All this is a factor but what rigsby will ignore as it doesn't suit his agenda is that this rule change was known well in advance and so isn't something that we should have been caught by surprise with.
What we are reaping is the lack of advance planning and the failure of numerous previous Brown signings.
We should have been making signings in January, February and March with an eye on this season. That's getting them in early and letting them bed down so they can be productive players from the start of the season.
And to be fair Ron backed him. He let him get in on decent wages Tyrone Barnett with a view to a permanent move only for us to find out that PB wasn't as good a man manager as PB thought he was and he couldn't motivate him either where others had failed (still, at least with Nile Ranger as his replacement there are no concerns there and PB seems to have learnt his lesson). We got in Franck Moussa which gave us an exclusive negotiating period which we failed to take advantage of. We got in Piotr Malarczyk on loan, but he appeared to be crap and not the answer to our central defensive issues that arose as a result of Brown falling out with two centre-halves in Prosser and Bolger, that latter a Brown signing that itself ultimately has to also go down as another failed signing.
Instead we gave yet more pitch time to loanees that we've got no chance of signing. Sam McQueen played 18 times when we had a chance in the second half of last season to blood Jack Bridge, to find out what we had and bed him in the side so he was ready to start this season but instead gave him just 76 minutes total from one start and one sub appearance whilst playing loanees like Sam McQueen instead. Bridge's now getting the minutes for us as sub he should have got towards the end of last season before starting the final matches. We played Glen Kamara - maybe that was with a view to a permanent but if so it was an unsuccessful loan spell. Ditto for Jamar Loza. I'm not sure what happened with Glenn Rea, but at any rate he's not here. Then there's Joe Pigott who needed his confidence building up by a manager but didn't get that.
Our problems now are the result of unsuccessful signings for Barnett and Moussa and Bolger and Malarczyk and Kamara and McQueen and Loza and Rea and Mooney and Weston and before them the likes of Clifford, Barnard (although that was probably Ron's fault) and Reid and Coulthirst and Ibenfledt and O'Toole and Layne and Brown and the list goes on. That's the real reason we're struggling: poor signings, often just trying to apply the band-aid temporary solution of a loanee rather than addressing the underlying issue with a permanent fix.
We need to be recruiting and developing young talent. Our biggest -pun not intended - need is at centre-half. Off the top of my head Brown has during his reign signed something like 7 central defenders on loan! How come that problem hasn't been permanently fixed yet? Do people really believe that a permanent solution is just around the corner 8th time lucky?
Cox is Brown's 16th forward he's signed (Ranger, Mooney, Pigott, Weston, Loza, Hunt, Barnett, Barnard, Brown, Layne, Cassidy, Coulthirst, Cowan, Reid, Woodrow - have I missed anyone?) and whilst it's too early for a verdict on Cox and Ranger he's 0 and 14 in the hit stakes and still looking to replace the forward he inherited who got the team promoted.
Not every signing is going to be a success but Brown's hit rate has been woefully low leaving us struggling to fill gaps as he's now trying for somewhere between the third and seventeeth time - depending on the position - to fill a role. Of all Brown's signings only Coker, Thompson, Atkinson and White have I think got contract extensions and the latter two are out of the side and merely squad players (something that Thompson is likely to be once we sign the latest central defender). That's not nearly a good enough success rate and this, above all, is the true cause of our current difficulties.