That's Save Our Season!
In 10 days time, the transfer window closes, do we have just over a week to Save Our Season?
Having failed to add to the ten new signings Neil Warnock made in the summer, the next major window of opportunity was always going to be the January transfer window. As we tradionally and typically fumbled through the second verse of Auld Lang Syne our attentions immediately turned to exactly who we would be signing? An uninspiring win over Bolton several hours later pitched the transfer ferver even higher despite GFH's Salem Patel trying to manage expectations.
The inevitable transfer speculation in the latter days of 2012 saw us linked with an array of high profile, fanciful expensive signings such as Craig Mackail-Smith, Ricky Lambert,Dexter Blackstok the sentimental in Ian Harte, the realistic in Alan Tate and Michael Tonge, the inevitable Warnock old War Horses in Shaun Derry and Clint Hill then there was the names that would have us reaching for our Football League Yearbooks or Google eg Jamille Matt who apparently plays for Kidderminster.
When Warnock bemoaned the apparent loss of Chris Wood to Leicester City, Leeds unable to match his transfer fee or salary, the Sun linked us with an improbable £5m deal for Leo Baptistao of Rayo Vallecano, although Michael Tonge was proving to be a difficult one to get over the line, Ryan Hall's loan move was made permanent and although there seemed to be no chance of Jerome Thomas extending his loan spell, "other clubs are sniffing around" Warnock claimed however Thomas has been restored to the West Brom starting X1. We did extend Alan Tate's loan spell until the last weekend in January when it seemed certain we would get him for a nominal fee.
Tonge became a permanent signing prior to our annual massacre at Oakwell and Leeds appeared to have pulled off something of a coup by signing Everton's highly rated 18-year-old Ross Barkley albeit on a 30 day loan. Post the 2-0 defeat, the talk turned to the future of 19-goal Luciano Becchio who's head, according to Warnock had been "turned". Becchio's apparent illness three days later in an FA Cup replay triumph at Birmingham further fuelled speculation he was bound for Wigan or another Rugby League outpost in Hull.
Whilst the Becchio speculation was unwelcome, thankfully only fleeting mentions have been made to where the real success story of the season, Sam Byram's future lies. Similarly speculation linking Tom Lees with a clutch of clubs, including Celtic had cold water swiftly poured upon it.
With Becchio seemingly the most likely player to exit, the striker links have remained hot, Warnock himself revealing a high-profile hit man was top of his wish-list, the names Kevin Doyle (Wolves), Nakhi Wells ( Bradford) and Steve Morison (Norwich) have been and gone in the past week, it seems more likely that Arine Dindane and Habib Habibou are more realistic targets.
Despite regular updates that Shaun Harvey is "working hard" and Warnock is ever closer to "bringing in two or three", a massive cloud of apathy hangs over LS11 more prominently than any snow storm seen in the last week or so.
January is yet another dumb squib of a month as far as the transfer window goes.