Last weekend it seemed very likely that I would have a third new signing ro talk about in this piece, but there’s been nothing yet and, with the first team squad flying out today for their week in Austria, it seems likely that we may have to wait a while longer for the players I feel we need to match, let alone improve on, last seasons mid table finish.
There have been a few names given as possible targets of ours, but I’ll not mention them at this stage because there’s nothing that has happened yet to make them anything but speculation.
It does look as if there has been a bid of £5 million from an unnamed club for Mark McGuinness which has, thankfully, been rejected by City for not being enough. Some messageboard fans were adamant City should be accepting a bid of that size, but that was to ignore a CV for a young centreback with quite a lot of experience at this level now who we’d probably by saying was being sold on the cheap if another Championship club was willing to sell someone with a similar career path to McGuinness’ for £5 million.
Bristol City are, apparently, trying to sign Sinclair Armstrong, QPR’s non scoring striker who usually looks so good when he plays against us, but, clearly, does not repeat that level of performance consistently against other sides, and I’ve seen the fee involved being described as in the region of 2 to 2.5 million pounds.
I mention this only to give a broad idea of the market we’re in when we say we’re looking for one or, maybe, two new strikers. Based on what I’ve seen of Armstrong in a couple of games against us, he looks a real handful with the potential to be a fine player at this level, but, it’s an undeniable fact that his scoring record for QPR (four in sixty four appearances in all competitions) is not impressive.
By way of comparison, Kion Etete has scored nine times in sixty two appearances for City and he’s now been written off as not good enough by many – I agree, that Etete’s goalscoring figures aren’t good, but he’s scored more than twice as many in fewer appearances than someone who is, seemingly, on the market for over £2 million.
Therefore, you have to think that a striker who would get fans thinking that he will score the goals that the likes of Etete, Meite, Harris, Diedhiou, Wickham etc could not is going to cost us a lot of money.
It seems to me that, to get a striker who will make a difference for us, we will need to sell at least one current squad member for the sort of fee we’ve not been in the habit of getting since Kieffer Moore was sold.
If this is true, then it wouldn’t surprise me at all if McGuinness does leave in the coming weeks. If we are serious about signing a striker who’ll be a step up from what we’ve got, you’d think that there would need to be a balancing of the books and, when you think of the players who could get us the sort of fee which would help in that regard, you’re talking about McGuinness and the likes of Parry Ng, Rubin Colwill, Callum Robinson and maybe Ryan Wintle.
There has been some balancing of the books already taking place this week with the predicted transfer of Ebou Adams to Derby for a fee which would appear to be anything between £500 thousand and a £1 million involved.
This is quite a strange transfer in that it’s entirely possible that the fans of both clubs will be thinking they’ve definitely got the best end of the deal! Certainly, I think it’s fair to say that City fans never saw anything from Adams to make us think he was worth a possible seven figure fee, but it’s equally fair to say that the freak injury which saw him miss virtually all of the 22/23 campaign hardly helped his cause.
As for pre season games played this week, Chris Willock and Calum Chambers were both missing from the squads which took on Kortrijk and Pen y Bont at Leckwith on Saturday and Tuesday respectively.
Although the cry is always that the result doesn’t matter in pre season matches, losing to National League North team Kidderminster Harriers at home with a performance which could definitely be described as uninspiring was hardly likely to fire anyone’s enthusiasm for the new season, so it’s good to record that the two games played since then have been much more encouraging.
Vincent Tan’s “other” side, Kortrijk came here having just about retained their position in Belgium’s top flight by scraping through the relegation Play Offs thanks in no small part to the goals of the on loan Isaak Davies and it was the Aberdare born forward who equalised for us from the penalty spot a minute or so after the visitors had hit us on the break with a fluent counter attack.
There were the usual wholesale changes at half time which came with the sides level at 1-1 and, after dominating possession in the opening forty five minutes, City saw less of the ball after the break, but carried the greater cutting edge. Jamilu Collins put us in front with a close range finish as we showed we still have the capability of scoring from set pieces and an effective break out in the closing minutes saw Rubin Colwill score the goal which gave us a 3-1 win that probably flattered us in terms of the margin of victory.
Three days later, a Pen Y Bont team that, from memory, we only beat 2-0 last season were despatched by 7-1. Yes, it was only Cymru Premier opposition, but I had to agree with the commentator on the club’s stream of the match when he said that it was so encouraging to see how many players City were getting into the opposition penalty box when they broke forward.
Of course, there are dangers involved in doing the same thing at Championship level, but we’re definitely going to score more if we show something like the same level of ambition once the proper stuff starts – as in most things, it’s a question of getting the balance right and it was obvious that, for most of last season, we didn’t do that.
Callum Robinson reminded everyone that he was still around with an early goal following a great run by Callum O’Dowda and the same player got the second goal with an easier close range finish around the half hour mark, with O’Dowda quickly adding a third from about two yards out.
City, with plenty of young forwards on as replacements made a fast start to the second half as Raheem Conte and Keiron Evans took it to 5-0, before the visitors got a goal back with a Venables header from a free kick.
In the last ten minutes, it was Cian Ashford who pulled back another cross from the right for Joel Colwill to score and Ashford completed the scoring with a first time finish from an Oliie Tanner cut back.
Before leaving this match, I must single out seventeen year old Ronan Kpakio, who played, faultlessly, for the opening half and provided assists for the second and third goals. As someone who is often left mystified by talk of inverted full backs and underlapping runs, I would recommend that you watch Kpakio’s performance on Tuesday because it explained what thousands of words, in my case anyway, cannot!
Eight goals scored on the night in all then and the Under 21s are dealing exclusively in eight goal thrillers so far as they’ve found themselves on the wring end of 5-3 scorelines against Potter’s Bar and Barry.
Finally, a dozen new apprenticeship deals have been signed up for the coming season with our under 18s – details can be found here