Lincoln City have been linked with a move for £1.5m-rated Dundee defender Luke Graham, and it’s Alan Nixon with the report once again.
Nixon linked us with a move for Graham earlier in the year, before we had confirmed promotion, and if the story is accurate, it does demonstrate we were planning for a possible promotion as early as February, which does sound plausible.
However, according to Nixon, Stoke City are now making a move for the centre half and are attempting to outbid us and Glasgow Rangers in the race for his signature. The Potters are said to be planning a deal for the highly rated defender, with talks ongoing and Graham believed to be keen on a move to England despite Rangers also trying to put together a package.
The same report suggests Stoke could go as high as £1.5 million and offer wages above what the Imps are able to put on the table, which underlines both the level of interest in Graham and the difficulty of this particular pursuit.
Imps Have Been Linked For Months
City’s name first appeared in connection with Graham back in February, when Nixon reported that City were preparing to pursue the defender if promotion to the Championship was secured. At that stage, the fee being mentioned was closer to £2 million, with Dundee expected to face significant interest in a player who had become a regular in the Scottish Premiership.
Now we are Championship club, and that changes the sort of market we are operating in. I did pour scorn on the likelihood of us getting a deal done three months ago, but with Jez George recently saying we may break our transfer record, it does feel possible. It does not suddenly mean we can throw money around like some of the division’s bigger hitters, but it does mean a player like Graham becomes a more realistic conversation than he might have been 12 months ago.
Portsmouth were also heavily involved in January, with reports in Scotland and on the south coast suggesting they had a bid rejected. A recent Portsmouth News piece claimed Graham’s preference was to test himself in the Championship, with Pompey, Derby County, Norwich City, Stoke, us, Charlton Athletic and Preston North End all credited with interest. They say up to 43 teams are interested, including Schalke in the Bundesliga.
Sadly, that is the other side of our potential business this summer. This is not a quiet Lincoln-only pursuit where we have identified a rough diamond before anybody else. Graham appears to be one of the more heavily watched young defenders in Scotland, with Rangers in the mix and continental interest also mentioned in recent reports.
Why Graham Fits The Lincoln Profile
Graham is not an unknown quantity. He came through Dundee’s academy, spent time on loan at Montrose during 2023/24 and was promoted into the Dundee senior squad in June 2024, with his first-team debut coming against Annan Athletic in the Premier Sports Cup in July 2024.
He has since become a significant part of their first-team setup, and his development has clearly not gone unnoticed. He is 22, left with room to improve, already tested in senior football, and has the sort of profile we have tended to like: young enough to grow, established enough not to be pure speculation, and likely to retain value if the next step goes well.
There is also an obvious positional argument. City will need depth and quality at centre half in the Championship, and Graham would represent a signing made with more than survival in mind. A fee of £1.5 million, if accurate, would be serious money for us, but not absurd in the context of where we now are and what the market looks like.
The issue is wages. Stoke are an established Championship name with greater financial muscle, while Rangers offer a different kind of pull altogether. We can offer a pathway, a clear role, and a club where development has been evident under Michael Skubala, but there will be a ceiling to what makes sense.
That is probably the reality of this summer. We are going to be in conversations that would have felt fanciful not long ago, but we are not going to win every one of them. Graham feels like a credible target, not a wild rumour, but Stoke’s involvement makes it a far tougher deal to land.
For now, the encouraging part is that we are being mentioned in the right sort of market. Young, upwardly mobile players, Championship-ready but still developing, are exactly the sort we should be looking at. Whether Graham ends up at Sincil Bank is another matter, but the fact City are even part of this race says plenty about how quickly the ground has shifted.
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