I've written an article explaining this a lot better than I will be able to here but I'll summarise.

[Link]

In the summer we'll have 13 or more (as things stand) players out of contract, including the 3 loan players. Granted, many of the players we'll be happy to see the back of but a man out, even Mutch, has to be replaced.

If we average out the cost of a new player to be just £5m then it will cost £65m to replace all 13 players with bang average replacements/players for the future.

We have a goalkeeper on a pre-contract who is a free and we can take Rakip for £10m. That's an average of £5m.

Given that we are notorious for being hard up we're either going to have to be lucky with free transfers or Freedman is going to have to pull something special out of the bag because we don't have the players in the academy who can step up.

Staying up (which I think we'll manage) will only be part of the struggle because of poor planning.

That's the thing about free transfers, they are never really free.

I just struggle to see, given how our finances have been painted, how we'll replace 13 players in the summer unless we rely on the youth plan we tried last summer.

I look at it slightly differently. We spent, relatively, little in the January window so should have some from that budget.

The players that I'd expect us to try and keep would be Hennessey (if he keeps up his form), Kelly (good squad player), Ward, McArthur, Cabaye and Sako.

That leaves the 2 loanees, who can be replaced as we normally do, Speroni, Delaney, Mutch and Chung-Yong to replace.

4 players isn't bad and does leave the manager a chance to really shape the squad with some of his own choices.

'Lies to the masses as are like fly's to mollasses...they want more and more and more'

According to Parish he and the Americans were lending the club money to use in the January window so I presume that isn't in the club to be used in the summer.

I too would expect us to at least try and retain some of the players but the fact we haven't done it already baffles me.

Presumably the reason these 10 players are being released (ignoring loans) is that they’re not having much of an impact on the squad/first team so the premise we have to replace them all doesn’t make sense to me.
Bin off the guys not getting a game, frees up the wage budget to rebuild, add 4/5 quality additions, not 13 average ones.

And that is the hard bit...we ain't the only ones looking.