January 2029 - May 2029
Having received a bid of £8m for Soonsup-Bell, I up Beijing to £29.5m thinking they will turn it down...they don’t. He’s been one of our best players in the last few seasons, so only time will tell whether selling him turns out to be a good move or not, but it does bolster the kitty and we still have Stewart.
And we use some of that money to bring in a replacement for Soonsup-Bell, with Dutch U21 International Jens Jansen coming in for a fee of £12m.
And he gets a goal on his debut…
The facilities and the staff have just kept getting better and pestering the board regularly really is paying off as I’ve managed to persuade them to fork out on both the training & youth facilities again to be completed before the end of the season. This is really starting to feel like progression.
Oduor was an Oldham youth product, but a natural winger and not really a fit for the 4-3-2-1 we’re currently playing, so Brentford’s bid of £18.5m, rising to £21.5m, is too good to turn down. After 'board deductions’ that leaves us with £20m in the transfer kitty which is nice.
After 81 league games, although never really much more than a bit-part player, Herbie Kane leaves for pastures new. He’s just not been able to match the quality of new players coming in.
Having spent the whole transfer window trying to find a suitable centre-back, which we couldn’t, Benkovic is brought in on loan for the rest of the season. The knock-on effect of this is that Abadaki can move into one of the carrilero roles, which is much more suited to him and we can continue to look for a decent centre-back for the longterm.
That was a much busier transfer window than I was anticipating. Mostly not good enough kids and loans out, but Soonsup-Bell & Oduor are the big out transfers.
...yup, that’s what I thought.
FA Cup - A really tough third round draw and after scoring two in two minutes at the death to salvage a draw, I did think the luck was with us. We pushed them in the replay, but the extra quality showed in the end.
Championship - Those first 3 games in April probably put paid to the chances of a ridiculously unlikely automatic promotion. We are the only team of the top six who have not been in the Premier League this time which shows the challenge at hand.
Our 94 points would have been good enough to win the league last year and would have got us automatic promotion in every other season so far, but it’s a record season for us - 10 more wins than last season, 4 fewer draws and 6 fewer losses. 10 more goals scored, 15 fewer conceded.
Blackburn’s run of wins at the end of the season really did for us and pushed us out of the top two where we had been pretty much all season.
...playoffs, here we come...