Imps DoF Jez George admitted we suffered some deadline day agony yesterday, as the transfer window eased shut.
City didn’t do any business on the final day, an unusual situation from windows past, but that wasn’t due to be the case. As revealed on our Deadline Day Live Show, which currently has more than 2,200 views across two platforms, we were in for a player from a Championship club on a loan-to-buy option, but he later opted to go to one of our rivals, willing to match his second tier wages.
“We’ve worked really hard over a period of time to get a player to come to us,” confirmed Jez. “We’d agreed everything yesterday. It would have been a loan with an option to buy, a really exciting one for us as a club. A player in absolute prime, a top player in League One.
“And then we got completely and utterly blown out of the water by a club who lost their other target, jumped on our deal at the last minute. The player rang me this morning to say he was on the way to that club to do a medical.”
Clearly reeling from the news, Jez expressed how gutting it was to lose out on a target in a market seeing huge numbers being thrown around.
“That was, how can I say, a bit of frustration at the start of the day—frustration close to devastation, to be honest. That’s how it felt because when you do so much work and think you’ve got someone who could make a real difference, it’s a gutter.”
While this is a one-off deal that has collapsed, Jez confessed he was ‘pretty scared’ about where League One was heading. Wrexham paid £2 million for Sam Smith from Reading, while at the top end clubs like Wycombe have been in a position to turn down £7 million for Richard Kone, while Huddersfield splashed £3 million on Joe Taylor. It makes our job much harder than ever before.
“League One seemed pretty mad at the start of the season. We get the benchmarking, we see where we are—19th in the budget table. We see we’re two million off 10th, and three and a half million off playoff positions. Then in January, suddenly, you see million-pound transfers between clubs in the same league.
Then it finishes off with a two-million-pound transfer and double-digit wages—10, 12, 15,000 pounds a week—to players in League One. Being honest, that isn’t a director of football trying to cover his backside or play the martyr. That’s just genuine concern, pretty scared of where League One is going as a whole, because it seems to me like there are just no financial controls whatsoever.
What felt like us being underdogs and fighting against the odds has almost become a financial landscape that’s getting further and further away from reality, any level of sustainability, and making it more difficult for clubs like ourselves. But that’s the challenge. We’ll wake up tomorrow morning and work hard to get things ready in the summer that give us a chance again.”
Who Could The Mystery Signing Have Been?
There was lots of speculation after Jez’s revelation as to who we missed out on. One player who it could have been is Owen Moxon, formerly of Carlisle, who left Portsmouth to join high-flying Stockport County. Jez described the player as being ‘in his prime’ and at 27, that’s certainly Moxon, a player we’ve seen first hand on a couple of occasions during his stint with the Cumbrians.
Owen Dale, a former Crewe Alexandra youth, is another it could be. He left Oxford United after playing a key role in their promotion last season, and at 26, he is in his prime. Kyle Edwards left Oxford for Stevenage, but he has had an injury-hit spell with the U’s and is another option. It might have been Alex Gilbert, a 23-year-old midfielder who left Boro for Charlton. Finally, it could have been Brad Hills, although he is only 20, so perhaps not quite in his prime. He’s left Norwich on loan and is going to Stockport.
If I had to pick the two favourites, I’d say it’s between Dale and Moxon, but as my Dad said on the live feed, it doesn’t matter, because he didn’t sign!