Constable and Wright going nowhere, for now

So, James Constable is going nowhere... currently. And neither is Jake Wright.

That’s the overwhelmingly underwhelming news from BBC Radio Oxford’s interview with Kelvin Thomas today. Constable’s position is consistently under scrutiny, with a persistent fear that he may end up at Swindon.

There are two factors at play here. Firstly, there’s Constable’s position as representing the soul of the club, without him we will become ‘soulless’. Secondly, there’s Swindon’s billing as the devil. So, the fear is that we’ll end up selling our soul to the devil.

We can take the emotion out of this nightmare scenario by looking at Jake Wright’s (non)-situation. Wright has contributed more than his fair share in our success, but unlike Constable, he’s not quite dragged us from the dark to the light in the same way. It’s easier, therefore, to assess Wright’s situation in an objective way.

It is some time since we had players like Wright who have a market value. For many years our best players were pretty much everyone else’s worst. During the Conference years, we either had players nobody else wanted, or that nobody - at that level - could afford. We’ve been at the top or bottom of our food chains for at least a decade, perhaps longer. Now we’re right in the middle. We have players we want to buy, and we have players others want to buy from us. This is a new experience that we’ll have to get used to.

Presumably Constable is as likely to sign for Swindon as he is any other club prepared to stump up the cash for him. Wright, likewise. And that this could happen at any time, regardless of rumour or gossip. Objectively, however, neither is irreplaceable, even within the current squad we have adequate back up.

As Vitalstatistix, the Gaulish chief from the Asterix books used to say “We have nothing to fear; except perhaps that the sky may fall on our heads tomorrow. But as we all know, tomorrow never comes!!” We need to stop worrying about tomorrow.