TUCKER, St James — Changes will be coming to Montego Bay United (MBU) after their poor Jamaica Premier League (JPL) season, says Club President Orville Powell.

MBU finished last in the competition after they replaced UWI FC in the just completed season, earning a mere 12 points from 22 games, winning twice and conceded 41 goals while scoring only 15.

Even before the season ended, Powell was already thinking ahead to the next season when he is expected to field a more competitive team and the possibility of a new coach and new players.

Leacroft Lettman took over from Englishman Ricky Hill who only lasted seven games as the technical director and while Powell has high regards for Lettman’s coaching IQ, he wonders if he had made sufficient progress in his baptism of fire, the MBU job being his first assignment at that level.

“You have to make some tough decisions and the most important part to me is the experience and the learning,” he told the Jamaica Observer West recently, “to me it is to give a coach an opportunity, not just to talk but to do what he says he can do, then and there you can see how difficult it is or how easy it was and what the challenges are.”

Powell said, “To me, I think Lee would have learned and he is here with us every day. Yes, he is being considered for the job but again I will be frank but I need to make a decision whether we will continue a learning process or if we will want to fix it right now, so that is still out there, it is an option, and we have to try our best to find a balance, no matter what.”

He said Lettman was “one of the brightest coaches in the country”, but cautioned “without the experience that might not mean anything, I will have to look at it now and make decisions, we will have to go to a situation where we have the same coach for 10 years,” said the owner who has seen the hiring and firing of at least 10 coaches since MBU first returned to the island’s top club competition.

He was blunt when assessing the players who turned out for MBU in the just ended season and said it will be a scramble to get players as the local pool was not that deep and they have turned their eyes overseas.

“We have started the process to find new players, the second-tier league has started and we are seeing players who we already knew before and they are gaining experience as well in this competition,” he said.

“Two teams will go up to the Premier League and no doubt they will also be looking to strengthen from the same pool of players, as well as the some of the other Premier League clubs so its how we can try our best to match up against those teams.”

Powell, who has never been afraid to look outside of Jamaica for coaches or players, said, “We are seriously looking at the Concacaf Nations League and to see if we can get some players as the quality is not here, to bring in at least four players,” but said he did not want to talk about which players they had identified or where they were from, “names have been taken and contacts have been made”, was all he would say.

The selection of the overseas players he said will be collaborative effort, “all the coaching staff and some [senior] players who watch the games and we will compile the list afterwards.”

He would not be drawn into which area of the field he thought they needed most help, “I know already that we need everything, coach and players,” he said with a laugh.

Asked whether he thought MBU was attractive enough to overseas players, the plain-speaking Powell told the Jamaica Observer West, “I don’t think we are that attractive, I don’t think we are where we want to be but we have to let them get to know us, we have to sell ourselves to them,” he added, “but it’s not just us here at MBU, it’s a wider issue that the entire league might not be that attractive.”