Who said anything about substantial?
I think, off the top of my head, we would be better placed if we still had Colin Kazim-Richards, Chris Iwelumo, Dean Hammond and certainly Joel Lynch...
The tone of your original post very much implied that players leaving under a cloud was a regular thing and that they went on to better things. Dean Hammond is playing in League One! CKR didn't want to play for us and we wouldn't buy Iwelumo a house in the south east so he went to German Div 2. Lynch is only with a club that spent most of last year holding up the rest of the championship. They are not the poorest team in Nottingham and not likely to progress. Hopefully there is a good chance we will be playing them next year, provided they don't go down.
Ok, not necessarily players leaving under a cloud. Just players leaving, fans then saying 'we don't need them anyway' and then realising three months later we miss them...
Changing your tune already!!! Personally, I never rated Hammond and was not disappointed when he left. As for CKR, he had potential, as does Lynch, but Lynch needs to eradicate a lot of expensive faults. CKR cocks up then the team loses the ball. Lynch cocks up and it costs a goal.