Battle to retain top-flight status sees Hull leading way for Yorkshire clubs

BUSINESS has been brisk during a summer of numerous transactions involving Yorkshire’s 11 league clubs – although no prizes for guessing where the most high-profile hive of activity has been.

This was at Premier League newcomers Hull City and while 10 deals were completed by the Tigers ahead of yesterday’s final day of the summer transfer window, the last thing boss Steve Bruce was doing was putting his feet up in the countdown to the 11pm deadline.

Bruce was working frantically in the final few hours of the window to get a deal to sign West Brom forward Shane Long over the line to potentially take his spending past the £18m mark. But that was scuppered at the last minute when Albion manager Steve Clarke pulled the plug after he failed to bring in Chelsea striker Romelu Lukaku on loan.

Mindful that his club’s seasonal prospects are likely to hinge on how they fare in the striking department, Bruce, despite completing earlier moves for Danny Graham, Yannick Sagbo and George Boyd, re-focused his energies on further attacking reinforcements in the final days of the window – having been linked with a host of forwards throughout the summer.

Charlie Austin, Gary Hooper and Nicklas Bendtner were three names on Tigers supporters’ lips at various junctures, but potential deals fell through for one reason or another.

Amid the jubilation following the Tigers’ dramatic promotion to the top flight back in May, club owner Aseem Allam issued a note of caution by insisting he would not risk the club’s long-term future by embarking on a spending spree, stating, “We are all sensible people” at Hull.

While Hull’s transfer outlay has been pretty conservative in regard to most of their top-rivals, the East Yorkshire outfit – whose promotion in May reaped a £120m windfall – sanctioned a club record deal to bring in marque recruit Tom Huddlestone on August 14 from Tottenham Hotspur.

Out of the six White Rose representatives in the Championship, Huddersfield Town and Barnsley were the busiest, although the most high-profile deal arguably arrived at Leeds United, when they splashed out £1m to bring in Crewe captain Luke Murphy – their first seven-figure outlay since signing Richard Cresswell in 2005.

The biggest cash deal proved an outgoing one with Town full-back Jack Hunt switching to the Premier League to join Crystal Palace, with the move – for a undisclosed fee thought to be in the region of £2m – finally completed yesterday.

On the incoming front, Town chief Mark Robins landed the transfer prize all supporters craved in the shape of last season’s top-scorer James Vaughan for around £1m, which already looks a snip.

Vaughan has carried on from where he left off in netting 14 goals last term and has already found the net eight times in 2013-14, with the captures of Adam Hammill, Jonathan Hogg and Irish youngster Jake Carroll – among a host of new arrivals – having already yielded fruit.

The purse strings were also loosened at Barnsley this summer, with a couple of significant six-figure players – who had been conspicuous by their absence at Oakwell in recent years – arriving in Chris O’Grady and Dale Jennings, the latter from Bayern Munich.

Money from the sale of England Under-21 defender John Stones to Everton for around £3m on the final day of the winter transfer window was in all likelihood used to sign the duo, for a combined total of £550,000, with boss David Flitcroft’s number of newcomers reaching double figures.

It was not all incoming for the Reds, however, after they sold attacking left-back Scott Golbourne to Wolves last week for around £700,000.

Leeds may have spent £1m for the first time in a good while, but other than that laboured is perhaps the best word to describe the incoming transactions at Elland Road.

Scott Wootton, Matt Smith and Noel Hunt have arrived with Murphy, but manager Brian McDermott has been stymied by the difficulties of getting several existing players off his books –to provide himself with further room for manoeuvre in the transfer market with money tight.

The situation has been similar at Hillsborough, with Owls chief Dave Jones – despite managing to complete deals to sign the likes of Jacques Maghoma, Jeremy Helan, Atdhe Nuhiu and Kamil Zayette – hamstrung by an inability to ship out fringe players.

Ongoing talks regarding a possible takeover have also put significant transfer signings on hold at S6.

Another club whose future has been up in the air is Doncaster Rovers, whose fans had been salivating at the prospect of a successful takeover bid from Irish-led consortium Sequentia Capital, described as a “once in a lifetime opportunity” for the club by chairman John Ryan.

Ryan revealed in the summer that Sequentia could invest up to £40m in the club in a bid to bring top-flight football to the Keepmoat Stadium, with the promise of a number of high-profile signings if the deal went through.

But with talks having stalled in recent weeks with Sequentia, who are bankrolled by an anonymous Belize-based tycoon, Rovers’ hopes of making any head-turning captures – having been linked with likes of Shay Given and Stephen Ireland – have seriously diminished.

Ryan has made no secret of the fact that the club, without big-money investment, must run a tight ship in the light of Financial Fair Play regulations with the number of signings pretty much a trickle until well into July when a number of faces came in to bolster a wafer-thin squad.

Mark Duffy and Harry Forrester, whose signings were protracted, were brought in with several others, including Theo Robinson, following last month.

In the third tier, frugality had pretty much been the order of the day at Bramall Lane – that is until late last week with a surprise development that the club had agreed a deal with a foreign investor that would see significant funds made available to the first team.

It is perhaps no coincidence that the announcement was quickly followed by the statement-making signing of Oldham forward Jose Baxter for around £300,000.

The Blades’ South Yorkshire neighbours Rotherham United – who lost out to the Blades in their quest to sign striker Lyle Taylor from Falkirk – have completed plenty of business to bring in the likes of Matt Tubbs, David Worrall and Michael Tidser, with cash at Steve Evans’s disposal.

The Millers tabled a club record bid of £200,000 for Taylor in July, but the 23-year-old, named as the Scottish Division One player of the year for 2012-13, failed to agree personal terms with Evans, promptly ending his interest.

Bradford City’s main priority has been keeping hold of hot-shot Nakhi Wells, with Phil Parkinson opting for experience on the incoming front, with Mark Yeates, Jason Kennedy and Matt Taylor all checking in.

In League Two, York manager Nigel Worthington was one of the more active managers, bringing in a raft of signings, including the striking quartet of Ryan Jarvis, Ryan Bowman, Richard Cresswell and Wes Fletcher to more than compensate for the loss of Matty Blair, Jason Walker and Jamie Reed.