EURO 28 mania made me put aside Sligo transfers but there was a lot going on and a lot of money involved.
Spain were the country that won the EUROs in the end by beating France in the final.
Our group stage opponents Portugal and Holland were both knocked out at the second round stage. Serves them right!
And we’ve also been given our Nations League group.
Ireland, England and Germany all in one group, should be uneventful…
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When I said there was a lot going on with Sligo transfers, by that I meant a lot of players leaving.
Firstly,
Vojislav Zivadinovic has joined Watford for £16m.
He was 4
th choice centre back for us, yet after signing him for £500,000 we still managed to sell him for a hefty fee so the move made sense.
Simon Pattison has joined Premier League Swansea for £12m.
He was one of Sligo’s longest serving players, so much so that he’s gained Irish citizenship and will be in my next Ireland squad. However, it made sense to sell him as he was only going to be back up for us and with 103 goals in all competitions I’m pretty sure he’s one of the highest scorers in Sligo history.
Then it all got a bit hectic. Firstly, Steve Keady moved from Leicester to Everton for £50m and because of a sell-on clause we installed into the last deal, we got more than £15m for doing nothing.
He’s been fairly consistent for Leicester but it was still a surprise when Everton forked up big money for him.
The Irish transfer window ends before the English one so there was still time for one more transfer out and it is a significant one…
Jakub Vana has joined Man City for £45.5m.
That’s right, £45.5m. I honestly negotiated that price as a joke and Man City actually accepted. We spent £2m on him as a 16 year old and we have 2 decent players in his position so once again the move made sense. Plus, it’s £45m for a Sligo player!
We were extremely close to selling centre back Losseni Diallo for even more money when Bayern Munich offered £56m for him.
£56m is ridiculous but we need to try and not be a selling club
and Diallo’s determination plus his insane physical stats made me realise that he would be hard to replace.
And with £150m in the bank, we really didn’t need the money!
The only player to come into Sligo is centre back Matan Avraham from Israeli side Beitar Yerushalayim.
We have a number of players to cover centre back but Avraham intrigued me. I’ve never signed an Israeli regen before and his physical stats along with determination, marking and tackling made me think it was worth spending £1.3m on him.
The mad transfer window made little difference to results on the pitch as we are still top of the league.
I’m excited to see how fellow Irish teams get on in the qualifying rounds of Europe. Dundalk and Cork are in the Europa League Third Round whereas Cobh will face Austria Wien in the Champions League Third Round. We could still have 5 Irish teams get to the group stages!