No delays. Because time is already running out ... The David Rawson Rotherham United Fan Column

It's fitting that it starts with the “Legends” match. Bottle the DNA knocking around in those dressing rooms and we won't go far wrong.

Easier said than done, given the state we're in.

We need 15 to 20 new players to have the basic squad size needed for a full season.

We need them to coalesce into a team. We need them to understand, buy into and implement however it is whoever it is wants them to play.

There's no time to “let the team gel”, no scope to “wait until the finishing touches are applied at the end of the transfer window”. Start slowly and the pattern of the last three seasons will start to play out again.

“It'll come right when we settle on our best side”. “It'll come right when everyone's available”. “It'll come right when we've had a chance to shuffle the pack in January”. “It'll come right if we just make it to the end of the season”. “It isn't coming right”. “It won't come right. What now?”

We can't afford another season of that kind of drift. We need to snap out of the daze we seem to have been in for three years.

Consider our recent decision-making. It's all reactive and passive.

You could understand the idea of backing Matt Taylor with proven players in the second tier, even if it wasn't “our” way. You could see how giving Steve Evans free reign to sign a who's who of League One promotion winners might make sense, even if buying our way out of the division has never been our style. You could see how installing Matt Hamshaw as a sort of Paul Warne tribute act might look attractive, even if it misunderstood what the secret sauce of the Warne era was.

But, blithely allowing Taylor to write cheques that the bodies of the players he signed couldn't cash, seemingly without question? Paying money to Stevenage to prove we still had financial clout to speed run a sentimental trip down memory lane? Outsourcing caring about the club's future to a man taking on his first managerial position?

There was no grip, no sense of direction to any of it. And now look at us.

We have to grab the initiative. To make it clear that we have, as Ronnie Moore once said, put the wedge in.

Look at the legends. Players who had the guts and the grit to make the absolute most of their talent. Players who “got” that we were never going to be fashionable, or glamorous or popular but we could be competitive and effective and successful.

We need to show that we're the still the sort of club that attracts those sort of players. In bulk.

And fast.

The close season just started.

Time's already running out.