Silly season has already started – Lincoln City were linked with Eoin Kenny last week, the first serious bit of media speculation of the summer.
As we approached the January window, we’re likely to be linked with others, including the likes of Josh Honohan, especially now Shamrock Rovers are out of Europe. Will we land our targets? Will we expect an influx of incomings? Questions that are being asked in pubs up and down the High Street.
The usual fear is players of ours leaving, and while that always looms large over the club, director of football Jez George suggested it would take something ‘ridiculous’ for us to consider selling this window.
“It’s really simple for us. Unless something is impossible for us to turn down, we are not in the place where we want to weaken the group in January whatsoever,” said Jez on our recent exclusive podcast.
“Our job going into January is to strengthen. You can’t say never because, especially in the landscape of football in this country, someone could offer something absolutely ridiculous for any player, and at that point, you have to look at it.
“But our intention is that we come out of January adding quality to the group and not losing anyone who’s got a big part to play.”
We lost Paudie O’Connor, Sean Roughan and Ethan Erhahon in the summer, but we’re not usually a team that loses players in the winter. In the past couple of seasons, we’ve not been a big buying team either, adding only a couple of players each window.
That is despite the constant speculation and agents offering players to the club. However, as Jez explained, it is hard to get around our recruitment policy. Indeed, it is my understanding that has happened three times in recent years, with Chris Maguire, Jaden Brown and Remi Longdon, none of whom were big successes.
“I think how we try to operate is to rely as little as possible on agents speculating,” add Jez. “Because in my experience, agents very, very rarely ring you about very good players and mostly ring you about pretty average players that you don’t particularly want to sign.
“So we have to do our work. We’ve got a lot of good guys led by Joe Hutchinson in the recruitment team.
“Our job is to identify potential targets and then refine those with the coaching staff, amongst financial parameters, squad depth, and squad needs, to come up with a couple of players that we hope we can add in January.”
If you haven’t yet listened, make sure you tune in to the podcast for some really interesting insight not just into transfers, but playing style, what Erik Ring needs to do for a regular start and even a tasty Sincil Bank development the club has planned.
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