Michael Skubala has suggested that while the club’s focus for the January window is firm, he is currently focusing on matters on the pitch.
With just over a month to go until the window opens, talk about transfers is inevitably going to dominate the headlines. We have loan players who may return to their parent clubs, which could trigger more incomings, but for now, Michael’s focus remains firm.
When asked at what point his focus switches to transfers, he was quite firm.
“It never moves away from the pitch and the grass because that’s the primary role,” he said on Imps+.
“I think the focus is with Jez (George). The recruitment team, Joe (Hutchinson), has always been on January. So I don’t think we ever not focused on it. But you don’t know what players are available until later on.”
Of course, focus is always across the board these days with such a large backroom team. Recruitment never really starts and ends, it is an ongoing process, and something the club is always across.
“We’ve got a process,” added Michael. “We know what we need to do or what we’re looking at. We know people that might not stay because they’ve not played enough if they’re loanees.
“So we’ve got all different options available to us and we’re always in weekly meetings with about recruitment moving into January.”
That said, we’re not in dire need of recruitment. It can’t be said we’re light in many areas, and we have a lot of options up top. Currently, our squad looks to be holding up through the tougher months, but the next five weeks will be huge and after that, there may be small changes.
“I’m really happy with what we’ve got in the squad. We might want to add a little bit to it. There might be some areas that we think we can help the group with in terms of who we bring in.”
Michael did stress that the January window can also be reactive. With games going on throughout, clubs can react quickly to injuries and the like, and there is also the possibility of strengthening depending on ambition. Who knows, if we’re top three come mid-January, there might be a little boost to be found to help us maintain that.
“January is always more a reactive window, especially when we’ve got the group that we’ve got,'” Michael finished by saying. “I think it’ll be more a reactive one for us but there will be things that we think we can still do to to strengthen as we go into January.”
“If we get points on the board and then we want to strengthen and we want to keep improving and and that might change it as well where we are so we’ve just got to concentrate on the grass.
“But our attention never goes away from recruitment but my fully focus is on the grass at the moment.”
That last comment is so interesting. ‘If we get points on the board’ hints at maybe opening an additional little pot if we’re in with a serious chance of promotion.
In fairness, I don’t think this board have ever lacked ambition, and while recent winter transfer windows have been quiet in terms of numbers, they have seen us add Joe Taylor and James Collins in successive seasons. Also, in 2022, when we needed a real leg up, we got Morgan Whittaker, Liam Cullen, John Marquis, Brooke Norton-Cuffy, Ben House and Charley Kendall (I’m sure there were others, but it was so busy I can’t recall the others!).
Who knows what might be around the corner?