James Blackett, Chidera Obanna, Ewan Greenlaw, Jeremy Civil (Newcastle)
Frankie Sleightholme, Archie Kean, Ethan Grayson, Josh Weru, Joseph Gaffan, Callum Burns (Saints)
Ben Carlisle, Sam Hill, Elliot Gourlay, Kieran Wilkinson (Sale)
Louie Kirkham, Oran Murphy, Oliver Stirling, Isaac Miller, Hugo O'Sullivan, Isaac Curtis-Harris (Irish)
Then i was also considering that 3 out 4 welsh regions have announced up to 50 players leaving already. List attached here:
https://www.walesonline.co.uk/sport/rugby/rugby-news/full-list-almost-50-players-26807120The likes of Ben Fry or James Ratti would make interesting options.
Realistically we will rely on loan players until finances are resolved, however with the quality of training facilities we have, i'd hope clubs would like the idea of their players coming to play for us. Especially the players who haven't quite broken through yet like Ma'asi White/Opoku-Fordjour (Sale), Alfie Bell (Exeter), Will Glister (Saints) and a few more.
Obviously we won't get all and will have to be select due to finances but at least there's a good start to go off. Hopefully we may get a few from other teams that might be interested too but will be interesting to see how we get on.