Thorn braces himself for loan window

The emergency loan window, the final resource for the desperate and the panicky who realise, a couple of days of the actual transfer window shuts, that their squad is suddenly thin and that they could jump into a time machine and go back a couple of days to when English clubs were permitted to do business.

These are the same men who will be lining up with placards and fog-horns when FIFA implement their plan to scarp the emergency loan window, which opens for Football League on the February and closes on the 24^th March, in 2014. Whatever will they do in the future, when they realise they have no safety net when the injuries and the suspensions come in to rupture the squad conveniently just as the January window closes?

Do the business early and swell the squad so they have the required cover is the most obvious answer of course, but it seems in the meantime that many clubs are aiming to reap as much fruit from the current system as they can as we mentioned Bristol City yesterday and now we have Coventry, Middlesbrough and Cardiff getting in on the act as well.

Coventry City manager Andy Thorn will be after a few strikers once it opens tomorrow after falling a little thin on the ground in that area with Roy O’Donvon being sent off to Hibernian for a short spell while Cody McDonald, who has failed to emulate the profligacy he showed whilst on loan with Gillingham last season, is slowly getting back to fitness after a knee injury. They also sold Lukas Jutkiewicz to Middlesbrough in January.

Also, with this gem of football logic “you need goals to win games”, it is obvious where Thorn’s priorities lie in the loan stakes, even though full-backs Herman Hreidarsson, Cyrus Christie and midfielder Conor Thomas are set to miss this weekend’s trip to Reading and are due to be out for a while.

New director of business at the Ricoh Arena Steve Waggot has apparently “been talking to a few Premier League clubs” in his search and is aiming to get somebody through the door for the visit to the Madejski to join Alex Nimely and Oiver Norwood in the temporary mini-club at the Ricoh as the battle to fight relegation goes on, the Sky Blues are rooted to the foot of the table, seven points away from safety.

 “We don’t have that much time to play with” said Thorn and he is right, so expect him to push the panic button at some point on Wednesday to bring another loanee in before the weekend. Better late than never of course, but he’ll just have to be a bit quicker off the draw when it comes to transfers in FIFA’s revolutionary year of 2014. If Thorn is still in a job, that is.

@AdamGray1250