Behind the transfer window: A conversation with Cambridge United's Director of Football, Mark Bonner
January is seen as a turning point, but inside football it is defined by uncertainty. Cambridge United Director of Football Mark Bonner explains why planning can only ever take you so far.
George Elek: From the outside looking in, January is framed as a decisive month that either rescues a season or derails it entirely, when inside football clubs, it looks very different. Speaking to me about the transfer window, Cambridge United Director of Football Mark Bonner explains the number one aim of every single window, why winter is harder than summer, and how, despite its proximity to Christmas, nobody ever gets everything they want.
George Elek: Fans naturally tend to look at the January Window as being pivotal for their season. Is that right?
Mark Bonner: I think that it is fair. Because if you can win the window, you’ve got a real chance of having a strong second half of the season.
Everyone is going into it with the same objectives: to come out of the window stronger and enable the team to perform better in the second half of the season, or to continue the momentum that got your club wherever it might be. So I think everybody’s ambitions are the same.
It’s just the hardest window. There’s a smaller time frame, a smaller pool of players to choose from, and more competition for those players as a consequence. It becomes a much harder window to do business in.
It’s also so dependent on other teams getting their business done to enable you to do yours. So it’s very, very constrained, I think, which creates huge challenges for everybody. But it is the challenge of the season to try and come out of the window in a better position.
George Elek: You mentioned the smaller pool of players. Unlike the summer where you have out of contract players, in January there are contracted players who are being actively moved on by clubs. How do you go about working out what the pool is and who’s actually going to be available?
Mark Bonner: We actually discussed this quite a bit ourselves. The life of recruitment staff means that the vast majority of the work you do doesn’t get used, so it’s quite a frustrating world to live in. But you have to do the work of sifting through match reports, watching games, finding all the players that might fit what you’re looking for at any one time.
By the time you get to January, you’re probably really clear on what your squad needs. You go into it knowing what you want out of the window. But anything can happen in that Christmas period and can change the strategy quite dramatically. And therefore you have to be ready for anything and have lists prepared for every position.
We’re [CUFC] really clear what we’d like to do in terms of January for this season, for example, whilst also trying to make it have an impact over us longer term as well — but that is utopia.
The truth really is that things change. The number of players who get injured in the six weeks leading up to a window can change everything. A player who was once available suddenly isn’t; someone who was out of favour is back in the team; or a forward who hasn’t scored for months suddenly scores three over Christmas and is no longer going anywhere in January.
All those things can crop up and make the window much tougher. And so you have to be quite reactive, more so than anyone would want to be.
George Elek: We’re speaking before the window opens. For us as fans, who have no idea beyond playing Football Manager, what actually goes on? Are conversations happening prior to January between clubs, or between clubs and agents?
Mark Bonner: It’s fair to say that it happens. From the first few weeks after the summer window until around November, it goes quiet for a little bit. And then once you get into November, everyone starts thinking about January. But they are very loose conversations in the main because very few deals are going before the window gets started.
Obviously, the 1st of January is when the window opens. Every club plays that day. So no team sees any benefit to their squad on that day [because they can’t register players in time] and the earliest time players can actually play is the fourth.
At Cambridge this year, we play in the FA Cup on the 10th of January, and we don’t play in the league until the 17th. So in a way that gives us a couple of weeks to try and do some business, but it is so dependent on everybody else.
And everybody’s quite non-committal going into January. It’s a similar lead up to the summer window. Everybody’s finding out who might be available, what interest there might be for a player, what a deal might look like.
But you probably get zero commitment from the parent club, zero commitment from the buying club, zero commitment from the agent, zero commitment from the player, because everyone knows how quickly things change.
George Elek: In your role now as Director of Football, part of your job is to look after the long-term strategy of the club. But January is obviously a window that comes mid-season.
How do you balance short-term decision-making and short-term goals, (which for CUFC is obviously to finish ideally in the top three but definitely in the top seven of League Two) whilst also making sure transfer business aligns with your long-term vision?
Mark Bonner: There are always some trade-offs along the way. You have to accept that you can’t have everything you want in any one window. And ultimately, you only get two opportunities in a season where you can sign players. Therefore, if you can make your team now, better for this season, that has to be the number one aim of every single window. Every football manager and head coach wants that. But all the Directors of Football will want that as well because we want success now.
What you also get in January is the possibility to do some business that can get you ahead of the summer. And if that’s there to be done, then that can help. And what I mean by that is, number one: you’ll have your own players that have got six months left on their contract. They may be thinking, ‘now’s the time to go if something’s on for me, especially if I’m not in the plans for the second half of the season and beyond.’
And then likewise, that happens at other clubs. So you’re looking at players that are expiring contracts in the summer, who maybe are in Under 21 setups, who have reached the end of their pathway at one club, and will be leaving in the summer. As a club, you might be able to get ahead of the summer queue, in January. But it’s got to fit with your budget and everything else. So there can be a long-term aspect to the window.
What no club wants, but often happens, is the window becomes desperate, and clubs end up making some bad decisions. And perhaps a very, very expensive one to try and achieve what you want to achieve now, but clubs can carry that cost for a while. Everyone’s aiming to avoid those.
George Elek: Getting “business done early” is often spoken about. From your perspective, what is the trade-off in terms of trying to get deals done early or waiting in order to try and get the right deals done?
Mark Bonner: The truth, probably, is that signings made really early are the ones that haven’t got huge competition for their services, or are being paid extortionate sums. Some can be done if they’ve been a long time in the making. And certainly some can be done early if the player comes from a league outside of England where the season has already ended.
Then there are some clubs and players in a position where they know they stand to gain the longer the window goes on, and the more desperate clubs get. The other side of that is things can change so quickly you can get to the 23rd of December and think ‘we’ve got a couple lined up ready to go’, but then the club has got five games before the window really comes alive on the fifth of January.
And in that five games, players will get injured, players will get suspended, players will come into the team that weren’t expecting to and do well. Managerial changes will happen. All of these considerations can skew the window so much, and business that you think you’ve got ready either falls through or just isn’t available anymore.
The final part of the puzzle is everyone wants to do their business early, but very few do. And therefore one club won’t sell a player until they get their new player in and that creates the problem straight away.
I remember back to the Great Escape at Cambridge, when we signed Michael Morrison from Portsmouth. We’d agreed that deal in December, but he didn’t join until later in January because of the business that they needed to do to get players in. And so you get a little bit peppered for not having anything ready to go, but you’ve actually got a player ready; they just can’t join you. And I think that’s the truth of the window as well: people in clubs want the same as fans, but we also understand the reality of how hard that can be sometimes.
George Elek: How frustrating is it for you then when, sometimes, you see criticism coming in about slow transfer business, even though you know otherwise, but you can’t really say anything aloud to the fans?
Mark Bonner: You can’t say every bit of criticism isn’t valid, because sometimes it is. But also you can understand why people in football can’t say a lot of this stuff out loud. One, because until something’s done, you’re dealing with some sensitive contractual things. And two, because you don’t want to alert anyone until a deal is done.
I have had plenty of experiences of thinking a player is arriving for a medical, ringing me 20 minutes before and telling me they’re diverting and going somewhere else. That has happened to me three times. And therefore you want as few people as possible to know until it’s done, because it’s so hard signing players, and it takes miles longer than it should, and miles longer than you wish it would. That’s just the nature of the beast.
And then ultimately, football is really expensive. Usually you are relying on a generous owner putting their money in. Signings don’t come from anywhere else. So the industry itself makes it harder and harder because the financial constraints every club is under mean the game is not sustainable. So it’s a very challenging environment.
George Elek: You have been a manager and a Director of Football, how do those challenges change between different roles?
Mark Bonner: Maybe a little bit, but probably not too much because I’ve always been fairly involved in understanding the market and that signing players is very hard. There aren’t tons of players that fit your profile all the time. And if they’re really high performing, then they’ve probably got a queue of teams waiting.
In the end, if you’re really aligned between Director of Football and manager, then you’ll be after the same thing and you’ll want the same thing out the window. And we’ve got a really open dialogue at our place, so we know what’s happening and we’re all on track.
I think the challenge as a head coach or manager, always, is that you can become distracted by what you haven’t got in your building rather than what you have. And ultimately, it’s other people’s job to try and get deals done and sign players. But as coaches, as managers, as players in the team, you have to focus completely on the tools that you’ve got and how you get the best out of that team. And usually if you do that really well, you’re capable of getting results.
George Elek: Outgoings in January don’t tend to get covered as much as incomings. What’s the process for making room in your squad when you need to move on a player who, say, might not have lived up to expectation, is out of favour, or just needs a fresh start?
Mark Bonner: That’s a little different for every club. How many players actually fill your squad list? Where are you in terms of available budget? Do you need to free up spaces in the squad? Do you need to free up the finances to do business? Those are always considerations.
First, there’s the question of how many is too many players? There are far fewer games after the January window ends which makes it harder to keep players rotating. So there’s a balancing act between how many players outside your match-based squad you want, and that’s a big consideration for squad planning.
Second, everyone hopes not to lose their best players. But another club can come in and blow you away with an offer that takes someone that you didn’t want to lose. That will happen at different places this window.
Third, which of your players might knock on the door and say, ‘I’ve got six months left, what’s my plan? I’m not playing, I could do with playing ahead of the summer.’ Is there a permanent option for them? That can also come your way when maybe you’re not expecting it. Then there’s which of the young players need to go out on loan? Which players are coming back from injury that could do with a month somewhere else?
It’s such a fluid window. And it’s very, very difficult to try and get it right. The reality is no one gets everything they want out of January. But everyone’s aim will be to come out of it a stronger team. We’ll be no different to that. We’ve got a decent plan. But the plan only gets you so far because so many other people and clubs are in control of whether things come off or not.
George Elek: And finally: Deadline Day. Do you think we have an issue with the way that our windows work, where it encourages inaction until there’s a mad rush on the last day?
Mark Bonner: People like it. It’s been made into a TV programme, which has just created ridiculous hype. But actually, I think it probably adds to the unsustainability of the whole thing by driving the prices up. So I don’t think it’s helpful personally, and I do wonder whether no transfer windows would actually be better? That’s a thought, not an opinion so much at the moment.
Everyone would love to have business done prior to deadline day. But once you get there, anything could have happened in the game before the last day of the window. You start to get clubs taking players just in case, and those players might not have a huge part to play in the rest of the season. You also suddenly get players becoming available in under 21s that weren’t before, who move at really good value just for experience. And clubs might take those to offer some first-time experience with, maybe, no promise or intent of ever playing them.
Other times, people wait and wait and wait, trying to hope something better comes along, not realising the earlier offer they got was good. And sometimes – from a player and a club’s point of view – when you get an offer, it’s just like… ‘take the offer’. And I wish people would just commit a little bit earlier, even though I know the number of people involved in a deal makes decisiveness that bit harder.