Nigel Pearson will use the forthcoming World Cup break to finalise Bristol City’s plans for the January transfer window with the Robins manager insistent that if the club are to do business, he wants it to be early in the month otherwise it's, "a waste of time".
City have two more Championship fixtures and a League Cup tie against Lincoln City before the enforced 28-day pause in the season to allow for the World Cup in Qatar.
It does allow squads to take a breather after what will be a pretty relentless schedule of 24 matches in league and cup inside 106 days - one every 4.4 days - and City have some medium-term injury absentees who will be afforded extra time to recover so they’re fit for the resumption of the division on December 10.
Pearson, though, would much rather be playing and shares the sentiment of the majority of the football world that the break will be “odd” but he and the recruitment team will utilise the period without matchday preparation to focus on targets for the new year.
Pearson and CEO Richard Gould have said several times that there won’t be any money to spend, unless the club sanction a major sale, but increasingly, based on the rhetoric used by the manager, there looks to be the potential of loan arrivals.
“I’m not welcoming it but I’m viewing it as it’s here, and we will do our best to get as many people back as possible,” Pearson said. “So it’s an opportunity but I don’t welcome it. It just seems odd, that we’re having a major competition mid-season but that’s what it is, and we will try and make the most of it.
“It's going to be an important time for us to prepare for the next window depending on whether we can or can't do business but we still have to do the groundwork on that.
“If we do business, I want to do it immediately and I don't want to do it at the end of January because that's a waste of time.
“You've wasted a month so if we do have aspirations to bring people in, it makes sense to do it as early as possible so this build-up to the World Cup break or until the window opens is always very, very important.”
Post-pandemic, City have been quiet in the two January transfer windows under Dean Holden and Pearson with Timm Klose’s free transfer this year being their only first-team winter arrival.
But based on City’s opening 19 games in the Championship, and Pearson’s own words both across the summer and the last few weeks, providing there are no significant departures, it’s clear the areas of concentration for recruitment will be in central defence and an attacking midfielder/winger.
The latter position has been highlighted by Pearson's revelations this week that they tried and failed to loan Reda Khadra from Brighton & Hove Albion, with no similar player signed after that, while the former has been a long-standing wish of the manager, as he stated in the summer.
Tomas Kalas has played only 33 first-team minutes this season, Kal Naismith has missed the last seven games due to a calf injury, while Rob Atkinson and Timm Klose are recovering from illness, leaving Zak Vyner as City’s only consistently fit centre-back.
On the one hand, there is an element of misfortune to that, but it does ultimately reveal a lack of depth in such a key position, further emphasised by the fact that Andy King has made two appearances as an auxiliary centre-back and, for the last two fixtures, full-backs George Tanner and Cam Pring have been drafted into the back three.
Pearson has recently spoken of a lack of “quality” and “reliability” in that area of the field and he also touched on the type of defenders he feels his team increasingly needs, given their counter-attacking style.
“What you’ll see a lot in the Championship now, there are lots of really good counter-attacking teams,” Pearson added. “That’s the trend, most teams that you play have players that can hurt you on the counter-attack.
“It means you need defenders who know how to defend 1vs1, are really good at organising; so when we are attacking, that’s when, as a rule of thumb, your defenders have to be the most alert because that’s when you’re at your most vulnerable.
“That’s why organisation is important, that’s why clever defenders are very, very important because their awareness is heightened when other people might think, that’s not the danger.”
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