Are United's signings a recipe for success?

Reviewing a transfer window that posed more questions than it answered

Creating a good football team is much like cooking a good meal. The food shop is the summer transfer window, finding and buying as many good ingredients as you can. The recipe is the tactical plan, organising a strategy to get everything out of those ingredients. The cooking itself is the week-to-week slog of football matches; frying, grilling, steaming, or baking to bring your delicious meal to life, and get the results you planned for. The seasoning is the January transfer window, hoping that a pinch of salt or a dash of paprika can lift your end product. And the quality of the hopefully mouthwatering and memorable meal at the end of it all is your league position, determining the success of all the previous steps and how it all came together.

Barring any unlikely late out-of-window free agent arrivals, step one of United’s culinary footballing feast is now complete. Strang, Monk, and the rest of the recruitment team have been to the big Tesco on Newmarket Road and done their big shop. And now that we can see all the ingredients lined up on the kitchen counter, have they picked up some fresh, exciting produce ready to serve up an enticing and unique flavour combination? Or have they just grabbed a yellow-stickered ding meal from the cast offs that are past their sell-by date?

Photo courtesy of Ben Phillips

Let’s start by recapping the window. Cambridge United made a total of 12 signings this summer, split in half with loan deals and permanent signings - meaning, as readers will be aware by now, that one of the six loan signings will have to sit out of every match day squad, as five is the limit.

In goal we picked up Vicente Reyes on loan from Norwich. At the back, Kell Watts opened the window’s proceedings on a free transfer, and James Gibbons re-joined the club, this time on a permanent basis. Connor O’Riordan came in as loan cover for Jobe’s desperately unfortunate season-ending ACL injury, and Emmanuel Longelo came in on loan from Birmingham at left-wing back.

In midfield, we picked up the experienced pair of Korey Smith and Gary Gardner on permanent deals, and contrasted them by picking up the young loan signings of exciting attacking midfielder Josh Stokes, and the promising if dubious talent of Taylor Richards. Up front, we replaced our forward line with Shayne Lavery and Ryan Loft on permanent deals, and brought in Dan Nlundulu on loan on deadline day.

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Every single signing has been covered in-depth here at undertheabbeystand.com - head to our Features page to read an introduction on our new arrivals with insight from fans of their previous clubs

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Given our previous two summer windows consisted of a total of seven and five signings respectively, you would expect there might be a decent degree of excitement at the idea of bringing in so many fresh faces. After two fairly gruelling seasons that were, despite being ultimately successful, almost always quite a tough slog to watch, the potential to refresh the squad and build a new one in Monk’s image felt exciting.

So why is the overriding sense among the fanbase one of disappointment? Why do people feel underwhelmed? And are people justified in feeling that the window has done nothing to lift their gloomy spirits as they look at the quality around the division?

We all know that the skill of a good coach is to get the best out of the players they have available. But it’s hard not to feel like we’re coming out of the transfer window with a squad that, on paper at least, feels quite undercooked (maybe this is the sign for the metaphor to die).

Where you want to come out of a transfer window filled with certainties, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the signings as a collective have only served to pose more questions than they’ve answered. The mixture of injury worries, aging legs, and really poor goalscoring records is a potent combination for disappointment. While no one is trying to write them off at this early stage, there is a definite lack of conviction about some of these signings, especially from a transfer window that promised so much.

The whole squad feels like it’s built on a foundation of ifs, buts and maybes.

“If Watts can stay fit…

But even if Loft doesn’t have a good goalscoring record (at all), Lavery’s is decent…

Maybe once Gardner comes in he’ll be the missing piece.”

That is basically the intended spine of the team. And you can do similar with the loanees:

“If O’Riordan fulfils the promise he showed at Crewe…

But what if Stokes can replicate his form at *checks notes* Aldershot (!)…

Maybe Nlundulu just needs the right team and tactics to fulfil his potential.”

It’s worth noting that signings without some sort of question mark around them are extremely rare, and probably unrealistic for a club of our stature. Everyone we sign will have some sort of reason why a club who can offer more attractive wages or ambitions didn’t go for them.

And there is also definitely a world in which these signings come off. You could go back through players we’ve bought in the past and argue an article very similar to this one could have been written chastising our recruitment team that turned out to have got it spot on. I could, very realistically, have sat here in the summer of 2020 and written: “Look at Paul Mullin’s goalscoring record! Wes Hoolahan has had a great career but look how old he is! Jack Iredale’s done his ACL - twice!” And I would’ve looked a fool.

But the context of this specific transfer window is all-important to summing up the fanbase’s feelings towards who we’ve brought in. Firstly, the context of the past three seasons - it’s only natural that fans would like the club to try and flex their muscles in the window as much as they possibly can to avoid treading water every year. From the outside, our number 9 being a loan signing from the same division doesn’t feel like we’re doing that. Secondly, the context of the league we’re in - we knew how strong League One was going to look this year and we needed to do a lot to match that. And thirdly, the context of our manager - we have a manager with serious pedigree who’s never coached below the Championship, so the feeling is that for this partnership with Monk to work, we need to back him with everything he wants. And it’s hard not to feel like we’ve fallen a bit short of doing that.

I don’t want you to think I’m relegating us now. There could be enough in this team to be successful. And I also don’t want you to think I’m writing an article specifically with the purpose of slamming this transfer window as if it has no merit whatsoever. It’s not been disastrous - not by any stretch. But my personal reaction is that it’s been unconvincing. 

At this stage of the season before we’ve seen it come together, it’s worth going through the considerable question marks that surround almost all of our incomings. Going through them one by one, you can choose to look at every signing in one of two ways.

Reyes is a young keeper with a lot of promise, by all accounts a well-liked, shining light in Forest Green’s disastrous second relegation in as many seasons last year. But this is the highest level he has ever played at, and he is a young ‘keeper who, like they all do, will have mistakes in him to iron out. So far we’ve seen his decent shot-stopping counteracted by his lack of assertiveness at times between the sticks. Not much of an upgrade on Mannion from first impressions, especially when an apparently mentally broken Stevens is all that’s waiting in the wings.

Kell Watts looked on paper to be a really promising start to the window - he is the great balance of a good age but with plenty of experience at this level. He’s also tall and, reportedly, good with his feet. But, I say reportedly because the fact he’s been instantly on the treatment table, as we were warned about, is frustrating. He can’t fulfil much of that promise if he’s unavailable.

Connor O’Riordan has plenty of rave reviews, and looked to be a brilliant season-long replacement for the injured Jobe - a loan deal to suit all parties. But early viewings indicate he’s still clearly a young player learning the game and he’s been found guilty of a few mistakes leading to goals already this season. It’s easy to forget that despite his extremely good reputation, this is the highest level he has played at beyond a handful of minutes for Blackburn.

Emmanuel Longelo looks like an exciting addition, with pace to burn and plenty of attacking intent with the ball. But, as many Birmingham fans have told us, his defending leaves a lot to be desired, to the point where they ended up dropping him last season for someone more reliable. In fact, he hadn’t started a regular run of games since the start of last season for Blues.

Korey Smith has great pedigree, and is unanimously well loved everywhere he’s been. But he’s not getting any younger and after being a bit-part player at right back (in a promotion winning side it has to be said), he’s now being asked to essentially play every minute of a 46-game season in central midfield. It’s a big ask.

Alongside him, Gary Gardner is another central midfielder with great pedigree. But he only started three games last season - just one in the league and the last of which was on the 16th of January - and played a grand total of 20 minutes in total, all off the bench, after January for Birmingham. It’s understandable then why he’s taking a while to get up to speed, but once he does it’s about how much of an impact he has in such a crucial area of the pitch for us. That’s the biggest lingering question mark of them all, and it feels like it could be a big decider of our fate this season.

Josh Stokes is clearly an exciting prospect, but in terms of numbers we only have a very good first half of last season for National League Aldershot to go off - even in that same season when he returned to the Shots he only notched 2 in 19, compared to the 13 in 26 he’d managed in the first half. A big step up for a young man.

The upside of Taylor Richards is obvious: a kid bought by Brighton for £2.5 million pounds just simply must have a lot of quality. But where has it been for the past four seasons? Because both Birmingham and QPR fans are yet to see it, so we’re asking a lot of our coaching staff to try and find it again.

Lavery is the one with clear quality, maybe the only unanimously positive signing of the window, and who has already shown us how dangerous he can be - bar some rusty finishing he’d have a more impressive goal tally to show for it too. Aside from some potential injury warnings, the big question was not on Lavs himself, but who partnered him.

Ryan Loft is a “big lad who tries hard”, or so we’ve heard as we’re yet to see him in a U’s shirt. But he has never notched double figures in a season. And the reviews from Vale and Rovers fans couldn’t be much worse. There’s a lot to prove for Lofty, especially considering we paid a fee for him for what could amount to a four-year deal.

And the same with Dan Nlundulu, who racked up a lot of minutes last season off the bench but last started a league game in November. He has 8 career league goals at 25 years old, and only one in the league for a Bolton side who finished 3rd and scored 86 goals along the way last season. His best scoring season is 4 league goals.

I feel a bit sorry for Loft and Nlundulu. They might well have a lot to contribute to how Monk wants to play, and could between them be the perfect foil for Lavery. But the whole window felt like it felt rested on who that striker was. And to add to the context of this transfer window mentioned above, it just feels like we were all waiting for a bigger name with a more impressive profile to satisfy what had become a baying fanbase by the end of the window. We’d heard Assombalonga, Hogan and Washington, and ended up with Loft and Nlundulu. It’s hard not to believe a bit of hype when the rumours are flying around and then feel let down when reality hits home.

Everything I’ve spoken about above could be viewed through a different spectre. You can think, well there’s no reason why Gardner can’t pick up where he left off, with his exclusively Premier League and Championship CV? Longelo will finally be playing in his preferred left wing back position and not need to be defensively relied upon. Stokes similarly will get a long run of games in a creative role in a side that wants to have the ball on the deck. Lavery has found a home, Nlundulu and Loft just need the right environment and system. Etc, etc, etc.

But in a league where we are a small plankton surrounded by blood-thirsty sharks, we are asking for a lot of these questionable signings to work out. The gambles have to pay off, more ifs have to turn into yeses than not.

Trying to analyse this transfer window is like a litmus test for your general outlook on Cambridge United. I can totally respect someone who looks at this window and picks out all the nuggets of positivity I’ve mentioned, and generates it into excitement. Some will go very far the other way and only see the worst case scenario. I am probably on the sceptical side of the fence: on paper, which right now is all we have to go by, for me it’s been an unconvincing window.

The proof, as ever, will be in the pudding.