- 3 years ago
On this week's Everything but the Prem, we're looking at football news beyond the premier league to see what to expect as the Summer transfer deadline approaches.
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00:00 [Music]
00:07 We're just a couple of days from the most exciting moment of the year.
00:12 It's deadline day.
00:14 On Friday, all the teams will have finished their squad preparations for the rest of the season
00:19 and there'll be plenty of places up for grabs before the window shuts on Friday evening.
00:26 With me today, and Chris Holt of course, is Toby Bryant and James Copley.
00:31 Here to talk us through what's been happening in the EFL so far this season
00:35 and take a bit of a look towards the deadline closing on Friday.
00:40 This is Everything But The Prem.
00:43 Toby, James, how are we?
00:45 Very good, thanks.
00:46 Thank you.
00:47 All getting ready for Christmas for football writers?
00:53 Yeah, absolutely. What happens after Christmas is the big question though, isn't it?
00:59 What are we talking about then? We'll have to talk about football. Terrible.
01:03 We'll have to talk about the actual things happening on the pitch.
01:07 James, we're going to start with you.
01:09 You work obviously in the North East up in Sunderland with pretty much an emphasis on Sunderland.
01:18 It's not been a great start to the season for Sunderland, given the outperformed expectations last season to a certain extent.
01:33 But I think people were probably expecting a little bit more from them this year.
01:37 What has been the big thing and is it just the lack of goals, which has been an issue for quite some time now?
01:46 I think so. It's been an interesting start to the season.
01:48 Started at home against Ipswich Town, newly promoted, a team I really rate.
01:52 I really rate Kieran McKenna. They came, played really well.
01:56 Sunderland arguably should have got a point or won that game.
02:02 The performance away at Preston was poor.
02:07 Then they managed to turn it around at home against Rotherham and then it was a 0-0 draw against Coventry last weekend.
02:12 Obviously, Coventry in the playoff final last season.
02:16 Again, another team who've got a great coach and manager in Mark Robbins.
02:20 I thought actually the two teams, Coventry and Sunderland, are in quite similar positions really.
02:25 Expectations have increased since last season after two really good seasons.
02:32 But both teams are slack at an edge.
02:34 You can tell that they're both decent championship teams, but they're just missing that special something at the moment.
02:40 Obviously, for Coventry, Victor Gheoccares has gone along with Heymer.
02:44 Sunderland lost to Amad Diallo from Manchester United.
02:46 Ross Stewart is still injured. We haven't managed to sign a proper senior goalscorer.
02:52 We've signed senior centre-forwards, two of them.
02:55 One of them was injured straight away and the other one is just too young and too inexperienced.
03:00 I think the signings were 18 and 19, no EFL experience at all.
03:05 So, yes, all eyes on what Sunderland will do in the last couple of days at the window.
03:11 We know they're talking to a couple of forwards, but this striker situation now is something that has sort of dogged Sunderland really.
03:19 Even when they were getting into the playoffs last season, we were struggling for forwards.
03:23 We were sort of carried along by Amad Diallo's brilliance and Jack Clarke's brilliance and Patrick Roberts' brilliance.
03:30 All fine players, but none of them are out-and-out strikers now with Amad having gone back to Manchester United.
03:37 Yes, it's been a tough start to the season for Tony Mowbray.
03:42 Yes, I think he's sort of looking above him at the moment, waiting for that little bit of help.
03:48 Sunderland have done some decent business this window and strengthened other areas of the pitch,
03:52 but unless you sign goalscorers in any level of football, I think it can provide problems.
03:59 Can Sunderland repeat the trick of going through large parts of this season without a goalscorer again?
04:04 I don't think so, because I don't think they're going to get a player of the quality of Amad again.
04:09 So, lots of unanswered questions at the moment, and I don't know whether we'll get the answers on deadline day, to be honest.
04:16 I mean, the difficulty is that finding a striker is arguably the most difficult,
04:24 the hardest person to find, particularly when you're heading so perilously close to the window closing.
04:32 The danger is you just end up grabbing somebody just for the sake of it, and nobody ends up happy then.
04:40 It's an inflated market, isn't it? Obviously, we had Ellis Sims on loan for the first part of last season.
04:46 He was recalled by Everton, and he's got a Coventry City for £8 million.
04:51 Now I'm a massive Ellis Sims fan, but is he worth £8 million now? Probably not.
04:56 I don't think a lot of Sunderland fans would have been overly happy with paying £8 million for him,
05:01 although he is rated on Wearside. But you look at clubs up and down the country,
05:06 I listen to a few different championship podcasts, and it seems like everybody wants a striker.
05:11 There's only so many around, really, that you can get in that will do you the job.
05:16 I think it's easy when you're a Sunderland fan or a Sunderland journalist to just look through the lens of Sunderland.
05:23 But to give the recruitment team a little bit of a pass, I think it's certainly not a problem which is unique to Sunderland,
05:31 although it is a long-standing one that perhaps could have been sorted a little bit earlier.
05:36 Last January, we were looking at the free agent market, and there wasn't really anything there either.
05:42 So you just hope that you can get something done fairly quick.
05:48 But strikers are a premium position, and as soon as one starts to do well at the Championship,
05:54 that's a fairly good barometer that you're going to be able to do well in the Premier League or a top European league.
05:58 It's really the audition before getting a big move elsewhere is the Championship.
06:04 If you can get even 15, 20 goals in the Championship, you're probably set for good things. So it is tough.
06:11 We have seen that as recently as this week. Cameron Archer obviously did really well on loan at Middlesbrough last year from Aston Villa.
06:20 Now he's gone to Sheffield United, and they've had to pay around about £18 million.
06:25 So that shows you that a good Championship striker is going to cost you a lot of money.
06:32 Presumably, I mean we know Sunderland aren't going to have that amount to spend,
06:36 but is there money available for them, or are they going to have to try and find some kind of diamond in the rough here?
06:45 It's tough because the model has been that they will not spend money on players over the age of 27.
06:52 They're happy to bring free agents in, but they like to sign players, upskill them.
06:57 And then I think the model eventually is to sell a couple on and reinvest,
07:01 but we haven't reached that sort of stage in the model yet.
07:04 We've seen bids for players like Jack Clarke, but Sunderland have stood firm in their valuation.
07:09 They're not going to sell low for anybody.
07:12 So it feels like we're in a little bit of a weird spot really where Sunderland have spent money.
07:18 They've paid fees for players, but they haven't spent that sort of Coventry money that I was talking about earlier.
07:24 But as I say, you could argue that Sunderland haven't necessarily reached that stage of their recruitment and their model
07:31 because Coventry have just sold two fine players in Giocherez and Hamer for large money.
07:35 So they've got that money there. In terms of stuff like financial fair play, Sunderland could get away with it.
07:41 I'm sure the owner, Kiro Louis-Dreyfus, has got the money, but they are steadfast and sticking to the principles.
07:48 And to be fair, I do see it because listeners may be familiar with Sunderland and the Premier League.
07:53 We spent money on a lot of very mediocre players who didn't really care about the place,
08:00 had no resale value, spending money on 28-year-olds, 29-year-olds, getting nothing back for them.
08:06 So I think that there is something to be said about this way of doing things.
08:10 But ultimately, I think if you want to get promoted in the championship, which is the stated aim of the board, by the way,
08:16 then you do have to spend a little bit of money somewhere along the line.
08:21 Toby, as Jordan said, the model that Sunderland now have, it's good to be admired really,
08:31 given that you, as I'll point out, you're a Reading fan, so you'll be well-versed on paying too much and not getting an awful lot back.
08:42 Sometimes it does no harm to just sit and wait.
08:48 Obviously, Sunderland are in a position where they got close last time around
08:53 and it kind of makes people think, "Oh, we need to be moving quick here."
08:59 But as you will have seen before yourself, a little bit of patience goes a long way really, doesn't it?
09:06 If you're prepared to just wait that season or two to allow things to…
09:11 to allow, for want of a better term, which I don't like using, but for allowing the kind of project to bear fruit.
09:18 Yeah, it's probably hard for Sunderland fans to hear that having been in the playoffs last season and thinking,
09:23 "Let's go at it again this year."
09:25 But I think that's right, especially, as you said, with deadline day.
09:28 If all the clubs know you're in for a striker and have got a bit of money to spend,
09:31 then prices start to double and triple just because they know that the club is in a position where they need to invest in that position.
09:38 It's early days as well. Sunderland won't have wanted to be in 18th.
09:42 Obviously, they want to be at the other end of the table, but there's plenty of time for the squad to gel.
09:47 And as James said, whether someone can fill in the role with the goals that Amad did last year,
09:52 that might happen over the course of the season.
09:54 It's not necessarily something that's going to happen just the first four or five fixtures into the campaign.
10:00 We'll talk a little bit about League One now.
10:03 Unfortunately for yourself, that's where you find your team this year.
10:08 What have you made of Reading so far, given that we spoke on this show just before the season started
10:19 and we kind of felt that Reading were a little bit of an unknown quantity
10:23 because we weren't entirely sure how they were going to react,
10:26 given there have been points deductions and embargoes and everything like that.
10:31 Nobody was really 100% sure what kind of Reading team were going to turn up in League One.
10:37 How have you found it so far?
10:38 I think it's exactly that. On the day we got relegated last season,
10:42 all football fans had that initial feeling, "Oh, we'll come straight back up.
10:46 We're a championship squad." At worst, some Reading fans like to dream of being a Premier League team,
10:52 even though that was over a decade ago.
10:54 I think now, after the summer and after the start of the season,
10:58 I think fans feel a bit with what's going on off the pitch.
11:01 They don't know what is reasonable to expect to happen on the pitch,
11:04 whether a year of just avoiding any more point deductions and staying in League One is the most realistic.
11:10 But then, as I said, Reading don't want to be in League One, so maybe they should be hoping for more.
11:15 Obviously, we lost. It was a 93rd-minute winner for Exeter over the weekend.
11:20 That meant we lost 2-1. If we had had enough, if we had got the last-minute winner,
11:24 it would have been three wins on the bounce and maybe looking up the league and things being more positive.
11:29 But with the loss, that's now three losses and just two wins, so that's really quite an opposite picture.
11:36 It's a completely new squad. I think 10, if not more, signings have come in now.
11:40 The transfer embargo was listed, so it's not like people are expecting more this deadline day.
11:46 It would be good to see. I think Androurin from Chelsea was one of the names rumoured.
11:52 I don't think fans are expecting more because there's been so many new players.
11:56 The squad is almost unrecognisable anyway.
11:59 So, yeah, just mixed feelings whether we should settle for a season without controversy
12:05 and just kind of mid-table nothingness in League One, or whether if Ruben Sellers can get the squad playing
12:11 like they did when they beat Millwall 4-0 at the Den a few weeks ago, then surely we're in for a chance promotion.
12:18 I think only time will tell. I think as long as more off-the-pitch dramas are avoided,
12:22 then I think Reading fans will be not happy but kind of satisfied with that as a season.
12:27 James, you know all about this and what it's like down there.
12:33 Is there a difficulty in trying to balance that kind of overspend and desperation to get out of the division?
12:43 Or let's try and just put out the absolute bin fire that has been going on
12:51 and try and just have a little bit of stability for a while before you…
12:57 Sunderland eventually found that but it obviously took some time.
13:02 And Reading's concern and the concern of a few other teams, Derby for instance as well,
13:07 still haven't managed to get out of it yet, is that once you're down there for a couple of years,
13:11 Sheffield United leads again, another example. It's so, so difficult to get out, isn't it?
13:15 Because you find as well that there are teams in the Championship, big, big teams in the Championship
13:20 who are potentially struggling and they end up finding themselves in there putting yet more pressure on.
13:26 Yes, it's a really tough division. I don't miss it at all. It's a bit of a graveyard.
13:32 Everything changes really when you get relegated from a Championship, in my opinion.
13:37 The contract lengths tend to get shorter. There's a lot of flux at football clubs, as Toby's just mentioned there.
13:44 Sunderland, when we went down to League One, having suffered double relegation from the Premier League
13:50 to the Championship in consecutive seasons and then to League One, the flux and the turnover was unreal.
13:56 And that never really seemed to stop. It was always, 'There's going to be 11 players out of contract.
14:01 Who do we keep?' And Sunderland managed to get into the playoffs every time,
14:07 but we ended up blowing automatics a couple of times. We lost in a playoff final.
14:11 We lost in a playoff semifinal. Then there was the COVID curtailed season.
14:15 So it was just a tough, tough slog being down there.
14:20 We had a player in our first season down there called Josh Madger.
14:23 He was poached in January and we ended up, the club was owned and taken over by Stuart Donald and Charlie Methven.
14:33 Charlie Methven's just rocked up at Charlton Athletics.
14:36 So my thoughts and prayers are with them because I think a scattergun approach would be nice.
14:46 Being nice is a description for Charlie Methven, and you're saying that now with a second Dean Holden.
14:51 It's such a tough, tough division.
14:56 And I think teams like Reading, teams like Charlton as well, it's such a balancing act in a sense that
15:05 do you go with a team full of older, experienced pros like Wigan Athletic did a couple of seasons ago,
15:11 and you go up with the likes of James McLean and Max Power, Charlie Wyke and players like that,
15:17 and then you might come straight back down, you might find it hard to shift those players in the championship.
15:21 Are they really good enough?
15:23 It really is a tough slog, hard division with a lot of uncertainty.
15:31 I think the time wasted in League One is noticeably different to the championship.
15:34 I'm not saying it's perfect in the championship, but the amount of time the ball is in playing League One is really tough.
15:40 I think if you are trying to play football, and I think teams like Reading and Derby as well,
15:47 Sheffield Wednesday found this when they were down there, Sunderland did,
15:51 is that teams like Exeter and Stavridge, they'll come to these grounds like the Stadium of Light or like Hillsborough,
15:58 and they'll go to play, rightly so, to frustrate, to time waste, and to get a result,
16:06 because it's a huge game for them in the context of the history of the club.
16:09 You feel like you're playing a cup final every week.
16:14 It's a very, very tough old slog, and I don't wish it on anybody, really.
16:20 There you go. Plenty for you to look forward to there, Toby.
16:26 We'll just talk a little bit generally about League One.
16:32 You've obviously got little to go against so far with what you've seen,
16:36 but looking around the division, who's impressed you?
16:42 Which teams have you expected to be up there?
16:47 Anybody a little bit of a surprise for you so far?
16:51 I think Austria United, the four wins in the last four,
16:55 is a little bit of a surprise, but good for them. It's good to see them up there.
16:59 Bolton and Derby were the ones to watch for me coming into the season,
17:04 and when looking through the fixture list as a Reading fan new to League One,
17:07 you kind of take a bit of solace in the fact that there's potentially bigger clubs
17:10 that you could play against. But they've had a bit of a start as well.
17:18 They meet next week, I want to say, Bolton having picked up after a loss in the draw early on.
17:24 Derby, Bolton won early, sorry, and then lost in the draw recently,
17:28 and then Derby, the opposite. They lost an early couple but won the last few.
17:33 So I think that'll be a good match. As James was saying,
17:36 it can be frustrating to play against some of the other teams that potentially employ the dark arts.
17:41 So I think to see them come to head will give us a better idea of what they're really looking at.
17:47 So I think coming into the season, those two will be up there.
17:52 We've seen, like you said, some of the bigger sides.
17:56 Oxford have kind of been there, thereabouts, haven't they, really?
17:59 Without ever really being able to push on that little bit extra towards the end.
18:05 But they've done a lot of their business quite early, and they're quite prudent and quite good in the transfer market.
18:11 Portsmouth, another side, who have done quite well.
18:18 I think one of the main things we saw at the weekend there,
18:24 when you're looking for a striker, sometimes they're a little bit closer to home than you realised.
18:31 Derby County brought in Martin Waghorn, or brought back Martin Waghorn.
18:36 And I think it's fair to say some Derby County fans were probably thinking,
18:43 "Oh, we're going a bit backwards here."
18:45 Or maybe they looked at the club and thought, "You're not really showing much of the nation."
18:50 And they scored a hat-trick.
18:53 At the weekend there.
18:55 There are players available who will do a very good job for you in League One.
19:00 But everything's a gamble, isn't it?
19:05 A lot of teams are going to find themselves in the top-heavy squad,
19:10 or a squad full of players that they thought a month ago already were going to get them out of this division.
19:16 And they're thinking, "No, actually, this is going to be a struggle."
19:19 When you talk about the Premier League and transfers and the big names coming in,
19:24 you know who should be doing what in terms of goals and performances.
19:28 But I do think that throughout the season, in the Championship and maybe even more so in League One,
19:32 there's the chance that someone stumbles on a few goals in back-to-back games,
19:37 and then manages to put a run together from that, and then becomes the next Ella Sims or whatever.
19:42 And you're someone that's looked at in that way.
19:44 Especially as a Reading fan, I don't know the squad too well because they're all new for a lot of Reading fans.
19:49 But I'm keeping calm and thinking that if one of them happens on or runs a form,
19:54 that maybe that will be enough to pull up the rest of the team as well.
19:58 So it is something that I think over the course of the season can emerge,
20:01 even if it's not there evidently at the start, as it can be in the Premier League sometimes.
20:08 James, we'll talk again, like League One, we'll talk generally about the Championship so far,
20:13 what you've seen, what you've been impressed by.
20:14 You've already touched on Ipswich earlier on in the show there.
20:18 They've been superb so far.
20:20 Unlucky at the weekend to lose out in a thriller against Leeds,
20:24 who perhaps look like they're just starting to find their feet a little bit.
20:29 Yes, I thought that Leeds-Ipswich town game was interesting as well,
20:37 because obviously Ipswich at home, they had 10 more shots than Leeds.
20:41 They had a bit more of the ball as well.
20:43 They passed the ball more, they passed the ball more accurately.
20:46 Obviously, I think Leeds went 3-1 up at one point,
20:49 but a good initiative shown by Ipswich to fight back into the game.
20:54 I just think they're a very well-coached team.
20:57 They've got an excellent player, Nathan Broadhead, who if he manages to stay fit,
21:01 because he's had a few injury issues, I think he could be really good in the Championship.
21:05 He's had a stint on there on loan at Wigan.
21:07 He was very good for us in League One, formerly Everton.
21:11 If he keeps fit, he's a Welsh international now.
21:14 I think they could be onto something.
21:15 Connor Chaplin, another exceptional player.
21:18 They've just quietly gone around building quite a nice squad, I feel.
21:22 Obviously, getting Brandon Williams in from Manchester United.
21:25 Kieran McKenna, I think, deserves so much credit for a young coach
21:28 to go in and do the job he's done at Ipswich town.
21:31 I know they've got new owners, but it was a club and a bit of a mess, really,
21:35 when McKenna took over, arguably.
21:37 There was a lot to fix, a lot to do, and they've managed to do it collectively.
21:43 The run that went on towards the back end of last season in League One was great.
21:49 It was one of those games at the Stadium of Light where a lot of Sunderland fans
21:53 weren't too impressed with Ipswich town and didn't really rate them.
21:57 Given it was the first game of the season, had Sunderland turned in that sort of performance,
22:03 I think everybody would have been delighted because it was really, really gritty.
22:07 They showed some quality.
22:09 They could have actually won a bye more in the end, although Sunderland did have some chances.
22:13 I just think that they've invested well, they've bought by the right profile of players
22:19 and actually haven't looked at them.
22:22 It is hard to tell because you do need 10, 15, even 20 games sometimes
22:27 in a championship to really know about the team.
22:30 If I had to pick a team to have a similar season that Sunderland did last season
22:37 at the moment coming up from League One, I think it would be Ipswich town.
22:41 Whether they'll make the playoffs, I'm not sure because I think maybe the league
22:44 is a bit tougher this year, but I think they could certainly go on a good run.
22:49 I think the one thing you would be concerned about, though, is if they continue doing well,
22:53 given Kieran McKenna's pedigree and the fact that he's an ex-Manchester United coach,
22:56 he's probably got some great contacts in the game as well.
22:59 How long can they keep a mission? Stocks going to rise.
23:03 Thanks a lot for that. That's us for this week.
23:06 Join us again next time where we will reflect on the weekend matches
23:10 but as well as what happened on Friday's transfer deadline,
23:15 which I'm sure will be another dramatic day.
23:18 Thanks again to Jordan and to Toby for joining us and thanks for watching.
23:24 We'll see you next time on Everything But The Prep.
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