The Lincoln City return to the Championship presented an obvious recruitment challenge, and it has presented us with a challenge in identifying a couple of players Jez hinted at in his interview with us.
We needed players capable of competing at the higher level, but we were operating in a market where established Championship footballers could command salaries well beyond our usual reach. One potential solution was the ESC market. It offered City an opportunity to recruit experienced players from overseas who might otherwise have been unable to secure the necessary Governing Body Endorsement to play in England.
With Championship players difficult to find domestically, City began their work early. Jez travelled across Europe during April and May to watch players who had been identified through our recruitment process. However, on the eve of the window opening, the ESC rules changed, meaning only players under the age of 23 could move as ESC slots.
“It was a massive blow to us, really, insofar as a lot of our planning was about how we would get ready-made players of the quality we wanted for the Championship,” Jez George explained.
“We knew it would be very difficult for us to sign, if you want to say peak players, maybe between the ages of 24 and 28, who were ready to play and had lots of experience and games behind them.”
“We knew that was going to be very difficult to find in the domestic market. So, early in the process, in April and throughout May once our season finished, I was going to watch players live who we’d tracked and identified in the ESC market in those peak ages.”
One trip took George to the Austrian Cup final, where he watched a 25-year-old central midfielder representing a club that completed a league and cup double, apparently their first for 60 years. He didn’t name the player, nor the winger he spotted in the 2. Bundesliga.
““I remember going to watch the Austrian Cup final. There was a 25-year-old central midfield player playing that day for the team that, crazily, I think had gone 60 years without winning a trophy and then won the double. The last time they won a trophy, they won the double 60 years ago.
“We met his agent and were pretty certain we could do a deal.
“We found a right-winger in Germany, a free agent, 28 years old, who played in the position we thought would improve us and had an absolute monster long throw.”
Those players fitted the profile City believed could help us compete: experienced, approaching or already in their prime, and potentially available for considerably less than their Championship equivalents. However, just one week before the transfer window opened, City learned that the criteria had changed following input from the FA and the government. ESC places could now only be used on players aged under 23 on January 1st.
“We did all this work with this group of players with the idea that we could find those peak players, with the quality we were looking for, from the ESC market.”
“That whole amount of work we’d done just went out of the window completely. At one point, it actually looked like they were going to cut the number of places from four to two, which would’ve been a massive blow to us because Ivan was taking one of those places. It would’ve meant we could only sign one player.”
The consequences were significant. Months of preparation were undermined at the point when City should have been ready to act, while at least three experienced targets were instantly removed from consideration.
“It felt like a lot of wasted time. They weren’t that many exotic places, Gary, let me tell you, but there were plenty of outposts across Europe, definitely.”
City therefore gained something from their extensive scouting, but the late alteration still removed an important route to experienced players. It also left two particularly intriguing targets behind: the midfielder watched in Austria and the free-agent winger with the enormous long throw.
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