The Mark Hughes Dilemma – Part 3 – The Derek Adams Experience

In this part of the four part article I’m going to look back on the January transfer window and try to shed some light on the challenges Derek Adams faced with the current budget, then talk about what Mark Hughes will face in the summer. If you haven’t already seen the justification for the figures I am using for all of this, it would be an idea to first take a look at part two before proceeding. In the final part we can take a look at the current squad and with everything in mind, get a feel for the difficulties that Mark Hughes has to overcome when he has to decide which players will leave Valley Parade and who he will bring in.

When signing players a lot of people forget that even in League Two, there is still competition for the best players. The reasons that Derek Adams doesn’t sign players you might consider obvious targets is no different from the reasons we haven’t signed the likes of Mbappe or Messi. There are lots of things that come into play that prevent us from signing a player and if you think of the Mbappe example, it isn’t all just about how much money you have (ask Newcastle United). Cole Stockton is a good example, he was rumoured to be a player that Bradford City wanted to sign, and considering he was managed by Derek Adams, it is easy to believe that he would be a target for us. He won’t have been a name we simply ignored in favour of Yann Songo’o just because Derek Adams is too stupid to recognise that Stockton would get us 20 goals a season, his wages would have cheaper than Andy Cook by a long country mile, and he was at a “smaller” club in terms of fan base and history, so everything points to Bradford City only needing to make an offer to get him to join us. I know some people reading this will think Derek Adams is just a bad manager, and even want to think that Cole Stockton probably didn’t like Adams either, but that’s a simplistic argument based on no evidence whatsoever. It fits with the narrative, but you have to take your own feelings about Adams out of this. It is blatantly obvious now that our chance of signing Stockton has gone, because the teams interested in him now will be from the championship as he is topping the League One goalscoring table, not with a club at the top of the table, but Morecambe near the bottom. Clearly he felt confident that there’s more chance of career progression remaining at Morecambe because he believed he could be among the top scorers in that league. And he’s been proved right. For many footballers contrary to popular belief it isn’t all about the money, the money will come as your career progresses anyway. And now there’s literally no chance of us being able to sign him because his next step is either to remain in League One at a one of the big clubs stuck down there, or straight to the Championship, and should he repeat his feat at that level anything is possible for him.

If you look at the dates of transfers for those players who were out of contract below, whether it is those departing Bradford City or those signing for us, you’ll notice that there’s a pattern to how in demand each player is, and as we bring in players, how the low wages and length of contract get. The standard is a 2 year contract, anything less in the footballing world is seen as a club not having faith in them, or if a player is willing to sign a contract for less than a year, it is because the wage on offer is all they can get at the time, so in the summer they’ll be looking for that to be renegotiated or, finding another club. There’s much more to football management than just signing the best players you can, sometimes, as it looks the case for Adams, you get to a stage where you have to find players that fill a position you need filling, that are willing to accept a very low wage, because that’s all you can afford to pay them. That’s why Bradford City end up with Theo Robinson late on transfer deadline day, instead of a Jamille Matt or Dominic Telford. In an ideal way, Robinson wouldn’t be first choice on Derek Adam’s wishlist any more than he was on ours. But that is the reality of how misleading the phrase “competitive budget” is, as you will see in more detail. Back to those players that were released by Bradford City, notice how Anthony O’Connor was fixed up with League One new boys Morecambe relatively quickly (it could probably have been much sooner had he not had more than one offer to consider), and how long it took for Zeli Ismail, Will Huffer and Harry Pritchard to find clubs that weren’t even EFL clubs. They most certainly weren’t turning down offers from League One or League Two.

Let’s first rewind to the moment that Derek Adams announced that he had used up the remainder of his budget when he brought in Theo Robinson. It is fair to say most of us were massively underwhelmed by his signing, especially as it was straight on the back of the signing of another player that didn’t exactly set pulses racing in the form of Caolan Lavery. It is easy at first sight to think that this was just another example of Adams not knowing what he was doing, but having had time to soak it up, it is more a case of you get what you pay for. Returning to the salarysports.com website for our information, below is a table of the Bradford City squad and each players estimated wages after the summer transfer window had closed.

This is a snapshot of the Bradford City players wages from before the January 2021/22 transfer window. It does not include Ollie Crankshaw who had gone to Stockport County, and as a result there are is no information about his wage. But in the last part I have predicted that his wage will have been in the region of £1,250 per week. I have also left out a number of the players who’s wages are at the standard £140 because in Part Four when you can decide for yourself what you would do if you were in Mark Hughes’s shoes, those players are not the ones you will be focusing on and will make little difference to the budget you have. The budget you will have available, stands at £45,000 per-week. In this part I will take you through a time line of the transfer dealings of Derek Adams to shed a bit more light on the restrictions he was likely working under as Bradford City manager, and those that Mark Hughes will be working under in the summer in the absence of any extra funds being invested by Stefan Rupp.

The Summer Transfer Window 2021/22

Below is a table of the wages and the players that came in and went out during the summer of 2021/22, as we know, some deals were already sanctioned by Derek Adams before he was confirmed as Bradford City manager. I am restricted by the wages that are available at salarysport.com which will show the wages players are on at their current club, not what they were on at Bradford City. However these figures are still useful to us as a guide. Some of these figures are taken from the list of top earners in League Two which differ slightly from their 2021/22 wages listed under the Bradford City wages. There is also a £1,000 surplus from Andy Cook who is quoted as being £4,500 whilst on loan to Bradford City from Mansfield Town, but is now on £3,500. View the top earners list for 2020/21 here.

The dates above indicate when they found a new club or announced their retirement, not when they left. On May 12th 2021 Billy Clarke, Connor Shanks, Harry Pritchard, Will Huffer, Zeli Ismail, Anthony O’Connor, Clayton Donaldson, Lee Novak & Connor Wood were all released.

Although not all of these numbers are available on salarysport.com and we have to use other methods of trying to figure out some of the wages, anything without a star is what they were what they were last confirmed to be on, anything with a star is what they are based one their current wage and anything with two stars uses a combination of sources to try to establish a figure that is in the region of what they were paid whilst at Bradford City. Whatever you think of them, with a margin for error, the final figure will be there or thereabouts. Remembering that we still have £1,000 in hand from the figure that isn’t shown in these tables which is the extra Andy Cook was being paid whilst on loan at Valley Parade. That makes the total money saved from the summer transfers out £19,900.

From the table above I also want to draw your attention to the dates each player that departed Valley Parade found a new club because it is also an indication of how in demand among other clubs they were. So if a player has been released by their club at the start of June, and is snapped up pretty quickly, it tends to ring true that those would have been the names of players that were most coveted by Bradford City (if incoming) and the players you’d probably least want to see leave in comparison with the rest of the players on the outgoing list. It kind of has a pattern to it. So it is worth mentioning at this point that Luke Hendrie, having been released by newly relegated to the National League Grimsby Town joined EFL new boys Hartlepool on August 30th 2021. Now you’ve had enough time to see him in action for Bradford City since he rejoined us in the January transfer window, you can judge for yourself whether there is any connection between how late in the transfer window this deal occurred compared to how in demand he was. I will be returning to the subject of Luke Hendrie later.

The table above is a list of the summer signings by Derek Adams, with one exception because that is where I want to begin my timeline for the transfer activities because with £19,900 saved in wages from the outgoing (£18,000+£1,000 for Andy Cook).

August 2nd 2021 – Lavery signs for Bradford City (Free)

Caolan Lavery is the first of two massively underwhelming signings. He is signed on a 1 year deal, which is never idea for a footballer, as it often is looked upon as a lack of faith in your abilities and being brought to the club as a stop-gap. The announcement that Lavery had joined Bradford City wasn’t exactly met with much enthusiasm from the Bantams supporters, and equally underwhelming would be our activities in the summer transfer window deadline day.

August 31st/September 1st – Summer Transfer Deadline Day

At 00:05 on 1st of September 2021 a transfer deadline day deal confirmed so late that the deadline had passed saw Theo Robinson arrive as the final summer signing by Derek Adams. As late in the day as it get, Robinson must have been very relieved at finding a club so late in the day, and the quoted wage certainly reflects that reality. This took the total wages for the season up to £19,900 in new signing, bringing the grand total for the squad to a figure that looks likely to have been £46,000 a-week if you include Ollie Crankshaw at £1,250. That figure looks about right when compared to other players, and it is most likely the budget available to Derek Adams would have been a rounded off figure as the I estimate they are. It is at this point that Derek Adams told the Telegraph & Argus that he had used up the last of his budget, and there’s no reason not to believe him, so this is where we can draw the conclusion that £46,000 was his allotted budget, and we can also say with confidence that this was what Stuart McCall had to work with in 2020/21, considering the budget has not increased.

It is worth baring in mind that 1 year deals are known not to be a ringing endorsement of faith in a signing, in a deal that both parties are happy with, the outcome is at least a 2 year contract. So this deal does hint at it being much less than Robinson would have ideally wanted as a wage (1 year gives him the option to impress and renegotiate for a higher wage in the summer) and it also tells us that the manager isn’t confident enough in the player to sign him for 2 seasons.

September 28th – Ollie Crankshaw to Stockport Co. – Undisclosed

Only days after stating he was ready to fight for his place at Bradford City it came as a bit of a shock when Ollie Crankshaw departed to the National League for an undisclosed fee to Stockport County. The Edgley Park outfit had spent big to secure some decent signings to compete for promotion to the EFL and it is likely his 3 year deal will put him on a higher wage than at Valley Parade. The key to this deal is trying to work out how much the undisclosed fee actually was, but this is the deal that not only gave Derek Adams some free wages, it also will allow him to primarily concentrate on using that fee to pay loan wages for six months as you will see soon. Although we can only estimate the transfer fee and the wages Bradford City contribute towards loan deals, again we can apply some maths, and some business logic to how the loan market operates to give us an idea of how much money this transfer added to the wage budget.

However the money from the transfer fees must be divided up for the term of any incoming players contract. And because the transfer fee is a one-off payment, it isn’t added permanently to the wage budget. The length of the contract is dictated by when the extra boost from the fee runs out. So let’s use an example to illustrate this. If Ollie Crankshaw had moved to Stockport County for a fee of £58,500, we have £58,500 plus his weekly wage of £1,250 to use in our budget. We find a player we want to sign on an 18 months contract and he is paid £2,000 a-week. The £1,250 is something we will always have as long as the wage budget is set at the same figure next season. But that leaves our budget short by £750 a week. Once the £68,500 transfer fee is gone, it’s gone, so we cannot afford to sign our example player on a 3 year deal in this example. What we can do though is divide the the £58,500 by 78 weeks, this gives us a figure of £750. So we simply add the £750 per-week for 18 months to what remains of our budget of £1,250 and we have the £2,000 a-week wage. The figure I have used is purely fictitious for the sake of the example, but looking at it, it is fair to say it is what many would imagine the fee for Crankshaw to be somewhere in the region of.

But that is only going to bring you in one or at absolute maximum, two decent League Two players, and from the signing of Caolan Lavery to Theo Robinson I begin to suspect Derek Adams had one eye on the summer transfer window of 2022 as he considered his recruitment in the January transfer window, because instead of looking at using the money available to him, he chose only to bring in players that were not going to be at the club longer than six months.

January 4th 2022 – Dion Pereira in from Luton Town (Loan)

I have outlined in a previous article why I am confident that we aren’t contributing to the wage of Dion Pereira. At the time Luton Town manager Nathan Jones wanted to find Pereira an opportunity to get experience in the rough and tumble of the EFL and the best he could find was National League Yeovil Town, where that ended prematurely where he was then sent back to his parent club after only 90 minutes of football.

For those of you that may think that every loan must mean the club receiving the player are paying their wages, and some, that I’ve heard even believing that clubs at this level pay loan fees, I will briefly explain how the loan market works. Firstly loan fees. A club will demand a loan fee if they have a player that has a decent selling value that they could get if they sold the player, often these players are those that are from the Premier League or of similar standing abroad. The player could walk into most other teams in the same division, let alone the lower leagues. The player doesn’t need experience and aren’t learning the trade, these are players that are often internationals. The club wanting them on loan will pay a fee because this player will likely be one of the best players in their starting 11, and they will contribute up to 100% of their wages. Another reason for a loan deal is when one of a teams highest paid players aren’t performing at the standard required to make it into the 1st team but would walk into most other clubs. In this case the club doesn’t need to be Premier League standard, it could just be by the standards of the rest of the division they’re in, this is something that will feature with Tom Elliott and Salford City, but I will use Coutinho as an example. Barcelona needed to get Coutinho off of their wage bill, but nobody else could afford his wage, especially given his recent form. But getting rid of as much of that wage off of their bill would free up wages for another player (or just allow them not to lose loads of money and reduce their wage bill). Aston Villa haven’t paid a loan fee because they have more power in this deal as Barcelona need Coutinho off of the wage bill. And Villa aren’t even paying half of his reported £380,000 a-week wage, instead they’re contributing ‘just’ £125,000 a-week. If he does decide to join Aston Villa in a permanent deal in the summer, it will be in the region of a cut price £33million.

The other types of players are those that need 1st team experience, usually those are players that are in Development Squads or Under 23’s. To talk in terms of the Premier League, even the biggest clubs will only expect wage contribution where there is competition to sign the player on-loan from similar standing clubs in the same division. What a player is loaned for depends on how many other clubs want the player, with the demand the loaning club usually making being based on ensuring that the player they loan out will feature in the first team and not be unused substitutes. There are other things that come into play when working out who contributes how much towards a player, and as in business, it depends on what each party is wanting, and how strong the hand of each club is. And when looking at each loan deal with Bradford City, they have to be looked at on a player to player basis and the reasons why a club loans them out and why Bradford City want them.

January 11th 2022 – Jamie Walker in from Hearts (On loan)

By the looks of this one it took a bit of work to get the deal over the line, but Jamie Walker was out in the cold at Hearts. With his contract due to expire in June all they had to do at Tyncastle was to get as much as they possibly could out of Bradford City, as they have no intention of renewing his contract in the summer. It is likely Derek Adams will have been keen to get this deal through as we needed to fill that problematic issue up front, and it was clear that Adams wanted him to play in a more goalscoring kind of role than provider. It is likely that Hearts will have wanted at least 50% of his wage out of this deal with the possibility of other clubs wanting him. So even at this early stage it looks like Derek Adams has had no choice but to dip into the transfer fee money from Ollie Crankshaw to get this deal over the line. Probably using up £7,800 of the Ollie Crankshaw transfer fee.

January 17th 2022 – Jorge Sikora (Mutual Termination)

The timeline as you will see seems to run a smooth course (smooth in terms of how the budget rectifies it’s self back to round figures, not that smooth if you’re Derek Adams trying to navigate the budget). The mutual termination of Jorge Sikora’s contract looks like it was probably a round £300 saved on the budget as City won’t have had to pay much off in his case. It is unlikely that Jorge approached Derek Adams because there was interest from FC United of Manchester because at that level you need to start looking at part-time or full-time jobs. Even when Salford City were at this level, the wages were still part-time, in the region of £50-£150 per match. These are things that have to be taken into consideration, and based on the fact that we are talking about dropping to wages that are less than we would get from a 9-5 job, you should get a better feel for the choices Jorge would have to make, and the power that Bradford City hold to get a much better deal out of this than the player (business is business applies in football as much as in any other walk of life). The reason Bradford City hold a lot of power is because of the pull of a lump sum of money which allows you time to make the most of that and hopefully find a job in time to make sure you’re much better off than you would have been had you just held on until the end of your contract.

So just think from your own point of view to try to work this one out. You are on £410 a week at Bradford City, which is £1,776 a month. You’ve been told that in June your contract won’t be getting renewed. If Bradford City let you go now, you’ve got plenty of time to find another club. Obviously if they were to stop your wages at the end of the month, your answer should be a fuck no, and you’d stay. But what about if you had an idea that you could get between £100-£150 a week at FC United of Manchester? It would still make no sense to join them obviously. In an ideal world you’d want your £410 a week paying up until the end of the season and add to that the £100 a week or whatever it is. But that’s not how real life works. The club want rid of you to save some money and put towards other players, so they want as much as that £410 that they can possibly get. If they could get you to agree to take nothing, they would!

So here is the big Deal or No Deal question, you’ve got a club lined up in FC United of Manchester that you’re pretty certain will take you. This does pose a bit of a problem for a number of reasons, mainly compensation. If you had six months left on your contract and the club just wanted rid of you, they’d have no choice but to pay the six months up. However there are rules that take into consideration whether a player will be able to get a contract with another club. So if FC United of Manchester were already offering £150 a-week (or even subsequently did within the period of the duration of the remainder of his contract – e.g. they sign him within the next 6 months) the amount he is being paid by the club would be deducted from the compensation from Bradford City. For Jorge he will no doubt have been keen to join another football club knowing he isn’t needed by Bradford City and there is no guarantee that FC United of Manchester will still be in for him in the summer, and that might be it for his football career. This is what a football club will take advantage of, if he stays at Bradford City, he could lose everything in the summer. So since the best he could hope for was in the region of £6,000, it becomes a starting point of negotiations not an end point. After all, if it was an end point there’d be no point in a “mutual termination”. Personally I think most people would be had at £4,000 faced with the risk of missing out on a move that still means you get paid for playing football, the problem with the figure you could be had at, is that you never quite seem to get offered the amount you could be had at, you always have to settle for less. How about £3,380 when you’re in no real position to negotiate and you have a club waiting for you? That’s more like a reality of life isn’t it. That’s £280, and it might as well be the £300 to fill the gap in the budget. The fact is we don’t know exactly what the deal was, but I have set out the guidelines where negotiations start, and football clubs, much like the music industry are very good at knowing how to get the last bit of blood out of the little guy. So if I’m left with £20 by the end of this article, we know that Sikora got less than the figure I’ve gone with.

Wow, that was a long talk for such a small wage, but I hope you enjoyed another of my dilemmas. We can round this off to a sum of £250 saved in wages to leave room for error. For Jorge that will mean over £3k in his pocket and from the compensation and he gets to make his debut as an 87th minute substitute for FC United of Manchester against Matlock Town a mere month later. That means we’ve now only used a mere £520 of the Ollie Crankshaw transfer fee.

January 18th – Matty Daly in from Huddersfield Town (On Loan)

Although there’s no information about his wage, it is likely to be (a lot) less than £800 a week at Huddersfield Town. Daly had struggled to pin down a place in the starting 11 on loan at Hartlepool United since the arrival of former Bantam Graeme Lee as manager. So cutting short the current deal with Hartlepool United and sending him local to Bradford City in need of attacking players made sense all round. Again this is another loan that is unlikely to have seen Bradford City contribute to the wages of Daly as once again there wasn’t a queue of EFL clubs wanting his services and even Hartlepool weren’t playing him. It was a choice between us and most likely National League North for him. Fortunately for Bradford City when he did get injured and had to return to his parent club for treatment, it was no loss to us, in fact, the very fact that happened again shows any loss whatsoever on our part.

January 24th – Alex Bass in from Portsmouth (On Loan)

After two loan deals that won’t have cost us a penny, to a significant chunk out of our budget. This will have eaten into some of that fee that Bradford City received from Stockport County for Ollie Crankshaw. So it is a good time to keep track of the excess in the wage budget from herein, as it might give us a hint of at least a ball park figure of the transfer fee. Sorry I can’t offer perfection on that one! On the one hand Alex Bass wanted some first team football, and on the other hand we really badly needed a goalkeeper. At the time we thought we were getting rid of Richard O’Donnell on a permanent deal to Hartlepool United, or at least there was a chance someone would take him off of our hands. Goalkeepers as we know are a bit more of an in demand position, so this is the most likely position you’re going to get out of the door if they’re under contract. At this point I want you to put yourself in the shoes of Derek Adams, and what he was having to consider when doing these deals. Here is the remainder of your playing budget about to be filled with one loan deal. Remember that argument everyone was having, do we need a goalkeeper or do we need a striker? Here’s the dilemma now. All that is left is the ability to spread whatever money there is from the Crankshaw transfer fee after this. Remember that if you are Derek Adams, part of you is also thinking you can free up £1,900 to do more business when you get O’Donnell out of the door. In terms of the Crankshaw transfer money City will have likely just spent £32,500, + £520 = £33,020 so let’s keep a note of that figure.

January 27th – Tom Elliott in from Salford City (On loan)

We needed a striker as well as a goalkeeper and we got one. Obviously whoever we signed had to fit into our budget and quite clearly that budget is tight, so the best we can do to work every last drop out of the budget is another six month loan deal. The pot is almost dry now, and when you’re looking for decent strikers there aren’t many that are available for loan at this time of year. Yet Tom Elliott stands as the highest paid striker in EFL League Two, Salford City really don’t need him on their wage bill and Bradford City are about the only team around who are big enough to be able to take him. This deal really will be a case of every little helps for Salford City who have their own irons in the fire and need to strengthen to try and get a badly needed push for promotion on the rails. So although Elliott will be on a very high wage, it is unlikely City have paid anywhere near that figure, after all, who else is going to pay more than £2,500 for a striker in League Two aside from the clubs that already have strikers banging in the goals that don’t need him anyway? So I don’t even think City will have gone halves on the wage here, Gary Neville and co many have plenty of money between them, but they’re still business people who will save money where they can. And so far, financially, the club have been taking big hits with no return for it. That’s another £39,000 which added to our figure of £33,020 is a total of £72,020. Can you imagine that Ollie Crankshaw will have gone for more than this? For Stockport County this transfer fee works out at the equivalent of £462 a week wages, as he was signed on a 3 year contract. Pretty reasonable from Stockport’s point of view.

The story so far heading into deadline day.

No matter which way you choose to look at it for Derek Adams it is clear that he had nothing to work with. You can probably argue that my loan wages may not be high enough, because even you still have to increase the transfer fee of Ollie Crankshaw to get there. The figure for Olli Crankshaw would need to in reality be higher anyway because you’d need to allow for deductions from that fee before it can be used. But my point is, whichever way you want to look at it, Derek Adams well and truly had his hands tied and the “competitive” budget all of a sudden doesn’t feel all that competitive. So just to finish things off for you, I’m now going to take us onto transfer deadline day, and this, if it isn’t already obvious, explain why Niall Canavan was shockingly sold to Barrow, and why I think that Luke Hendrie, baring everything I’ve said so far, is probably on about the same as Theo Robinson.

Transfer Deadline Day – January 31st 2021 | 15:30 Sam Hornby [Bradford – Colchester] Loan

Cast your mind back to the Richard O’Donnell link with Hartlepool United. And whatever your thoughts on the Ollie Crankshaw transfer fee is, it is unlikely to be south of £100,000. As touched upon there’s also deductions that need to be made from the total received anyway. I’ve already demonstrated that whichever way you choose to look at it, the budget is exhausted. In the morning on transfer deadline day we were expecting Bradford City to do a bit more business, and that will have been based on the expectancy that the club could free up £1,900 in wages by getting shot of Richard O’Donnell. As early as January 26th the Telegraph & Argus had already written O’Donnell’s Bradford City obituary announcing that his departure would bring an end to the Edin Rahic era. So the plans to sell Richard O’Donnell and keep Sam Hornby (£600 a-week) not only seemed to be the plan, but made perfect financial sense. However the deal to take O’Donnell to Hartlepool had fallen through early on transfer deadline day, most likely because to match his wages it would have most likely put him in the bracket of the top earners at the club, and there’s always the likelihood that he wanted to increase his current wage. It was after this announcement that the noises coming out of Valley Parade were that there would be no further incomings to the club. This again makes perfect sense as there wasn’t a penny available for wages.

At half past three there was a sudden shift, Sam Hornby had joined Colchester United on loan as cover for their keeper who had been suspended. The wage was said to be a sizeable part of what he was getting at Bradford City, and to those who are still doubting my take on how loan deals work, notice that this was mentioned in the report about him, so for “sizeable” to be a point of the article demonstrates that this is an exception not the rule. That figure sounds like £500 a-week if I’m to estimate it, so at 15:30pm Derek Adams had £500 a-week to spend on wages. Cast your mind back to Theo Robinson at £600 a-week, Adams is still £100 short of bringing anyone to the club. It’s no coincidence that the deals for Luke Hendrie and Nathan Delfouneso weren’t wrapped up until last.

So now Derek Adams has around 7 hours left to raise the money to bring a couple of new faces to the club, he needs a replacement for the absolute sack of shit he signed from Salford City, namely Oscar Threlkeld, and since Lee Angol got injured again, a striker would be needed too. Note to those City fans who think Adams didn’t see what we do, he brought in a replacement for Oscar.

We now come back to a problem that in part four you will have to consider when looking at the available budget to Mark Hughes, and those players you want to bring to the club, along with those players that are currently under contract at the club. In an ideal world you want to keep all of your best players and get rid of the crap. When players are under contract, getting rid of the crap is very difficult at this level and when they’re over paid. And this is now the problem that Derek Adams faced, who could he get rid of in a day now the deal for Richard O’Donnell had fallen through and he had lost out on the £1,900 in wages. Well there is O’Donnell, but we couldn’t even shift him to Hartlepool, and there’s few below that level that can afford £1,900 a-week on their wage bill for a goalkeeper that isn’t exactly the best in League Two. Nobody is going to pay Gareth Evans £3,200 a-week in League Two at such short notice, although this it may have been explored as a loan deal but even based on that, are there many clubs willing to pay £1,900 a-week contribution to his wages that are again in that list of clubs that are only going to be paying wages like that to players that are absolutely vital to their needs. Usually the top earners are strikers or goalkeepers. If you look at the list of players we have that aren’t needed by Bradford City, we keep running into the same problem. So what is the solution?

20:30 Niall Canavan [Bradford – Barrow] Undisclosed

So why does this deal make perfect sense? Well I can safely say that the undisclosed fee for Niall Canavan will have been well below his market value to get this through. The move will make Canavan possibly Barrows top earner, but that is made worthwhile by not only his position, but the fact that it leaves Barrow will sell-on value.