Walsall transfer news: Jon Whitney hoping to kick-start deals
Jon Whitney will push for a breakthrough this week as he aims to kick-start Walsall’s summer transfer dealings.
The boss remains hopeful of finally making inroads ahead of what promises to be a busy few weeks at the Banks’s by completing the capture of two defensive targets in the coming days. Whitney would ideally like to do most of his business before players return for pre-season training at the end of the month and is still waiting to hear back from out-of-contract stars including skipper Adam Chambers.
The close season has to this point been a story of departures, with Isaiah Osbourne and goalkeeping duo Craig MacGillivray and Neil Etheridge among those to have left the club.
Finding a new No.1 is a top priority and goalkeeping coach Neil Cutler was tasked with drawing up a shortlist which is thought to include Reading’s Jonathan Bond and Jon McLaughlin, following the latter’s release by Burton Albion last month.
Whitney will in the meantime press ahead with plans to sign a centre-back and full-back who have both verbally agreed to join.
The manager is acutely aware of the need to recruit in order to fill gaps in his squad and soothe increasing concern among supporters after a disappointing finish to the season which saw the Saddlers finish 14th in League One and lost six of their final nine games.
He has been hampered to this point by a generally quiet market with several targets away on holiday.
Whitney had been keen on bringing Eoghan O’Connell back to the Banks’s following a successful loan spell but the defender, out of contract at Celtic, had numerous suitors and eventually opted to sign a three-year deal at Bury.
He also faces a battle to persuade Jason McCarthy, who scooped the club’s player of the season award while on loan from Southampton, to spend another year in the Midlands with the defender’s performances catching the eye of several other clubs.
Veteran midfielder Chambers must choose whether to trigger a one-year contract extension which would keep him at the Banks’s for a seventh season.
Defender Matt Preston is meanwhile mulling over the offer of a two-year deal.
