Lincoln City entered the summer with a rare advantage: while Bolton Wanderers had to wait until the end of May to discover whether they would be joining us in the Championship, our promotion had effectively been secured a month or two earlier.
That head start should, in theory, have made recruitment slightly easier. However, sporting director Jez George has admitted the club quickly discovered just how difficult it is for a newly promoted side to operate in the Championship transfer market.
In a 50-minute exclusive interview with The Stacey West, due to go live at 6 pm this Thursday evening, Jez admitted that the club have learned two huge lessons from this summer’s window.
The first challenge was balancing the number of players required during pre-season with the division’s 25-man squad limit. City needed enough bodies to manage workloads safely throughout July, but there was little room to carry additional senior players once the window closed.
“It means that pretty much until the last pre-season game, and maybe we’d look at Derby as almost our last pre-season game, we need more than 22 players'” Jez told me.
“We don’t just need the 11 and the 11 sharing the 90 minutes, we need a couple of substitutes on top of that in case there’s an injury, because we don’t want to then give people too many minutes.
“You’ve almost got that pressure in the middle to the end of July, when you need 24 players, whereas you get to the end of August and you’re only allowed 25 in the squad. The two things are conflicting,” he said.
Academy players can supplement the squad, as Donald Inyama did during the summer, and trialists can come in, as Mickel Miller did. The jump from youth football to Championship level is considerable and City therefore faced pressure to assemble a relatively large group early enough to share minutes without filling every available squad place prematurely. Jez believes that is one issue the club must find a solution to in future summers.
“We don’t have an under-21 side. We do that consciously because the cost of doing that isn’t right for our club, in terms of what the cost of our budget is and how we could better use that money.
It’s a hell of a jump, and you’ll maybe ask me about the bridge between the academy and the first team, but it’s expecting a lot. I think one or two of the young players did feature in pre-season, like Donald, but it’s very difficult for that to be a number of players. The gap in level is just too big.
That’s something we’ve got to look at. How do we create a scenario where we’ve got enough players here in pre-season that doesn’t make us feel under pressure to bring players in too early?”
Waiting became particularly important because the market changed dramatically during the final days of the window. Several established Championship clubs completed expensive deals late in August, pushing other players down their respective pecking orders and making previously unrealistic loan moves possible.
Jez said his phone “exploded” during Wednesday, Thursday and Friday before the deadline as players were offered around the division. Many were earning salaries Lincoln could not contemplate paying in full, but their clubs had become willing to accept contributions on very different terms.
“Suddenly, players on huge money and big salaries become available for loans at much different financial parameters than they were maybe four weeks ago.”
“If those players are on salaries of more than £1 million per year, we can get nowhere near that. Suddenly, for those clubs, even if they get something for them, they’re trying to find an option for them to go out on loan to another Championship club.
“One of the big learnings has been to try to hold a couple of those places open. Obviously, by signing Chiedozie (Ogebene), we’ve created a slight subplot for ourselves, which we didn’t want, because we have six loans.
“That isn’t desirable, and it certainly wasn’t our intention at any point through the window. So, that’s definitely one learning.”
The greatest obstacle, though, was the level of wages throughout the Championship. City were not naive about the financial step up, but even the club’s recruitment team were surprised by the salaries being demanded by relatively ordinary Championship players.
Those out of contract, or available for what appeared to be affordable transfer fees, could still command huge wages. That placed many potential targets beyond our reach before any negotiation could seriously begin.
“It just felt wrong to bring someone in on twice or three times as much money who hadn’t played a part in getting us there,” said Jez.
“With players who were out of contract, or players we’d spoken about previously who we thought would be available at an affordable transfer fee, wages suddenly spiral to somewhere between £15,000 and £20,000 a week. That is just way out of our capabilities.
“Even if we were going to try to break the wage structure for one player, which we weren’t, then we have that whole consideration of this group of players who were all paid very similarly in our promotion season.”
That was not simply a question of affordability. The core of the squad had earned promotion while operating within a relatively even wage structure, and bringing in one player on two or three times their salary could have damaged the unity which helped City reach the Championship.
Even breaking the structure would not necessarily have secured those targets. Players already established at this level were naturally more likely to choose clubs with longer Championship histories, particularly when we have to protect ourselves with relegation-related salary reductions.
City could promise stability, development and a strong football environment, but Jez was not prepared to expose the club to significant long-term risk in an attempt to win a financial battle it was unlikely to win anyway.
“I guess they’re the two things: how crazy wages are in the Championship, not just for the top players at the top clubs but almost as the norm, and what can happen right at the end in terms of loans from other Championship clubs when they’ve been aggressive in the market,” added Jez.
The summer ultimately highlighted two competing pressures. City needed numbers early to complete pre-season safely, but also required patience because better-value opportunities only became available near the deadline.
Our first Championship window was therefore always going to involve an element of learning. The task now is to use those lessons to refine the process without abandoning the financial discipline and dressing-room values which helped get us here.
Stay tuned at 6 pm for our exclusive interview on YouTube and all your favourite podcast outlets, sponsored by Wingers Lincoln.
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