Meet Ryan Loft
Weighing up the arrival of our big man up top
The transfers keep rolling in, and we continue struggling to keep up with them. Where some transfer windows are prone to invoking pile-ons from supporters frustrated by the pace of incoming announcements, that’s one aspect of this window that can’t be criticised, with eight signings confirmed already.
But we need to rewind a few weeks. After spending some time canvassing opinions from fans of his former clubs, we need to give a proper introduction to the fourth of those new signings - Ryan Loft, who, after the arrivals of Kell Watts, Shayne Lavery, and Vicente Reyes, arrives to boost the U’s attacking options.
It’s fair to say, where the first three signings sparked a sense of real excitement, this one has raised a few eyebrows. As a supporter, without a rare intimate knowledge of the breadth of players across the EFL, you can often only go off a combination of Wikipedia career stats and social media fan sentiment from previous clubs in judging the astuteness of a signing. With Watts, Lavery and Reyes, it was obvious that the feeling with which they left their previous clubs was positive - there might have been a legitimate reason to move on, but fans always spoke highly of the player in question.
Loft doesn’t arrive with such good feeling. Ranging from dismay to outright disapproval, the overwhelming consensus is that people can’t quite believe he’s managed to bag himself another deal at the third tier. And even more so that United are the third team to pay a fee for him in less than two years. On the one hand, that must say something about the quality of a player that multiple recruitment teams are all seeing. But on the other, it’s not something that has translated to the terraces on a consistent basis so far - and, judging by his numbers and the willingness clubs have showed to let go of him, to the pitch either.
Ryan Loft is a 6 foot 3 inch, 26-year-old striker. He started his career in Spurs’ youth academy, and after a string of loans at Braintree, Stevenage (where he was described as a young Duncan Ferguson, make of that what you will) and Exeter, he left without ever troubling the first team to sign a two-year deal at Leicester. In the second of those years, he spent the season on loan at League 2 Carlisle and racked up 35 appearances across all competitions, scoring a total of six goals - from just nine starts, it must be noted.
The Brunton Bugle, a Carlisle United podcast, said of Loft:
Ryan did okay in his short spell with us. He featured mostly from the bench in a pretty average-to-poor team. Despite being a big lad, he wasn't a slouch and he certainly worked hard.
But truth is, most of our fans are baffled as to how three separate clubs have now paid a fee to sign him. He didn't look anywhere near good enough to play at League One level.
After leaving Leicester, Loft landed at Scunthorpe, also of League 2, bringing to an end what has been described as a “long pursuit” by manager Neil Cox. On paper, this is where he enjoyed his most fruitful spell, scoring 15 goals in 62 games over two seasons (note that my use of “fruitful” must be taken in context).
Scunny’s no.1 fan site, Iron Bru, gave us this insight:
Ryan has all the attributes to be a decent striker at the level. He is quite quick, mobile, and works hard for the team. He will press defences if you play that way and does a lot of good work outside of the box linking play.
He hasn't seemed to settle long anywhere and he is definitely a confidence player. When he is confident he can be unplayable and a nightmare for defences. We probably didn't see that enough and I think this is likely why he has never really settled anywhere.
He arrived under Neil Cox during the 2020/21 season. It was a strange time as it was the Covid season so we didn't see him play live and were watching on iFollow. He had a purple patch in the four games that ultimately kept us up that year, where we managed wins against Grimsby, Port Vale, Colchester and Harrogate in the January and Loft scored four goals in four games. We only won twice after that and narrowly avoided relegation by three points.
He ended with nine goals in 43 games and a number of assists, which was a fairly productive campaign. He scored six goals in the first half of the following season in a very poor side under Keith Hill. He was sold out of necessity in the January to Bristol Rovers as we were in financial difficulties and heading for the National League. We ended up receiving around 50k which was a fair fee at the time. We ended up relegated and Rovers (his new club) were promoted after panning us 7-0 on that infamous final day!
Overall, he’s yet to prove he can do it regularly at League One level. He was average for us in League Two but showed glimpses of real quality. If you can get him enjoying his football he should be a handful and chip in with a few goals.
Presented without comment, that message from Iron Bru was followed up with the clip below (click the image to watch)…
That move to Bristol Rovers was a two-and-a-half-year deal - another sign in the confidence recruitment teams have in Loft. He ended that season at Rovers with his first promotion, and started the next in League One on fire, with five goals in six games. Partnered with the more diminutive Aaron Collins, who had an extraordinary season himself, the classic little and large combination was clearly successful for a time.
Reiterating that point, the host of Talking Gas pod Charlie Hayne said:
As you can see by his career stats so far, even though he is a striker he is not known for his scoring record. But he will always cause havoc and give 110%. If you’re going to get the best out of him you need to play a quicker, more mobile & technical striker with him. It worked well when he was playing as a two with Aaron Collins next to him.
But that hot streak turned out to be just a streak. With the arrival of John Marquis and Jevani Brown, Loft found himself down the pecking order at the Mem. TalkSPORT commentator and Rovers fan Matt Iles added:
He may have spent 18 months at Bristol Rovers but Ryan Loft was one who many fans were never convinced by.
Signed for a small fee from an out-of-sorts Scunthorpe during our last season in League Two, he was someone who Joey Barton used regularly for the first year or so with the team.
But he quickly fell out of favour and the plan was for him to leave swiftly to pave the way for Jonson Clarke-Harris - a transfer which ultimately fell through in dramatic circumstances in the 2023 summer window.
As a player, Loft is certainly a trier. But he knows what he’s good at, and won’t do much outside of that. His size and presence should be aspects that people fear, but in reality he’s a rather unorthodox footballer and quite baffling given how he wants to play.
He can hold the ball up, but equally he doesn’t tend to embrace the physical side of the game. He can be deeply frustrating at times - that isn’t necessarily down to his efforts but rather just how he deploys the attributes it looks like he should have. The idea of playing up top on his own is one that fans should be fearful of.
He doesn’t shy away from the ball being at his feet, it’s just sometimes what he does with it can be a tough watch.
In terms of positives, a chipped goal against Port Vale in a key game in our League Two promotion-winning season was his finest hour - a rare sign of quality in his time here.
His next step, and his last before landing in CB5, was to that very opponent, Port Vale. In signing him, it’s interesting to note this quote from Vale’s Director of Football:
[Flitcroft] had pursued the striker all throughout the summer due to "his willingness to run unselfishly for the team, creating space or pressing the opposition aggressively"
Unfortunately, those qualities didn’t translate to the pitch. Vale were relegated in what was a dismal season, and Loft ended up losing his place to another ex-U’s favourite Uche Ikpeazu in the second half of the season.
Watching on, Vale fans were less than impressed. The Ale and the Vale podcast told us:
The positives is he works hard. That's where it ends.
He cost us more goals than he had shots on target. For a big lad he doesn't challenge for headers, he isn't strong and he can't finish. He didn't click with our fans at all. It wasn't all his fault but we'd struggled for a goal scorer and then paid money for him which meant fans were on his back early doors.
From then on he shut fans out even when we tried back him. I can't believe another club has paid us money for him, let alone one in the league above. But if you play to his work rate you could have someone to occupy a defender for a bit.
Sorry it's not more positive and hope this comes back to bite us.
There is, clearly, an overwhelming amount of negative points to take from these reviews. The qualities fans have witnessed on the pitch are self-evident from the comments above and don’t need repeating. We’ll wait to watch him ourselves before casting our own judgment on him, but it is understandable why it raises some eyebrows, to put it mildly.
At United, it is rare we spend money on a player. We are a small fish in what this year is an enormous ocean of sharks in League One. The budget has clearly been increased to try and compete, and to be committing money to sign a player who has so overwhelmingly unimpressed throughout his career at this level so far is, at the very least, worrying.
Then there is the question of the contract length. In United’s recent history, it is very rare to see three-year deals handed out. Much less so with the option of a fourth. You have to have faith that there is good reason to pay a fee for a striker who seems to have always struggled in the third tier, and then commit to him until June 2028. A lot of U’s are currently struggling to see that logic, but that is on Loft to prove us all wrong.
If Ryan were reading this, you’d want him to use all these comments as motivation. And from a recruitment perspective, surely football even at our level is too analytic, too advanced, too systematic that players aren’t just signed on vibes - they’re signed on solid data and a plan for how they can play in a set-up.
Let’s end by looking at a few of the positives. As touched on a second ago, Loft has clearly been signed to play a specific role in this squad. Partnering a smaller, more mobile striker (for example Shayne Lavery or Elias Kachunga), his role will be to occupy centre halves, press aggressively, and create spaces for more technical players to operate. With the expectation we go and get another striker still in this window, we may even see him be used predominantly as a ‘finisher’ off the bench - whatever the game state is, if we’re chasing a goal or defending a lead, his size, presence and physicality will be deployed to either hold the ball up or create chaos from set pieces.
The other is the question of confidence - we’ve seen with Mullin and Ironside, to take two examples, how strikers without the best goalscoring record or pedigree can turn into completely different players when they’re in the right environment. It’s fair to say Monk will be the highest pedigree manager Loft has worked under, and along with Jason Euell (a man who knew where the back of the net was) and Barry Corr (we know all about his goalscoring abilities) that could be a route to fashioning a new version of a player who has clearly been derided by fans for a lot of his career so far.
No one is trying to write off a player before he has kicked a ball. That doesn’t help anything. On a few notable occasions, even just in the success of our recent years, we’ve seen how a striker arriving with a modest at best scoring record and a pedigree lesser than Loft’s has been turned into a goalscoring machine or a fan favourite. Or in Paul Mullin’s case, both.
Let’s just hope that, come June 2027, we’re not triggering the fourth year on Loft’s contract for a record that reads “Played: 113, Scored: 5”.