Waiting until deadline day to do a deal is risky business

EARLY in my managerial career, I learned the danger of trying to sign players on transfer deadline day.

Late in the January window, I had spoken to an agent who will remain nameless. We had agreed a deal for a player to come to St Johnstone and the two of them had set off from the Glasgow area at 6.30pm.

Our secretary was among the staff who were in working late at McDiarmid Park, ready to get the deal done.

Come 8.30pm, we started to smell a rat. Phone calls were going unanswered and we sat there until we were eventually tipped off that he had gone to one of the Edinburgh clubs at 11pm.

Needless to say neither the agent or player gave us the courtesy of telling us directly. That one made me really angry but that’s the risk you take when you leave your business late.

Other than my last January at Aberdeen, I’ve managed to avoid things getting so frantic.

This week could be different. I’ve scarcely been involved in a busier, more time-consuming transfer window than this. Yet Kilmarnock’s most important signing of the year will not arrive until after Thursday’s deadline.

We’ve been operating without a head of recruitment at Rugby Park. The position has been advertised and candidates will be interviewed with a view to making the appointment at the end of next month.

A lot of the candidates are in position elsewhere and so they wouldn’t have been able to get out during this window. So it all falls on me and I can’t pretend it hasn’t been a challenge.

Moving into the summer, forward planning was difficult because we were not certain which league we were going to be in.

We want to create value on the pitch, do our work more forensically and strategically. But good recruitment doesn’t happen over a rushed period of seven or eight weeks.

We have had to try to plaster over it really.

We needed to get some Premiership-ready players and we needed to utilise the loan market to bridge the gap. I didn’t feel we could give out two and three-year contracts to permanent signings, so we have taken a short-term view.

We have too many loan signings. But we feel there would have been more risk in giving out long-term deals.

I have felt it because nothing has been getting filtered before it reaches my desk. It has landed on myself and the analyst to work our way through it.

You spend a lot of time ruling people out and it can be pain-staking.

I’m not moaning about it.

It’s just the circumstances we are in. But it’s unsustainable. It’s the first thing I think of in the morning and the last thing I think of late at night.

I am looking to add another forward player this week.

Over the next few days, I think things will start to move at the higher end in England and then there will be a ripple effect which may open up options in the last couple of days.

I hope that will be the case because I would like to add that player who might just give us something different.