Glasgow Warriors: December double-headers can make or break season

Glasgow Warriors were humbled at home by a weakened Leinster side last weekend

This time two seasons ago Glasgow were sitting on a perfect start to their Pro14 season with seven wins from seven games. Last season they began with a healthy five wins from seven. This season the number has fallen to a less than salubrious three wins from seven.

Things are not yet at the point of panic for momentum can shift quickly on the back of a few morale-boosting victories, but the Warriors are six points off third place in their conference, 10 points off second place and 18 points off the top. Last Saturday night they lost at home to a second-string - and, in places, third string - Leinster team.

They've also got a raft of players out of contact at the end of the current season. Among them, mainstays Jonny Gray, Ali Price, Ryan Wilson, Tommy Seymour and DTH van der Merwe. There's not a whole lot of certainty at Scotstoun right now. The locals, it's fair to say, are getting restless.

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In their next four games the Warriors play La Rochelle twice in the Champions Cup and Edinburgh twice in the Pro14. They travel to France this weekend to play a team that has lost both of their European games so far but also a team that was won all five at home in the Top 14 this season, while losing all five away from home.

Glasgow need four wins from four this month to really get themselves moving again.

They are at a strange point in their history. Are they sliding back into the ranks of the mediocre or is there life in them yet? Is there ambition to kick on? More questions are being asked by their fans than ever before. Leone Nakarawa left for Racing and his X-factor was not replaced, though the club are now investigating bringing back the Fijian lock after his sacking by the French club. Finn Russell left for Paris and no money was found to replace one of the best fly-halves in the world. Stuart Hogg left and again there was no star quality in his stead, just a rearranging of what they already had.

Glasgow's, and the SRU's, position is that in trying to replace like for like they would have to spend money that would blow their budget to smithereens. Their preferred route is by promoting and developing youth. That's a policy that works nicely for the national team but it's not wholly conducive to putting a winning team on the park.

It gets harder to compete when your European rivals are spending big and when your main Pro14 dangers have, in Leinster's case, arguably the greatest youth conveyor belt of any club in the world, and in Munster's case, sufficient financial muscle to recruit World Cup winning Springboks to their ranks. Damian de Allende and RG Snyman will join the province next season. That's the sound of an ante being upped.

There will be a new coach at Scotstoun by then of course. Dave Rennie was a glamorous appointment that reflected a club on the up. In going for Danny Wilson as his successor the opinion has formed that the easy option was sought. Wilson has been caught in the crossfire a little here. He may have had a pretty miserable time in Gregor Townsend's national set-up but Glasgow have not appointed a dummy as coach. He's a talented operator who's respected by his players. He coached an unspectacular Cardiff team to a European trophy.

Glasgow's predicament is inextricably linked with the national cause. Even if they had the money to go and buy a star replacement for Nakarawa, which they didn't, there would have been a reluctance. With only two professional teams in Scotland there has to be a pathway for youth to come through.

Had Glasgow signed an established international to replace Nakarawa then that would have limited the growth potential of Scott Cummings. Had they replaced Russell with Aaron Cruden, as was seemingly Rennie's wish at one time, then what chance would Adam Hastings have had?

Townsend was never going to approve Cruden's signing. It would have left him in a situation where Cruden, a Kiwi, was number 10 at Glasgow and Jaco van der Walt and Simon Hickey, a South African and another Kiwi, were the 10s at Edinburgh. Not having a young Scot in the loop in your two professional teams was not a tenable proposition.

'Recruitment has been hit and miss'

Hogg's departure is slightly different. Townsend is not short of full-backs in the way that he's short of 10s. He has Hogg and Blair Kinghorn (and Sean Maitland and Duncan Taylor if needs be). Some leeway could have been granted for an ambitious signing, but there was still no proven quality brought to Scotstoun. Instead you have Seymour switching positions and Ruaridh Jackson filling in as deputy in the same way you have Hastings being backed up by a player, Pete Horne, who's not at home at 10.

The Glasgow fans feel a little short-changed. The great atmosphere in the stadium is under threat. The sell-out crowds are no longer guaranteed. Plenty of good young players have emerged, though. Cummings and Matt Fagerson, George Horne and Kyle Steyn, Stafford McDowall and Robbie Nairn. Others are taxiing on the runway. That side of it looks healthy.

While feeling sympathy for Glasgow for their inability to replace the very men who made them special, there also has to be analysis of what they have brought in from overseas. Recruitment has been hit and miss. The bad ones in the last three or four seasons have outweighed the good ones.

True, some of the failures were brought in on short-term deals and some were on longer deals but were not all that expensive. It's notoriously difficult to find these squad players, characters who can do a job when the big guns are away, but recruitment from beyond these shores hasn't been great.

For every Callum Gibbins there was a Sam Vunisa and a Hagen Schulte. For Sam Johnson and Oli Kebble there was Jarrod Firth, Nemia Kenatale, Tjiuee Uanivi and Langilangi Haupeakui. For DTH van der Merwe, Simone Favaro and Leonardo Sarto there was Javan Sebastian, Corey Flynn, Djustice Sears-Duru and David Tameilau.

On their day, Glasgow are still capable of excellence, but the coming weeks are huge for them. They'll tell us a lot more about whether their beginning to the season is a minor hiccup or a major slump. Starting against La Rochelle, they have four games to ease the anxiety of their supporters.