Moans About Loans

Town fans (well, the sort who inhabit internet message boards) were agog with excitement about the possibility of a deadbeat Fulham striker joining us on loan. Why? This is the same serial underachiever whose conspicuous lack of league goals helped to get Leeds United relegated from the very division we cherish hopes of leaving in the opposite direction.

What is it about the thought of begging and borrowing unwanted and surplus players to go through the motions for Town? It's utter madness. But clutching at straws by abusing the loan system has now become a strange and indelible part of our game. It effectively means is that supporters who fondly believe themselves to be the club's keenest supporters are actually happiest seeing players who are not Town players. Surely they would be better off supporting another team?

The constant merry-go-round of loans also means the manager is repeatedly telling his own players he thinks they are not good enough, which must have a debilitating effect on team morale. Yes we are a tad goal-shy at a critical time of the season - but our strikers are hardly inadequate. If Lee and Counago stay fit and are actually given a game, both are well capable of scoring goals. At times they even look as though they are on the same wavelength. Haynes is reputedly one of the hottest prospects in this division and has already shown he is a scorer of important goals... all he needs is a run of games - not yet more dead wood ahead of him in the queue.

IF Healey was a proven scorer (like Jeffers). IF he was motivated and actually better than what we already have, it's still a big ask to expect him to instantly perform with a bunch of strangers. So what on earth is the point of demoralising players already on the books with yet another less than average signing?

The same week it was rumoured that Jordan Rhodes would make his full debut against QPR. Yet this genuinely exciting possibility raised barely a murmer of interest amongst the internet warriors. (Rightly as it happens, but only because Magilton was once again too cowardly to place real faith in real potential)

Am I the only Town fan who finds the loan system absurd and ridiculous? If Town are a prime, misguided example of every other team in the league, then every club has at least three or four players playing for someone else and just as many misfits shipped in from elsewhere playing for them. That's effectively half a team made up of somebody else's players. Wouldn't it be better if everybody bit the bullet on this and simply played their own players?

This season, we have had players marooned in such far-flung and appalling places as Brentford, Falkirk and Yeovil, rather than give them the chance to perform for a club they have been groomed for years to play for. This is in addition to perfectly adequate players like Richards who get frozen out and loaned on so that room can be made for another left footer to become the crowd's favourite boo boy.

Meanwhile the revolving door twirls and we get in players on loan to play in their stead - none of whom seem any better than those squeezed out to make way for them. It's bad enough that there is a transfer window to encourage managers to plunge in with ill-considered bids for overpriced players rather than do what they are paid for - manage what they have already got. If the transfer window is madness - the loan window is definitely one step beyond. I simply cannot see any point to it.

We live in an era where clubs buy vast amount of players they neither need, nor can possibly accommodate. In fact, counting rejects already out on loan I think Fulham have no fewer than ten strikers on their books. I'll say that again - ten strikers! And look at the good it has done them. Somewhat predictably, they are moving headlong towards relegation. All the loan system does is encourage such madness.

What good is our clutch of loan players doing us? Our borrowed goalie is universally disliked. Meanwhile Supple sits shivering on a park bench in Falkirk. Somewhere in the background is an injured Kuqi, who as he swallow-dived on to the treatment table must have been thankful that Magilton's daft quest for yet another Irish recruit floundered somewhere between the Fulham boardroom and the Sky Sports studio. And that's not counting some youngster from Manchester who turned up almost unannounced for no discernible reason.

In many ways this has been a profoundly depressing season. Despite hovering on the verge of the play-offs, with every chance of elbowing our way in when it matters, it's been strangely flat. I look back at the home game against West Brom and seem to remember a well-balanced team playing superb football to effectively outplay the league leaders. Yet Trotter, who played on the left in that game has barely kicked a ball since. The Bristol City game was another high point - and as Billy Clarke left the pitch I doubt he was thinking of Falkirk's chilly bench.

Magilton seems to be making the same mistakes that Burley made when he lost the plot so catastrophically. He's forgetting that football is team game - and a team needs just 11 players who know their role - plus five subs. Please Jim, next season, forget being the loan arranger - and play your own players.