League is now fertile ground for foreign clubs to land a bargain

IT was a little ironic, and indeed disingenuous, to read comments last week on the Preston North End website about the influx of League of Ireland players into the English Championship club.

The comments were made by a former Preston player and Irish international, Sean St Ledger, in the context of previewing last Saturday’s opening league game against Sheffield Wednesday at Deepdale, which incidentally Preston won with a late penalty.

Former Cork City player Sean Maguire started up front for the home team and Daryl Horgan was on the bench.

In his preview comment St Ledger remarked that it was great to see so many League of Ireland players ‘being given a chance by Preston to come over to England to showcase their talents’.

The former defender added that Horgan and Andy Boyle who joined Preston in January, and Maguire and Kevin O’Connor who joined last month, now had a platform to showcase their talents to Irish manager Martin O’Neill.

Unquestionably there is some truth in that assumption, for O’Neill ignored the claims of Horgan and Boyle, and even more mysteriously Maguire when they played in the League of Ireland, but once Horgan and Boyle joined Preston they were brought into the Irish set-up, while it is a safe bet to say that Maguire will be in the next Irish panel, to be announced shortly for upcoming internationals.

However, it was not St Ledger’s views about the prospects of the players making the Irish panel, but the gratuitous comment that it was somehow out of a sense of altruism that Preston gave the Irish players recently recruited their big chance.

In truth it was nothing of the kind. They recruited the two Dundalk players without paying a transfer fee and if the reports are correct, Sean Maguire, the hottest property in the league, joined Preston for a fee in the region of €150,000.

Such a fee would not cover an agent’s cut in many transfers conducted not in the Premier League but in the lower leagues in England, and it was no real gamble for Preston to pay a fee for Maguire or offer two-year contracts to the other players they recruited from the League of Ireland, for they are very likely to recoup their outlay if they move the players on.

Preston’s success in recruiting in the last six months the four Irish talented players who are now a vital part of their first team panel, for little or no outlay, is deeply worrying not just for the lack of compensation paid to clubs who developed the players, or the loss of such quality to the League, but for the obvious fact that foreign clubs - and not just English and Scottish ones - are increasingly viewing the League of Ireland as fertile ground for picking up a bargain.

Dundalk manager Stephen Kenny highlighted this trend last week after he lost striker Ciaran Kilduff to the second tier of American football, and remarked that American clubs were joining the queue of foreign clubs scouting players in the League of Ireland.

Unfortunately there appears to be no viable option to deter this trend, for players who have the talent and the ambition to move abroad are only willing to sign short-term contracts with Irish clubs as was the case with Horgan and Boyle. As free agents, players have better bargaining power when it comes to transfers and contracts.

A similar situation is rapidly developing with Patrick McEleney who has shown in recent weeks a welcome return to form, causing a posse of clubs from England and other countries to view his talent. If Dundalk cannot persuade the player to sign an extended contract beyond this season, then they are in danger of losing him to a free transfer.

The loss of McEleney would be another body blow not just to Dundalk but to the League, for he is an exceptional talent, worth, as a spectator behind me said during the Limerick match, the admission price alone.

The League, and in this context the FAI, must rapidly address this flight of talent without adequate compensation being paid. Of course it is a difficult problem in that players’ basic human rights are involved, but it beholds all - the FAI, clubs and the PFA - to sit down and try a find a solution before the League is completely drained of the quality of the talent that spectators want to see.

There was of course another transfer from Dundalk this week in addition to Ciaran Kilduff and that involved the loan move of Paddy Barrett to his home town Waterford.

Mention must be made of this move, not in terms of the transfer itself, but in the context of some of the comments made on social media about the player’s playing ability following recent games.

Some of the comments were extremely hurtful and totally unwarranted, for the player was a very good servant to Dundalk over recent seasons and he deservedly earned plaudits when he stepped into the breach alongside Andy Boyle when Brian Gartland was injured for a number of European matches last season.

Indeed Barrett was outstanding in a number of those games, but his confidence seemed to take a hit this year as the team struggled. Hopefully he will regain that confidence playing regularly with Waterford, for many believe that he still has a lot to offer Dundalk.