Neil Warnock has revealed that when the transfer window opens next month he is hoping to sign a new striker as well as to retain the services of all four of the players we currently have on loan.
The manager told the Yorkshire Post “I’ve given the club one or two names regarding another striker. We need to put pressure on Luciano Becchio in case he has a period where he’s not himself, and we need a top-class striker to take us into the second half of the season in a positive way.” This suggests that Warnock doesn’t have complete confidence in Becchio, a player he’s already left out of the starting line-up a couple of times this season.
Although the Argentinian has scored eleven goals in the league this season four have come from penalties, and at times he’s seemed to be struggling for form. He’s not really offered us much in terms of movement or winning the ball in the air, and he didn’t do himself any favours with a glaring miss on Saturday, sending a free header over the bar when all he had to do was get off the floor so he could direct the ball downwards.
Apart from improving his forward line, Warnock is keen to keep all our current loan players at the club for the remainder of the season at least.
Michael Tonge’s three-month emergency loan from Stoke City expires later this week, so presumably he’ll be able to put his feet up over the Christmas break as we can’t sign him again until January. But let’s hope he doesn’t bloat out on the mince pies, because the Warnock is keen to sign him permanently as soon as the transfer window opens and has already begun talks with Tonge’s parent club Stoke City.
Thankfully our other loan players are all available right up until January 3 (remember the date) and Leeds have made Swansea an offer of £250,000 for Alan Tate. Hopefully that will go through, as we’ve looked far more solid in defence since he arrived, and he’s played a big part in the improvement that has brought us four wins from the last five games.
Warnock is also hoping to keep Jerome Thomas for the remainder of the season, though WBA have indicated that they’re not looking to sell him permanently and they just see his spell at Leeds as a way to build up his fitness. Once again on Saturday he failed to last ninety minutes and he seemed to be hobbling for ten minutes or so before he went off, but before that he scored the first goal and engineered the second, so Warnock was very pleased with his overall contribution.
We’ve already agreed a deal with Southend to sign Ryan Hall for £150,000, which will be formally completed as soon as January begins. I’m not sure how Hall can be accommodated in the same team as Thomas, as they currently seem to be alternating on the left wing, unless one of them can operate on the other flank or in a different position. So if we can extend Thomas’ spell at the club Hall may have to be content with spending most of his time on the bench.
So are the funds in place to pay for all this lot? In his programme notes on Saturday Bates was indicating that we shouldn’t raise our hopes about a massive spending spree in January, so previous rumours about £8 million being available would seem to be wide of the mark. Of course the new year takes us into the period where we hope that Bates would just be a figurehead and would have nothing more to do with decision-making at the club.
In view of last week’s story of a missed payment, we could start to fear that his continued involvement is a sign that GFH don’t have the funds to complete the deal on time, so Bates would be left in charge, but could it come to that? We’ll soon know.