Welcome to June’s Transfer Window, consider this a shelter from the storm of Oxford United tweets complaining about ‘y we dont no about nu singings’. Come and drench yourself in the cleansing waters every spurious rumour in the Oxford United universe.
May was a thrill-ride of former loanees and youth players signing for Conference South teams, you can read about it all here, but let’s carry over three stories of interest.
Having been offered a new contract which he’s expected to turn down, there’s little news of Curtis Nelson’s plans for next season. Leeds’ failure in the play-offs have sparked mutterings of Kemar Roofe going to the Premier League and Callum O’Dowda has done what he does and pulled a sicky to push for a move, possibly to Elland Road.
One half of the Oxford United Jedward – we know the name is a portmanteau, we’re just not sure which is Je and which is Dward – Gavin Whyte is attracting interest from Nottingham Forest. We’re not one to cast aspersions, well, we are, but let’s pretend we’re not; but the story was broken by newspapers in Northern Ireland, where Whyte is away on international duty. Unless a Nottinghamshire hack has speculatively gone to Ireland sniffing for a story, we’d speculate this might be coming from the Camp of Whyte. Is he about to O’Dowda us?
Wednesday 5 June 2019
INCOMING? We’ve been linked with Charlton winger Tarique Fosu <strikethrough>who might be a good replacement for Gavin Whyte</strikethrough>. Apparently the race for his signature is a three-way battle between us, Lincoln and Rotherham. KRob worked with Fosu when was at Charlton, because KRob seems to have worked with every professional footballer in the country at some point. Presumably Fosu wouldn’t have to uproot to come to Oxford, so maybe that’s a go-er.
Meanwhile poor old Callum O’Dowda may have to find a new club to agitate a move to, the same report says Leeds aren’t interested. The big O’D (Original Defector) will have to focus on engineering a move elsewhere.
Sunday 9 June 2019
KRob’s attempt at signing every Charlton player took another step with rumours that we’d like to sign Defender Jason Pearce. Sunderland and Portsmouth are also in for him, so KRob will have his work cut out.
Fact-vacuum The Sun (actually, the Scottish version The McSun) are reporting that we might be in for Motherwell’s midfielder Chris Cadden, the basis of the story being that KRob scouts in Scotland regularly (signings = 0).
Ah summer, the gentle caress of the sun on cheek, light summer dresses, birds chirping happily in the trees. Time to freshen up, let air flow through your soul, and renew. Fling those windows open, for light is here to replace the dark!
Except if the window is a transfer window, then a swarm of wasps will consume your head, sting your eyeballs until pustules ravage your eyelids. But, football is dead, long live transfer windows.
So, what can we expect? New contracts for Rob Hall and Curtis Nelson? Freedom for Jon Obika, Jonte Smith and Scott Shearer? Players returning to their clubs to continue their long and winding journey towards an two-year contract at Fleetwood Town? Let us not forget, Fierce Keheller’s mission to play for every Conference South team in the country.
So, welcome to the summer’s transfer window, what a ride it’ll be.
Tuesday May 7 2019
Are we off to a flyer or what? No. George Waring who Michael Appleton called upon to save us in the JPT Final in 2016 – replacing Callum O’Dowda – has signed a new contract at Chester City.
The opening days of the transfer window are like the early episodes in a series of Game of Thrones. You have to keep your eye on apparently inconsequential exchanges because they could have a significant impact later on. So, expect Alex Jakubiak – who has gone back to Watford from Bristol Rovers and Isaac Buckley-Ricketts – set to join Macclesfield from Peterborough – to have their manhoods cut off and be incinerated by a dragon some time in mid-August.
Jugged-eared centre-back Michael Raynes has been released Crewe, while the 2016 striker who isn’t Kemar Roofe or Danny Hylton (or George Waring), Jordan Bowery, is in talks for a new contract.
Callum O’Dowda appears to be on his way out of Bristol City. There’s a familiarity with the story, O’Dowda has a year on his contract and is refusing to sign an extension. With a number of clubs interested, Leeds especially, he’s suddenly gotten himself injured, though not injured enough to miss the Republic of Ireland’s upcoming internationals.
Chelsea have finally decided that Todd Kane, who has had more clubs on loan than Tiger Woods after his luggage got lost on his way to the British Open, isn’t going to make the grade. Hull City are interested.
Former loanee Zeli Ismail who had everything Jordan Graham had – a Wolves contract, but missed one thing – talent, even though he was once tipped to be a £100m player – has been released by Walsall.
Hero of the home derby win over Swindon in 2012, Lee Holmes, has been offered a new deal by Exeter City.
Rob Hall has step-overed his way to a new one-year contract. Hall has been injured for the best part of two-years but KRob is ready to take a punt on him. With Curtis Nelson unlikely to sign his new contract, Hall’s signature should signal the start of the next phase of next season’s planning.
Some transfers run smoothly, with fans wishing players well as they move onto the next stage of their career – think Ryan Ledson or Kemar Roofe. Some transfers are messier – Callum O’Dowda or Marvin Johnson. Some are just plain weird, as anyone who remembers the protracted saga of Mark Watson’s vanishing act in 2000 will confirm.
Curtis Nelson’s departure from the club is threatening to get messy. It should come as no surprise to hear that Nelson is likely to go either in January or at the end of the season. He’s an outstanding player with potential to play at a level beyond that of avoiding relegation from League 1.
At 25, his next contract will define his career and unless he’s offered eye-watering amounts of money or has developed such a bond with the club that he’s happy to be remembered as a loyal, if under-achieving servant – Joey Beauchamp? – it seems Oxford is unlikely to fulfil his needs.
No one should deny Nelson’s right to pursue his ambition, even at the short-term expense of the club. Fans will regularly remind you that no player is bigger than the club, but the quid pro quo is that no player should be naive enough to trust a club which may use its size and stature to retain or discard its assets as it chooses. Fans might pay today’s wages, but players must control their own future.
The question is not whether he should leave, but more how that might happen.
There’s been plenty of finger-pointing following Nelson’s uncomfortable interview after the defeat to Plymouth; some say he was being unprofessional and disrespectful, others say it was a calculated attempt by Karl Robinson to humiliate him and/or turn him against the fans.
At the time Karl Robinson said it was to give Nelson some breathing space to decide his future. I think it was more a crude attempt to force him to sign a new deal. Crude rather than manipulative. Clubs with a player like Nelson – a saleable asset coming to the end of his contract – have little room for manoeuvre, so perhaps the club thought removing the captaincy might expedite his decision.
Was Tuesday’s interview stage two in a calculated plan? If Robinson was such an arch schemer, I suspect we wouldn’t have had some of his more bizarre outbursts this year, for example giving Shandon Baptiste the captaincy or claiming that Jamie Hanson wasn’t his signing. I think it’s more that Nelson is usually a good man to put in front of the media and Robinson, under pressure, didn’t think through the circumstances or consequences.
A shrewder move would have been to keep Nelson away from the media and present him as a settled, happy player. That way any interested clubs might feel they need to spend more to prize him out of our hands. An unhappy Nelson is more likely to encourage clubs to offer lower fees knowing the player is more likely to want out of his existing situation.
Was Nelson disrespectful? It wasn’t a great interview, but he’d just come off a heavy defeat to his old team at a time when speculation around him was intensifying. Presumably some dialogue is going on now and perhaps has been for some time. In the short term, the club hold the key to his immediate future, so it must be frustrating to have to bite his lip while it all plays out. It’s reasonable to think that it’s consuming a lot of his headspace. Someone asking him about his future when everyone knows the media friendly answer is a non-committal ‘I’m focussed on Oxford until someone tells me differently’ must be intensely frustrating. In the circumstances, the frustration boiled over.
Despite the loss of the captaincy, there’s been no sign that he lacks motivation or commitment on the pitch. No player is completely impervious to external pressures or lapses in form, but if you were to list our weaknesses, Nelson wouldn’t be high on that list.
Ultimately, I don’t think either party is playing a particularly calculated game. What I think we’re seeing is another example of poor organisation within the club. I don’t know how post-match communications are handled; whether it’s the player, manager or someone else who decides who steps up, but it was clearly a mistake to put Nelson in front of the microphone given the position he was in. Everyone could have handled it better.
The problem is that with each new screw-up or wobble comes more questions and assumptions. You end up in a confrontational situation that no party intended or wanted.
Some managers handle these situations better than others, Robinson might wear his heart on his sleeve, but sometimes he needs to use his head to get the best outcome.
The January transfer window is open, and keeping up is a bit of a pain, so rather than trying to write a new post with every rumour, I’ll keep updating this post with bits and pieces.
1 February: Jonte angle
NO WONDER IT’S SO BLOODY COLD, SOMEONE’S LEFT THE WINDOW OPEN!
The rules around transfer windows are complex, and while Mick Brown might have problems operating a fax machine, he has had no problem finding an obscure sub-clause called ‘Oh screw it, it’s only Oxford’. This has allowed us to make our fifth signing of the window, outside the window. Bermudan Jonte Smith has joined in what the club called ‘a low-risk’ signing from Lewes. This is either code for ‘proven goalscorer at this level’ or ‘really very cheap’. Which could it be?
Anyway, he seems very happy to have joined, so we’re happy to have him.
31 January: The Vaughan identity?
This is the denouement of a month exhilarating rumour mongering, the thrilling climax of the January transfer window. That is, if drilling your eye-sockets brings you to a thrilling climax. OK, let’s go:
When James Vaughan was called by his agent this morning and was told ‘you’re going down’, he assumed, like us, he was signing for Oxford. It turns out he was going down to the south coast, missing the junction off the A34 with the big brown football sign on it and heading straight to Portsmouth.
Still, after rumours lasting, ooh, nearly seven minutes, it was confirmed that Jerome Sinclair has signed on loan from Watford. “That’s not Antoine Greizmann” said Oxford fans experiencing expectation hyper-inflation your average Venezuelan greengrocer would describe as a bit toppy.
The Ivo Pekalski saga is rapidly becoming Oxford United’s Brexit; KRob is demanding things he has no power to enforce or that Pekalski has any incentive to accept. KRob’s unicorn solution was to tell the Swede to GET ANOTHER CLUB by the 8th January or face ‘lots of running’. 22 solid days on from a red line so passable, it might have been defecated by UKIPs racist-in-chief Gerard Batten, Pekalski is sitting tight asking for money to leave, KRob’s response is to not give it him so he’s going to, um, pay him his salary until the end of the season instead. That’ll show him.
The prospect of KRob’s ‘wow’ signing grew considerably smaller as the transfer window’s witching hour crept unrelentingly closer. We were linked with Bermudan international Jonte Smith from *adjusts glasses and reads at arms length like your mum trying to focus on a Chinese takeaway menu* Lewes. Lewes are currently in the *turns page, turns page, turns page, turns page, scans down* Isthmian League, which for those of you who don’t know is in 1974. Now, before you start scoffing, Smith was a big money signing for Lewes. He was paid for using funds raised through the club’s PayPal account. Seriously.
Then, like a fat kid on a school cross-coutnry run, we gave up on Smith. Where did the rumour come from? We’re not sure, but we reckon Tiger’s involved, so we’re investigating the Bermuda Thai-angle (h/t Keith Harris on Twitter for the inspiration).
It was fantasy transfer window signing day on Tuesday when Danny Hylton was suddenly floated by one website and a million ambulance chasing Twitter accounts claiming to have the ‘inside gossip on everything EFL’.
I know I’m not the only one who would willfully entrap Hylton in my basement, spend several hours rutting up against his bare thigh before flaying him from head to foot and smothering his entrails all over my naked torso, but calls for his return feel like a crowd appeasing populist move which can only end badly. But then, I’m still scarred by the Nigel Jemson’s second – eighteen games, no goals – spell with the club.
So, if Hylton isn’t the saviour; what about James Vaughan was also briefly floated as a possible signing from Wigan?
Meanwhile, up in the cold wastelands, ex-loanee, mini-goal grabber Conor McAleny, who ignored our advances to choose Fleetwood Town in 2017, has been slung over to Kilmarnock in the SPL to while away the remaining months of the season.
You know when you’re expecting a phone call and the phone doesn’t ring; so you pick it up to test if it’s working? Well, that was last week’s frenzied transfer news, a week that was so devoid of anything, we thought the something terrible had happened, like David Kemp delivering Brexit, or something.
Everyone’s second favourite Martinez; Damian/Emiliano, whose record of conceding 3 goals for every Oxford United game he played in is only bettered by the doyenne of butterfingers goalkeeping; Mike Salmon, has gone to injection moulded plastics Reading on loan from Arsenal.
The only bit of transfer news coming out of Saturday’s game against Portsmouth was that Ricky Holmes, the only player whose fitness is measured in minutes, is going back to Sheffield United. While dumping the man-bun maverick, Robinson also left the door open for him to come back at some point in the season. ‘Even though we’re not lovers anymore, I’m sure we can still be friends.’ said Robinson, who was always hopeless at dumping his girlfriends.
Football fans are well known for their calm objectivity. The announcement that Cameron Norman had signed for Walsall was met with predictable circumspection. I think we can all agree that there has been an absolute barrage of calls for Norman to be returned to the team to arrest our alarming decline. Not on Twitter, it seems, Norman before the announcement there hadn’t been a single mention of Norman by any Oxford fan since the turn of the year.
You know when your mum texts you asking for your bank details so she can transfer your birthday money? And you know how the amount drops every year because she’s forgotten that you’re not nine anymore, that everything is more expensive than she thinks it is and that she’s forgotten how much she gave you last year?
And you know, that despite all this as soon as you get the text you start a process in your brain where the amount jumps by multiples of five with every passing minute until you convince yourself that for reasons that defy logic, she’s about to transfer at least £10,000 into your account.
And you know the feeling when you see the £25 in your bank serving no purpose but to make you fractionally less poor than you were just a few minutes previously? And that you make plans to buy a new pair of trainers knowing you’ll use it for Findus Crispy Pancakes, a four-pack of lager then put the rest towards the £45 you need for your mum’s birthday present next month?
You know that feeling?
Well, Oxford United’s much anticipated quest for a proven goalscorer ready to propel the club out of the relegation zone and on a collision course with an unlikely tilt at the play-offs took a thrilling turn with the signing of Troyes defensive midfielder Ahmed Kashi on loan.
In alumni news; when you’ve captained a Manchester United team and watched the players in your charge become international stars and when your achievements are eclipsed by someone with the same name as you, you know you’ll eventually find yourself at Swindon Town. The man they call ‘The Sexy Simon Clist’, Danny Rose, has rocked up at the County Ground following his release from Portsmouth.
January 15: Robin Raglan
With all the tax avoiding and cock dangling going down this week, Charlie Raglan skipped over the fence end at the Kassam and headed down the A40 to Cheltenham. There, he’ll spend his time battling to keep the Robins in the great noiseless vortex of nothingness they’ve have always existed in until the end of the season. What with the ongoing daily tasks of finding internet connectivity and clean water, it’s a pretty exciting challenge.
We live in hope that there’s a sell-on clause in the O’Dowda deal which took him to Bristol in 2016, or more specifically, HMRC live in hope there’s a sell-on clause.
Toni Martinez, Toonii Martinez, Toni Martinezzzz Toni Martinezzzzz
What. A. Tune.
We’re not sure what’s happening to the fondly remembered loanee and hero of That Minute at Middlesborough, but we do have news of namesake Emiliano Martinez.
Who? You might justifiably say. Well, according to the Oxford United dementia sufferers’ best friend, Rage Online, Emiliano (or Damian, as he was known back then) spent 90 minutes on loan at the end of the 2012 season when he conceded three at Port Vale.
The sword of Damocles hangs over Ivo Pekalski. Last week KRob donned a black hood, stripped to the waste and slathered grease over his curvaceous moobs threatening the Swede with ‘lots of running’ if he didn’t find a new club by Tuesday.
Kelleher is most famous at Oxford for being the player whose publicity photo became an analogy of the club’s silence over rumours that Michael Appleton was leaving in 2017. Since then he’s played for Solihull Moors and is currently on loan, along with every other Oxford player you’d forgotten about, at Macclesfield
7 January: Sam Surridge on the radar
Karl Robinson loves nothing more on Sundays than roasting a lump of meat and 10 vegetables; not unlike his Saturdays. He sacrificed it all this weekend to watch Cottagers exposing themselves in front of disbelieving onlookers in West London. Kinky.
‘Karl, what were you doing at Fulham?’ asked a hack with a line of questioning so crafty it could have spent the afternoon fashioning a full-sized Jamie Mackie out of macramé.
Robinson sees Surridge as an obvious replacement for Sam Smith, just with more goals. And shots. And touches of the ball. More importantly, he can use Smith’s monographed training kit; it’s not like it ever got dirty.
4 January: Ivo given the heave-ho
Karl Robinson has given Ivo Pekalski until 8 January to find a new club. He’s had a nightmare since Pep Clotet signed him. You might argue that as he spent Christmas in Sweden rather than in a futile fight for first team football given half the chance he would happily to leave by Tuesday, if not before. Robbo’s punishment for not achieving what everyone wants is for Ivo to listen to Charlie Pride’s Crystal Chandeliers on a loop while receiving Chinese burns from Faz. No, sorry, misread that, the consequence for the professional athlete trying to regain his fitness is ‘lots of running’. Talk about bringing a sponge to a knife fight.
Glenavon in the Irish Premier League have announced that we’ve signed their midfielder Mark Sykes who has played with Gavin Whyte in the Irish Under 21s. It seems he was heading for Port Vale, but, reassuringly we managed to outbid them. All this is subject to a medical and personal terms, whatever that actually means.
1 January: Jake Wright on the move?
More promotion squad alumni news; Jake ‘Jakey Wright, Wright, Wright’ Wright, captain of our promotion winning team in 2016 and more importantly voted Best Player of the First Ten Years of Oxblogger, has been linked with a move to Scunthorpe or Doncaster or Fleetwood, or maybe Barnsley. Which clears that up.
31 December: Kemar Roofe to Newcastle?
Not really related, but according to The Mirror Kemar Roofe has been targeted by Newcastle United. Whether Roofe will want to go from Leeds, who are top of the Championship and heading for promotion, to Newcastle, who are towards the bottom of the Premier League and maybe heading the other way, will depend on money, no doubt. I can’t find any references to sell-on fees we might be due, so it’s probably best to assume we’re not due a windfall.
29 December: Smith and McMahon to leave
A surprise to nobody is that Sam Smith is going back to Reading. Karl Robinson’s prize signing of the summer hasn’t really worked out, scoring a handful of goals in the Trophy that shall not be named, but little else. Tony McMahon, who has weighed in with a few assists here and there is heading back up north for personal reasons.
26 December: Jordan Graham on loan from Wolves
He’s been training with us for weeks, so nobody was shocked by Tiger’s ‘Christmas present’ announcing the signing of Jordan Graham on loan from Wolves. Graham had a brief spell with us in our promotion season, showing himself to be a classic Michael Appleton player. Since then, however, he’s managed just seven appearances in nearly four years due to injury. He could be the signing of the season or we may need to move Ricky Holmes on to make space in the physio’s room.
