You're assuming that he was going to do a straight swap, but that's not how it works when you lose 7 or 8 first team players.
Under those circumstances you need to rebuild and adjust to the styes of the new players.
Stuperavic is, apparently, a number 10 and was one of the signings intended to add to our creativity.
If you cast your mind back to when Spittal joined the club, he was roundly slagged off by a large number of fans as being useless. He obviously wasn't, but he became the player he was partly through coaching.
Any replacement is going to go through the same coaching process. Fans tend to forget that one of the key jobs of the coaching staff is to develop players.