Official January Transfer Window Thread

Dress it up however you like, but January has been an absolute disaster.

The summer wasn’t much better, but we all know and understand the reason why it was difficult. We had our latest ever finish (4 weeks after the L2 regular season ended and most clubs were well into recruiting) followed by our earliest ever start. We were playing catch up with many potential targets signed up elsewhere while we were still navigating our way through the play-offs. It is unquestionable that Hurst signed players he didn’t really want long-term as a short term remedy (Kiernan on loan and a fair few existing players who ideally Hurst would have moved on and replaced with better quality signings).

For whatever reason all our main targets in January said “no”. You can include Vernam on that list too. You can say that Lincoln wouldn’t release him all you like, but if he really wanted to join Town he could have engineered the move very easily by employing the dark arts and submitting a transfer request.

The question is why we can’t get signings over the line. Location (town and training ground)? State of and facilities at BP? Wages? Unappealing manager? Poor selling of club and extended area?

Let’s be honest. If you’re a player we are targeting you’ve probably played at BP before. So you already know it’s a bit of a dump with rubbish, old fashioned changing rooms. You know it 50 miles past Doncaster, out on a limb and by the coast. You check Google maps and you see the training ground is located in about the worst possible location it could be when players are generally all commuting in down the A180 corridor. And then thats confirmed when the player is taken by the club to Cheapside if/when he comes for talks.

You can only play the hand you have at your disposal. But the hand we have is at our gift. We can make the club more attractive. The owners can pull their heads out of their ar$es and admit BP isn’t fit for purpose and crack on with delivering a stadium fit for this century. They can stop wasting their time on a training ground project in a built up area which will be costly and time consuming to achieve and won’t help attract players to the club and just follow the lead of others clubs (like Lincoln) who have an easily assessable training ground 4 or 5 miles from their town/city off a main road. If they can’t finance a good enough squad or facilities they have to be more proactive in finding further partners who will lighten the load on themselves and help drive the club forward on and off the pitch. Or look to sell the club on if they have underestimated the finances and complexities of owning a football club in our geographical location and with our unfit for purpose facilities.

Let's look at the positives eh, 338 pages of rumours for non of the rumoured names to sign!..that has to be a record for a Fishy thread surely!..

Well that went just as i said it would and got shot down again for being right   . Cheap - last thing - and the dregs .  When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee. How many more times are people going to make excuses and say NEXT WINDOW  Nothing has changed except a few tarting up the ground bits .. Typical big busines owners, lots of background staff and this manager and that manager but no end product on the field.

As the saying goes, it is what it is. I am disappointed that no permanent signings arrived, but we now have numbers again in the squad.

On a positive note if Hurst can get them singing and dancing, like the depleted team that played against Luton then we should do ok, and maybe touch the playoffs. After albeit the 1st Feb we still have 22 games to play which is virtually half a season.

“Wake up and smell the coffee”, “dress it up as you like”, “disaster”, “cheap”, “bargain bucket”. All opinions without the benefit of seeing any of these lads play. Did I want Dallas, Vernam etc? Of course, but what do you expect the club to do? Kidnap them? If they don’t want to come, or their club won’t allow them to come then that’s that. Don’t blame the people currently in charge, blame the previous incumbents who have allowed this club’s reputation and facilities to fall below the likes of Barrow, Rochdale and Stevenage. Blame the council and the government for the lack of investment in N.E Lincs needed to make it a desirable place to live. Blame Grim for discovering this town in the location it is and not 50 miles west. The fact is that we are what we are now, and it’s going to take years, not a few transfer windows to repair and build this club again.

Quoted from denni266

Well that went just as i said it would and got shot down again for being right   . Cheap - last thing - and the dregs .  When are people going to wake up and smell the coffee. How many more times are people going to make excuses and say NEXT WINDOW  Nothing has changed except a few tarting up the ground bits .. Typical big busines owners, lots of background staff and this manager and that manager but no end product on the field.

Another 'i know the budget and its crap'...
When will you wake up n smell the coffee, unless we spend the kinda of money that Wrexham, Stockport etc do we will struggle to sign top drawer players that have little or no affiliation to NE lincs.
The last 13 years have damaged our reputation as a "league football club" with 2 relegations to non league and not finishing above 14th in league 2, thus hardly making us a great proposition for players that have aspirations of furthering their footballing career.
Until we can establish ourselves back in league 2 and have a few stabs at promotion will we then be looked as "good proposition" for the 'better' players.
I doubt our failure to land players in this window has anything to do with lack of ambition or even finances, its years of failure    
biting us firmly on our ar$e let alone being an end of the road, down on its luck town.

Seen a few “no better than Fenty” / “we signed more when we had Fenty” type comments.

All very well, but….you do realise we were, on the whole, not very good when we had Fenty?

What does the final table look like ska?

Quoted from sam gy

Seen a few “no better than Fenty” / “we signed more when we had Fenty” type comments.

All very well, but….you do realise we were, on the whole, not very good when we had Fenty?

I’ve also seen people saying ‘we can’t spend too much’ etc, excuses Fenty & Day rolled out before getting us relegated.

I love the owners but let’s face it, if the last mob turned in a window like this, fans would’ve been rightly raging.

But equally just because we were abject when we had Fenty doesn't mean we should  just accept substandard once again.