City make a fast start on summer recruitment drive
COVENTRY City have already started planning their summer recruitment drive in order to keep building the foundations for a return to the Championship.
Although Sky Blues boss Mark Robins is intent on having a strong finish to this season, confident that his players can make a push for the play-offs in the last 18 games, he’s already got half an eye on the next step in the club’s progression.
The Telegraph understands that the club are well down the line in terms of agreeing deals with players to join the club when the next transfer window opens.
Clubs can begin talks with players who are due out of contract in the summer, and City have at least two transfers lined up to ensure they waste no time in preparing for a more sustained promotion push in the 2019/20 campaign.
In the meantime, Robins remains hopeful that the loan striker he has ear-marked to join the club by the end of the month will help drive the club towards this season’s play-offs.
That situation will be ramped up if Bournemouth sell Callum Wilson to Chelsea this January, ensuring City will get a sizeable sell-on fee, expected to be a minimum of £5 million.
The club are poised to splash out on a proven permanent striker signing if that comes to fruition.
“We are looking towards having as strong a finish as we can do,” said Robins, who has tasked his head of recruitment, Chris Badlan, to identify targets for the summer as well as having identified possible arrivals in the current transfer window.
“But we also want to put things in place for next season as well while we are doing it.
“So we are trying to use this period to do business for the summer as well. Chris Badlan is really busy at this stage and he certainly will not be going on holiday for a while!”
Robins knows what he wants in terms of the quality and types of players to ensure his squad continues to “evolve” and grow in strength in order to get to the next level.
And the manager is determined to be ahead of the game when it comes to the summer months when he will look to do plenty of early business in order to get his new look squad together and prepared for another campaign.
Successful loan players like Dujon Sterling and Luke Thomas will return to their parent clubs in the summer and that will leave holes that will need to be filled, while City have a number of players who will be out of contract, not least goalkeeper Lee Burge and centre-halves Jordan Willis and Tom Davies. They, too, will need to be replaced if they leave the club.
City have also been pro-active in signing talented young players for Jason Farndon’s development squad, drafting in a host of players to build a strong looking Under-23s group. The plan is to develop those players in order for them to break into the first team.
“There is a pathway for our young players to come through,” said Robins.