City Gashing in?

Who said the close season had to be dull? After a gripping week-long transfer saga with more twists than a massive twisty thing, City have ended up missing out on one Ebbsfleet player we thought had signed, capturing one we'd never even mentioned and still waiting on a third who is, in all likelihood, not worth anywhere near the £50,000 rumoured to have been offered. So, how did we get here, why were the signings 'unveiled' before the deals had been finalised and, perhaps most importantly, how the devil did we become one of the most minted clubs in the Conference all of a sudden? Let's reacquaint ourselves with exactly how the story panned out.

Monday June 22nd
Ebbsfleet United announce that an unnamed club has bid £80,000 - payable in two equal instalments, one immediately and one in January - for defender Darius Charles and striker Michael Gash. Due to Ebbsfleet being owned by the faux-democratic social experiment gone wrong otherwise known as MyFootballClub, the decision over whether to accept the bid must be voted on by the site's members. Luckily for the unnamed club (which at this stage no-one really suspects is City) these votes are about as unpredictable as an Iranian election, given that they essentially follow whatever advice is given by the board and manager, which in this case recommends that they snap the unnamed club's hands off. The members have two days in which to decide to do exactly as they are told or else.

Tuesday June 23rd
Speculation is rife over the identity of the unnamed club, with City fans throwing our name into the hat more in hope than expectation. The evidence to support their theory seems fairly flimsy - we had earlier tabled a bid of £10,000 for Charles, but Luton and Morecambe had both made substantially larger offers for Gash, and seem more likely to be flush enough to afford such an offer.

Wednesday June 24th
Things begin to get really interesting today. An overwhelming majority (78%) of the MyFC members vote in favour of towing the party line, and all that remains is for the identity of the unnamed club to be revealed. Oh, and for the players to sign deals, but let's not get bogged down in mere formalities. That comes later. Meanwhile, reliable sources are being cited left, right and centre, to support claims that we are the unnamed club, and rabid excitement mounts. Whether this is over the prospect of the two players involved signing for City or the sheer novelty of the club actually being able to spend money on players remains unclear.

Thursday June 25th
With City fans just about creaming their pants as the rumour gathers pace, party-pooper Dave Flett ruins it all with a throwaway sentence in an otherwise uninteresting article about some mediocre left-back, which states that 'manager Martin Foyle has revealed that City are not the club who have had an £80,000 bid accepted by Ebbsfleet for Michael Gash and Darius Charles'. Sounds pretty final, so that must have been that, right? Weirdly, no.

Friday June 26th
Foyle's apparent denial fails to halt the juggernaut that is the Gash-and-Charles-to-City rumour. After all, proponents of the rumour point out, Flett's article contains no direct quote from Foyle, although it's difficult to envision the scenario in which a denial could have been interpreted when none was forthcoming. Perhaps Foyle said 'Oh, someone's bidding for Mark Gash and Darren Charles? Never heard of them' and then performed an exaggerated wink which Mr Flett failed to catch. We will simply never know.

Saturday June 27th
Today the world is turned upon its head, as it becomes apparent that we can no longer trust the Press. Flett's latest article not only adds fuel to the fire by revealing that the club are set to unveil three new signings on Monday, but also heavily insinuates that Gash and Charles are two of the three by retracting the earlier denial by Foyle.

Sunday June 28th
The Non-League Paper jumps aboard the bandwagon, with an article revealing City as the unnamed club. Fans wait with bated breath for the unveiling tomorrow, a week after the original bid was submitted.

Monday June 29th
It's official! York City have signed Darius Charles, Michael Gash and Neil Barrett! Wait, who's that third one? Another Ebbsfleet player, although it is unclear initially whether he is joining as part of the Gash/Charles deal or separately. There can be no more doubts that the deal is going ahead - maybe we can't trust the Press, but the official site is running the story too. Joy abounds, and City's odds descend rapidly. 'A big coup for York City', says Foyle! 'The London-based trio will be moving to York', adds the official site! 'We're going to win the league', yell the masses, foaming at the mouth despite having never seen the players involved in action.
And then, just as everyone is settling down with a celebratory cup of Horlicks, another rumour starts. The deal, despite appearing to have been finalised, has fallen through. One of the players has failed to agree terms. This rumour is then confirmed on the Ebbsfleet site, which makes it clear that since the offer was for both players, neither will now be making the move North due to an about-turn performed by one (Charles, it turns out).

Tuesday June 30th
The dust settles and all becomes clear: the players had agreed terms in principle and were all set to join today, but Charles had a last-minute change of heart and decided to stay in London with his pregnant girlfriend. So why had the deal been announced if it hadn't been finalised? Sophie McGill kindly explains to us that the club saw no point in delaying the announcement, because there simply remained a few formalities to tie up. Formalities like the players actually signing contracts with the club. In a final, farcical twist, the Press runs with a back page hailing the arrival of City's three saviours. That might have been understandable, as news of the collapse broke late the night before, but less understandable is the decision to add the stories about an '£80k statement of intent' eleven hours after it has become apparent that intent alone would be as far as the deal went. A brief article explaining the 'new' situation appears soon after, but not before a few idle hopes had been raised that the previous night had all been a bad dream. In the end, though, the overall damage turns out to be relatively minimal, as Barrett joins regardless, and the club submit a further bid for Gash.

So, it was a bit of pre-season excitement while it lasted, and given that we're one player better off with significant funds left to burn, can we not shrug off the loss of Charles, and move on with no real harm done? Well, not exactly. The image of those responsible for running the club is growing more amateurish by the week, and while Sophie McGill might cry that announcing players have signed before they've actually put pen to paper is 'the normal way' in football, the board are being left red-faced far too frequently for it to be attributed simply to misfortune. One occasion might seem like carelessness, but two in the space of two weeks? Fortunately, some blushes were spared when the club secured a replacement for Charles hours after the deal's collapse, but Martin Foyle's comment upon securing O'Hare that he 'always had a feeling something wasn't right' with Charles only makes the premature announcement that he had signed more baffling.

More baffling still, perhaps, is that the club are suddenly able to shell out £80,000 on two players from a team who finished below us last season, and still come in under the playing budget. The source of the funds is presumably the run to Wembley and extra monies from recently-promoted Scunthorpe as part of the Martyn Woolford sale. But aren't these the same funds which weren't sufficient to plug a £19,000 gap to keep the youth team running? Regardless of whether you think, as I do, that this reflects a wrong ordering of priorities, what is undeniable is that the tone of the board's statements about the financial situation seems to be changed at will in different circumstances. As for the Press, the debacle of the past week has only confirmed what we already suspected; that the reporters are just as clueless as the rest of us when it comes to goings-on at the club, and in some cases more so.

'He who does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it'

Jason McGill, that is. You'd think by now that he would greet the reappearance of the Curse of the Contractual Loophole, which strikes the club every summer, like a visit from an old friend. Or at worst like the annual visit of an unwelcome relative; mildly irritating, but expected. Yet he seems to have been genuinely caught off-guard by the news that Onome Sodje's move to Barnsley looks set to go through without any cash arriving in exchange. The official statement shows the club still clinging on to the idea of a tribunal, but given that it has now become apparent that Sodje was playing for City on a non-contract basis only for the past two seasons, frankly they seem to be pissing in the wind.

Let's take a look at the previous casualties.
2006: Top-scorer Andy Bishop leaves on a free transfer to Bury. Despite Bishop being 23 and therefore ineligible to leave for free under the Bosman ruling, a clause written into the contract offered to him by then manager Chris Brass (and presumably ratified by McGill) extends this privilege to him on the condition that City are not promoted, and a Football League club offer him a deal.
2007: Top-scorer Clayton Donaldson leaves on a free transfer to Hibernian. Despite Donaldson being 23 and therefore ineligible to leave for free to another English club under the Bosman ruling, Hibernian are not required to pay a fee as it is classed as an international transfer, for which the age limit is a year lower. The club vows to take the matter to appeal, but nothing ever comes of it.
2008: In fact, this looks to be an anomaly - although our star player again departed, on this occasion Scunthorpe were honourable enough to actually pay for Martyn Woolford (and a six-figure sum, no less). However, given that exact details of the deal were never released, and the general consensus that a fair amount of the fee was tied down in clauses, would it be all that surprising to learn that Woolford putting in a man-of-the-match performance in the playoff final triggered a clause which meant that York had to hand back every penny they had received?

Of course, the Woolford deal did in fact represent a decent bit of business, and if anything Scunthorpe's promotion could have been good news for City financially. But this week's events show that we're back to being screwed over. Or do they? The case is complex enough to have seemingly confused both the club and the Press, so let's examine the details more closely. This much is clear: that Sodje was unable to sign a contract with any English club as a result of being a Nigerian national, and that the only way to overcome this was for the player to gain either a work permit, or Indefinite Leave to remain in the UK. The former is a red herring, because not only can work permits only be granted to Football League players, they are also dependent on the player having turned out for 75% of his national team's matches. It is Indefinite Leave, then, which Sodje has been awarded, apparently with the help of £5,000 of McGill's own money, plus letters of recommendation from our Most Reverend and Right Honourable season-ticket holder John Sentamu, and Hugh Bayley MP. Indefinite Leave, unlike a work permit, is never dependent on any contract of work, which means that the club's statement that Sodje finally received it this April 'on the basis he would sign a contract with York City Football Club' seems to rest either on a misunderstanding, or more likely a deliberate conflation, of the two concepts.

Certainly, there are 'exceptional circumstances' surrounding the player, but are there any real grounds for claiming that some form of compensation is due? The fact that the club did offer the player a permanent contract as soon as they were able seems irrelevant, as the contract was never signed. The campaigning which the club did on Sodje's behalf to remain in the country also has little relevance to his move to Barnsley, and I would suggest that the impact of these efforts upon the decision to grant him Indefinite Leave may well have been overplayed. All that remains, then, is the £5,000 which McGill provided to cover legal costs. Regardless of whether this is seen as an act of generosity or a hopeful investment which would bear fruit later with a big-money move, it seems that no strings were attached and so Sodje was perfectly entitled to take up the offer and then move on. The club can try to paint the young striker as a pantomime villain all they like, and of course some fans will be only too happy to play along, but we should have learnt that loyalty from players is the exception rather than the rule in the modern game. What we, and more importantly Jason McGill, should also have learnt is that all possible loopholes should be explored when dealing with player's contracts, but this affair has brought to light that our chairman is still demonstrating considerable naivety. Of course, this is infinitely preferable to owners who openly try to asset-strip the club, but repeatedly missing out on financial reward for players which the club has developed is hugely regrettable given the continually perilous state of the club's finances. The only saving grace is that on this occasion, the playing squad won't be adversely effected by the loss.

Sod off to Barnsley

The prevailing reaction amongst fans of both York City and Barnsley, upon hearing that young striker Onome Sodje has been catapulted four divisions from being an unwanted fringe player at the former to a hot prospect at the latter, has been one of mutual bemusement. Surely, they cry, it can only be sheer idiocy which has led the Championship side to sign a player who was only grudgingly offered a one-year extension to his City contract as a result of a 'gentlemen's agreement' which Martin Foyle went out of his way to distance himself from. Surely, they yell, a striker who has failed to shine in a mediocre non-league side will find himself hopelessly out of his depth at a much higher level.

In all likelihood, of course, they are right. Sodje has, if anything, appeared to go backwards during his time at Bootham Crescent, the only thing saving him from the ire of supporters being his occasional propensity to produce something exceptional (see: his stunning late equaliser at Torquay early last season). The periods inbetween these moments have consisted of ridiculous hairdos, repeated failure to pick out better-placed team-mates when through on goal, and a general lack of effort.

And yet, and yet. History has taught us many a time that a player's performance at City does not always presage his future career trajectory. The exit of Jon Parkin during our relegation season under Brass might not have been met with the same apparent glee as today's announcement, but few could have envisaged his rise to solid Championship-level striker. Likewise Iwelumo, Cresswell, more recently Stockdale and innumerable others whose post-York exploits caused a few raised eyebrows at the least. And it is precisely those rare moments of brilliance, alluded to earlier, which hint that Sodje just might be capable of joining that list; indeed, it is the very fact that the young Nigerian showed such promise in his first few months at the club which probably explains the vehemence of City fans' ill-feeling toward him upon his departure. The bar was set high, and Sodje's performances over the last season and a half - increasingly restricted to cameo roles - never came close to reaching it. The very opposite path, in fact, to that mapped by Richard Brodie, whose rapid improvement came as a pleasant surprise to those who had written him off as an unfit, ruddy-cheeked no-hoper.

So, where will Sodje find himself in another year? On the scrap-heap or angling for a big-money move to a Premiership side? Let's stop giggling at the silly South Yorkshire fools for a second and reflect on what qualities they might have seen in the player. Pace? Certainly. Power? Not bad for a little'un. Skill? Has shown it in flashes. Goals? 17 the season before last, in a poor team. The only attributes he can really be said to lack are commitment and an overall understanding of the game. Major drawbacks, no doubt, but perhaps Barnsley consider themselves in a better position to develop these areas of his game than a struggling Conference team susceptible to regular staffing changes. My own feeling is that they are wrong in this; Sodje simply seems to lack the required self-awareness and perseverance to succeed as a professional footballer. I don't, therefore, expect to see footage of him cartwheeling across the Wembley pitch and jiggling his afro in front of the cameras after firing the Tykes to playoff glory. But stranger things have happened.