McGhee Marks Our Cards On Recruitment

Aaron Downes

Manager Mark McGhee has today explained the latest developments at the Mem and how he hopes to be spending his summer months. Recruitment is of course number one on the list and he's revealed negotiations have already begun with clubs and players across the land.

The club are talking with Leicester City in regards to bringing defenders Cian Bolger and Tom Parkes back here again next season. What's unclear is whether they'd both be loans or whether either would be a permanent move. You can't see why Leicester would want to keep handing both players new 1 year contracts and then loaning them out for the entire time, so perhaps a full move is being lined up. On top of this McGhee confirmed that he is talking to another centre back this week and still needs to make a decision on Aaron Downes, making the centre of our defence one of his priorities.

We're also in talks with Stoke City in regards to bringing Matt Lund back next season and McGhee stated that if he does, he'll just get 'better and better'. Alongside the potential return of Lund, if McGhee gets his way, is two further midfield players although their identities are being kept secret. From what I can gather we're interested in Macclesfield Town's Arnaud Mendy, but there's no concrete information to support this as yet.

The left hand side is another area that needs to be addressed following the departure of Gary Sawyer to Leyton Orient over the weekend, something which disappointed McGhee. A trio of Paterson (if a deal can be agreed), Lee Brown and another will see our left side completed and work is already underway to bring somebody in. No names are being bandied around as yet, but I'm sure we'll hear speculation develop as the days pass.

'Up front I feel as if we need to freshen things up a little bit'. Very interesting comment this, suggesting that on top of the inevitable departure of Scott McGleish and the free transfer of Joe Anyinsah, Chris Zebroski could be on his way. I'm only putting two and two together here, probably coming up with five, but if it was just the one striker he was looking for he would simply have stated so. 'Freshen things up' implies more than one change, so hopefully a couple of goalscorers can be signed.

If my mathematic ability doesn't fail me, that's a total of around 10 players coming in. If we bring in as many players as that I will be pleased, because it's clear we need plenty of improvement. Hopefully we can see some recruitment being completed soon to whet the appetite for next season.

Finally it was announced that the retained list will be made public by the end of the week, confirming what many of us already suspect. Check my previous blog post to see my opinion on who's coming and going.