Deadline Day: Can Rotherham United hold on to Michael Smith and what is Paul Warne’s process if a bid comes in late

Today is transfer deadline day, the last day of 2021 when football clubs can trade players. But for all the deals rushed through, plenty more will collapse as others never get taken up.

If an irresistible bid comes in for one of their players at 10pm tonight, clubs face a stark choice. The money will be tempting in a global pandemic and as the clock ticks down to the desperation deadline, any bid worth the effort of picking up the phone for is likely to be big.

Likewise, the players sought are more than likely the better ones at their club. But at 10pm there will only be an hour to sign a suitable replacement and that is impossible from a standing start. So by now most clubs should have a plan B and possibly C and D in case an offer comes. The chances are it will be wasted work, but it could be crucial.

“If a bid came in now for Joe Mattock, say, for £1m the agent would already know about it and have agreed wages with the (buying) club,” says Rotherham United manager Paul Warne whose main concern today is unlikely to be Mattock, but centre-forward Michael Smith. “That means the player knows and there’s a good chance he will knock on my door.

“If he says he wants to go, his family wants to go, his missus has found a home and schools, it’s the best wages he’ll ever earn at that age, within minutes I’d speak to Rob (Scott, head of recruitment), Andy (Warrington, goalkeeping coach), Rich (Barker, Warne’s assistant) and Hammy (Matthew Hamshaw, first team coach), to the chief exec (Paul Douglas), the chairman (Tony Stewart) and if it’s a reasonable offer we would accept it but I’ve never known a football club accept a first offer. More likely we’d go back to them and that time would enable us to go to our left-back list and straight away bang in an offer for the player at the top and speak to his agent, as we have done over the last six months, to say we liked the player and find out roughly financially if we can make it fit.

“In the meantime we’d wait for a second bid. When it came to the point where we were very close to having our bid accepted we would allow our player to speak to the (buying) club, which is an absolute farce because they’ve already done that. That would gain us another couple of hours.

“In the meantime I would be Facetiming our target, doing all the medical research, going through his Instagram and Twitter. We’d try and have a back-up and me and my staff would be watching the (priority) left-back and speaking to any of the coaches he’s played for, trying to get it all done as quickly as possible.

“That’s the problem with the window. If there wasn’t a window shutting we could say, ‘Look, we might be able to make it happen, just give me a week to try and replace you or see if I need to get one in.’”

It might get Sky Sports excited, but for most managers, transfer deadline day is the twice-yearly bain of their life.

“Deadline day is the worst time to get a bid for a player because 90 per cent of the work is done behind the scenes, all they want to do is agree a fee, whereas you’ve got to start the ball rolling,” says Warne.

“When clubs get criticised for not signing players it’s not as easy as people would think. It’s not like playing FIFA, typing in an offer and it says, ‘The lad wants to join.’”

The hope for Warne is that so much effort by so many people counts for nothing, because that would mean Smith and his other prize assets are staying put until the madness restarts in January.