Total Recall

With Louie Barry’s return from Stockport to Aston Villa already announced, we predict another seven loan recalls in January…

This could be our most unpopular piece ever.

Total Recall refers to a transfer trend that often provides major stories throughout January: loan recalls.

The benefits of signing loan players are simple: they’re (generally) cheap and they don’t carry much risk in comparison to permanent deals. You benefit from the addition of untapped talent that your own academy may not produce and that you wouldn’t be able to afford to buy.

Put simply, you could end up with a future Premier League star playing for your club, and not just if you’re a Championship club with a Ben Doak or a Reece James — who remembers Harry Kane and Jack Grealish in League One? Elliot Anderson and Ebere Eze in League Two?

But you don’t hold the cards. Clubs, contract depending, are within their right to recall their player – to play for their first team, to divert to another loaning club, or even to sell. If a parent club senses your dependence on a loanee, they have the option of recalling their player and seeing just how much you value him — indeed, this situation seems to be playing out with Aaron Morley, currently on loan from Bolton to Wycombe a few places above them. Funding your own January business with the sale of a loanee? Perfect crime!

What follows is a list of players for whom we think a Total Recall scenario could be on the cards. These are not loans that will be cut short because they haven’t worked out. If anything, these EFL loanees have been too good, causing twitchy trigger fingers among parent clubs and exploratory WhatsApps between Heads of Recruitment.

NB: There are usually pre-agreed clauses that we don’t always know about, such as ‘any recall clause must be activated before 10th January’. Do let us know if there are any obvious oversights.

And yes, Louie Barry was on this list until the inevitable happened. Who’s next?

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Tom Cannon: on loan at Stoke from Leicester

These two things are true:

1. Tom Cannon has scored 5 non-penalty goals in 19 games.

2. Only 7 Championship players have scored more league goals this season than Tom Cannon’s 8 (with Borja Sainz, Josh Maja, Vakoun Bayo, Emmanuel Latte Lath and Callum Lang being joined on Boxing Day by Josh Brownhill and Joël Piroe)

Given that half of Cannon’s goals came in just one of his 19 starts, there’s a discussion to be had about how well he’s actually playing this season. However, he’s in a low-performing team at Stoke City, and if you include his full body of work at this level, adding an impressive loan at Preston and 430 minutes for Leicester last season, then he has 18 Championship goals in 41-and-a-bit 90s – a decent return for a 21-year-old.

It’s been reported that Cannon’s loan does have a recall clause. Do Leicester need him back? They need someone – Jamie Vardy turns 38 in a fortnight, yet he’s starting every game when fit. His understudy, Patson Daka, mostly gets 10-30 minutes every now and then. They are light up top, and Ruud van Nistelrooy may want to take a look at Cannon. More likely, though, they’ll look to sign a perceived ‘surer thing’.

There is another possibility. There’s something about Cannon that seems absolutely ripe for the old ‘recall and sell for £7.5m to Leeds/Burnley/Sheff Utd to help fund some January business’. From Lyle Foster and Michael Obafemi to Ali Al-Hamadi and Kieffer Moore (more than once), we regularly see promotion-chasing Championship clubs adding firepower to get them over the line.

Cannon would be tempting to a promotion-chaser on two levels:

- You can be confident that he’ll take chances if you create them for him.

- There’s potential for him to develop further into a Premier League #9, but even if he doesn’t, his age and nationality means he’ll retain plenty of transfer value as a Championship marksman for years to come.

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Jack Currie: on loan at Leyton Orient from Oxford United

Last week of August: Jack Currie is loaned to Leyton Orient, with senior left-backs Greg Leigh and Joe Bennett above him in the Oxford United pecking order.

First week of September: Joe Bennett picks up a long-term injury.

Currie had never played above League Two level, so it’s hardly shameful that Oxford felt he wasn’t immediately of Championship quality. But his subsequent 15 starts in League One have confirmed what we suspected: he is excellent defensively, even at a higher level, although his ability to contribute consistently in attack is still a big question mark.

With Bennett still nowhere to be seen, Greg Leigh having to play almost every minute, and Gary Rowett generally appreciating players who excel on the defensive side of the game, we expect Oxford to want to give their new manager a taste of Currie in January.

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Caleb Taylor: on loan at Wycombe from West Brom

In Caleb Taylor, Aaron Morley and Cameron Humphreys, Wycombe are in the slightly perilous situation of having loanees as three of their key players. The League One promotion hopefuls have benefited hugely from all three, but they don’t hold the cards here. In the case of Aaron Morley, Bolton have a strong hand and they’re acting accordingly: