IT WAS John Cleese's television character Basil Fawlty whose line about a group of German tourists visiting his shambolic hotel — "don't mention the war" — went from classic quip to common parlance. Right now, it suits the Essendon Football Club very well.

The Bombers are in a bit of a mess, set to miss the finals for a fourth year in a row and, having won only 23 of the past 76 games, are having their worst run since the dark days of the mid-1970s.

They're stuck with an inadequate playing group, which will take some time to rebuild, a job made even harder with the impending entrance of two new teams to the AFL, who'll be picking the eyes out of several future drafts. But just who's to blame, and where Essendon goes from here with its list, have become very touchy subjects, particularly when there are club politics, not to mention a certified legend involved.

That, of course, would be former coach Kevin Sheedy, the man who steered the club out of those doldrums 30-odd years ago, but whose increasing penchant for quick-fix trades over recent seasons has, according to plenty of voices in the football world, helped land the Bombers in this pickle.

The politics involved and philosophical direction of Essendon's player management has managed to ensnare club chairman Ray Horsburgh and new coach Matthew Knights as well.

Horsburgh, who managed to upset his old coach on a few occasions in a short period, upset his new one and a few other Windy Hill-ites besides with his recent public musings about veteran Bombers' Jason Johnson and Damien Peverill's limited senior futures.

He did it again when he suggested the club might trade underperforming stars for draft picks or mature-aged replacements, a suggestion Knights was quick to refute.

"Last year's draft will give you an indication of my philosophy," Knights said. "We took all picks, we didn't trade away. We took all our draft picks, we took a 17-year-old, five 18-year-olds, a 19-year-old and a 21-year-old, Jarrod Atkinson, (as a) rookie.

"As a club, we will look to add to our list with more youth at the draft. I wouldn't have thought we'd be trading aggressively."

Knights has until recently been open and expansive about his long-term list management plan for Essendon, using his draft picks, eschewing trades, perhaps leaving some room in the salary cap for at least one uncontracted "big fish".

But there's been an increasing coyness about how Essendon's list got in this state since the accusing fingers of critics such as Age columnist Robert Walls and Mike Sheahan began pointing in Sheedy's direction.

Knights has begun reining in the various sources of club comment this week. He preferred not to speak to The Age for this article. His assistant coaches and recruiting manager Adrian Dodoro were not allowed to.

The list has become an even touchier subject since Sheedy last week started returning fire on the "hand grenades" he said his old sparring partner Walls and Sheahan had been lobbing.

"Two clubs have disappeared since World War I, Fitzroy and the Brisbane Bears; Walls coached both of them. At least there will always be a job on the couch," Sheedy wrote. "Walls's 'Dumb and Dumber' cohort, Sheahan, has criticised recruiting decisions made at the Bombers while I was at the helm.

"The team may be headed for a wooden spoon, but the Dons have a very talented pool under the age of 25. I can cope with criticism of drafting players who are older and experienced late-draft choices. John Barnes and Paul Salmon were picked up in the 50s and were very good choices. Mal Michael has another year left in him … I think we've drafted pretty well in the past three years."

Sheedy might well be right there, with the likes of Paddy Ryder and Alwyn Davey, while time will tell on players such as Courtenay Dempsey, Jay Neagle, Sam Lonergan, Scott Gumbleton, Leroy Jetta, Tom Hislop, Bachar Houli, Kyle Reimers, David Myers, Tayte Pears and Darcy Daniher. What appears clearer, however, is that Essendon didn't recruit well for the four national drafts preceding the past three years, and that its failure to do so has left the Bombers with an uncomfortably large and costly generation gap.

It's generally agreed that the peak performance years of an AFL player are between the ages of 22-27, the better of whom should now be in the 50-150 game mark. They are age and experience brackets in which Essendon is severely short.

At the start of 2008, the Dons had 11 players younger than 20, along with the Western Bulldogs, the most of any club in the AFL. At the other end of the scale, only Sydney, Adelaide and Melbourne had more players 30 or older.

Importantly, no club had fewer players in the all-important 20-29 bracket. The figures are equally as stark when it comes to games played. Only the Brisbane Lions at the start of 2008 had fewer players with between 50-150 games under their belt.

Essendon had only nine, and few, if any of that group, including Adam McPhee, Andrew Welsh, Brent Stanton, Jobe Watson and Ricky Dyson, have emerged as superstars or genuine leaders capable of dragging their team along with them.

The drafts of 2000-03 are Essendon's "black hole". Only 10 of the 31 players taken during that time are still at the club, just two of the 14 from the worst years of 2000 and 2001, ironically, when the Bombers were being touted as the best team in history, yet simultaneously leaving their longer-term future extremely precarious.

While its high finishes didn't entitle it to the cream of the draft crop, Essendon butchered most of the choices it did have. James Davies, Sam Hunt, Shane Harvey and Simon O'Keefe were all taken in the first 35 picks in 2000-01. Between them, they played 21 games for the club.

Even when the Dons' on-field fortunes had begun to slide by 2002, little remedial action was taken. Close to half a team of other AFL clubs' discards were picked up, the likes of Matthew Allan, Justin Murphy, Mark Alvey, Ty Zantuck, Richard Cole, Scott Camporeale and Chris Heffernan (for a second stint).

Even a coach with a reputation as great as Sheedy's can't escape that legacy, nor the administration that allowed him too big a say in the club's recruiting decisions, a weakness of which rival clubs are scornful.

"You can't sell off your future just to fix today," says one AFL recruiter. "Even if you produce a couple of decent players every draft, you're going to just hold your ground. To go better, you need to also once every so often produce a 'killer' draft that really nails it. To have a reasonable team now, they (Essendon) would have had to have reasonable drafts between 2000 and 2004, and they just haven't. If you miss out even for a couple of years, it's going to come back to bite you."

Another leading club official points the finger squarely with Essendon chief executive Peter Jackson and former chairmen Graeme McMahon and Neil McKissock for allowing Sheedy to call the shots.

"You can't let the coach run the recruiting. That's it in a nutshell," he says.

Another criticism of Sheedy now coming home to roost is his innate conservatism about blooding raw youngsters, completely at odds with the oft-stated public face of "playing the kids".

The draft of 2002 provides a good example. Brendon Goddard and Daniel Wells were the top two picks that year. Goddard will play his 100th game for St Kilda next week. Wells is already up to 111 for North Melbourne.

Essendon had two first-round picks that same draft, which it used on Jason Laycock and Jason Winderlich. They've played 49 and 55 games respectively over the past 5½ seasons, half as many. Two players upon whom, despite more than half a decade at Windy Hill and at the age of 23, the jury is still very much out.

There are others in the same boat. And with the Gold Coast and West Sydney on the AFL horizon, Knights won't have nearly the same luxuries nor generous time frame as his predecessor to make the calls on whether some of his list can actually play.

It would be a difficult enough job in its own right, let alone when your team hovers near the foot of the ladder, you have a chairman prone to having his two bob's worth in public and a coaching predecessor who is one of the most revered, visible and outspoken figures in football.

No wonder Knights has had enough of the debate for the moment. Don't mention the war.

Essendon has its hands full enough without descending further into the farcical operation Fawlty Towers used to be.