The problem is that when until this season we've been a top 8 Championship side competing for a place in The Premiership.
If we'd retained the likes of Law, Creswell, Forte and Horwoord until they were 23-25 we'd still have ended up playing at their level which is Division 3 or Division 4.
And these are the players who with the benefit of hindsight can be said to have "made it". There are plenty of others we could also have retained who never did.
Ian "The replacement for Michael Brown" Ross is now 25 and playing for Harrogate in The Conference North (Sixth tier).
Tyrone Thompson is playing for non-league Mansfield and so it goes on.
What we undoubtedly should have done is build a team around those who had already proved themselves at top Championship level by the age of 21.
We did that with Montgomery, Tonge, Jagielka, Quinn and ended up in The Premiership.
We failed to do it with Naughton and Walker and wound up in Division Three.
McCabe pretending that we could have built a Championship team around players who've never reached that level is a red-herring in my opinion.
Don't think we could have built the squad around them, but I do think some could have done a job as squad players, rather than some of the expensive, overrated has beens that have come to our club, played little and poorly, taken the money and left us with a bigger problem than when they came - hole still to be filled, and a missed chance for a long term player to play and develop. Many Hartlepool fans wanted Horwood as player of the year last season, they he overlaps very well, has skill and a great left foot. Maybe he could have done a job, rather than signing Stephen Jordan? Signing Jordan Stewart? Loaning Mattock?
To take your one example of Horwood. He left in Jan 2008 when we had Naysmith, Armstrong and Geary ahead of him in the pecking order.
The following season our left backs were Naysmith again and Naughton (for the last few games).
It wasn't until August 2009 that we started scuffling around to try and replace the four senior players mentioned above.
McCabe is suggesting that we could have told Horwood in Jan 2008 "just hang around in the reserves for 18 months because we might need you if we turn crap".
You could say the same for Lloyd Kerry, James Ashmore, Dean Oliver, Martin Donnelly and Nicky Travis who were all released at the same time as Horwood.
It's only with the beneift of hindsight that we know Horwood was the pick of that bunch and he still hasn't proven to be a top 8 Championship player.
Would we have made the play-offs in 2008/2009 with Horwood at left back instead of Naysmith?
Our ambitions back then were a swift return to The Premiership, rather than consolidating and developing young players.
With the exception of Sharp, manager's decisions to discard young players who weren't good enough for the Championship, have so far proved correct.
McCabe's decision to force his manager to sell Walker and Naughton is the flawed one as they had already proved themselves to be good enough.
