Stickied League 2 Transfer Rumours/Confirmed Transfers 2023/24

[Uncle Pastuzo]

Josh Pask who we were rumoured to be bringing back after a so-so loan last season now rumoured to be joining TNS in the Cymru Premier.

Suppose it could be just to beef them up for their summer Euro games, that has happened before. But particularly for a player who struggles to stay fit a 32-game season for TNS might have appeal, they are streets ahead of the rest of the league and apparently pay well based on trousering UEFA money since time immemorial.

 

[Monkey Tennis]

NL felt very shite at the bottom half of the table this year but very strong at the top end, there’s a lot of players down there who would actually be coup signings for any club in this league. It’s a damn strong league, there’s a reason nobody ever goes straight back down after leaving it and there’s no other league in the country where you can say the same thing.

That's only because League 2 traditionally gathers up all the basket case clubs at the bottom. If it wasn't for total car crashes such as Southend, Grimsby, Oldham and Scunthorpe, we'd have been straight back down there (twice!). Also, the majority of teams coming into the EFL are doing so because they are throwing loadsa money at it. There are no other leagues where the promoted sides' budgets are generally above the average.

Most of the same players that pissed all over the National League were nowhere near good enough in League 2 - the step up was obvious to us. From limited viewing last season, only 4 NL clubs would've stood a chance of staying up in L2 - the rest all looked like the same old shite we used to encounter every week in non-league.

 

[Sestonpoolie]

If our fans get hold of this rumour they’re going put 2 & 2 together and our socials will melt down

Grimsby is the team doing the rounds.
I was going to post it on the Fishyforum last night & watch it explode,but didn't have time.

 

[Chief Rocka]

Grimsby is the team doing the rounds.
I was going to post it on the Fishyforum last night & watch it explode,but didn't have time.

Whilst your at it link Carver to them as well, another one who seemingly isn’t in Portugal

 

[SF_]

Why?

We’ve made five signings and four are from non-league. I’m not going to pretend we’re aren’t spending money but it’s not like we’ve got some ridiculous squad too good for this level.

Our first choice 11 as it stands with maybe one more first choice to be added

Hinchliffe - not played/proven beyond the NL
Lewis - not played/proven beyond NL
Horsfall - proven top end League Two quality player
Johnson - Port Vale reject deemed not good enough for this level last season
Southam-Hales - not played/proven beyond NL
Hippolyte - let go by the worst team in this division last season
Collar - Not played/proven beyond NL
Croasdale - Not played/proven beyond NL
Sarcevic - Proven top end League Two quality
Wootton - Much improved but failed at this level last time round
Madden - Proven top end League Two quality

Ben Hinchcliffe, that name is a blast from the past, surprised he's only 34.

Croasdale & Crankshaw started off as youth players here too.

 

[pontoonlew]

Grimsby is the team doing the rounds.
I was going to post it on the Fishyforum last night & watch it explode,but didn't have time.

Our fans begged for him back for years and he rejected us a couple of times, now I feel if anything it’ll be us rejecting him.

Having said all that, I’m convinced we’re the only place who will get the very best out of him, both he and Hurst will know that

 

[Sestonpoolie]

Our fans begged for him back for years and he rejected us a couple of times, now I feel if anything it’ll be us rejecting him.

Having said all that, I’m convinced we’re the only place who will get the very best out of him, both he and Hurst will know that

You can have Marcus Carver also,two for the price of one.

 

[joethegill]

Part of what you say is fair but saying you’re just not good enough if you don’t go up from that league is absolutely nonsense and shows that you’ve not had enough experience of that league.

2 up from that league when 2nd - 7th make the playoffs make it tougher than any league to get out of and some incredibly good sides still miss out. Even now we’ve gone up, I’d still vote for 3 up 3 down tomorrow

I've worked in the NL for the past 10 years, so with the greatest of respect I have plenty of experience within that level.

Yes, it's tougher than any other league to get promoted from, but that's for good reason. It's so weak teams don't come up to the EFL and continuously struggle to perform at a level that they aren't ready for. If you don't get promoted within the two spaces then sure, you might feel aggrieved at having missed out but at the end of the day you weren't good enough to come up, it really is that simple. Better luck next time and all that. If you increase the promotion spots then you dilute the quality coming into the league, and I'm fairly confident that the EFL have absolutely no desire to let that happen any time soon.

Anyway, wrong thread for all this.

 

[pontoonlew]

I've worked in the NL for the past 10 years, so with the greatest of respect I have plenty of experience within that level.

Yes, it's tougher than any other league to get promoted from, but that's for good reason. It's so weak teams don't come up to the EFL and continuously struggle to perform at a level that they aren't ready for. If you don't get promoted within the two spaces then sure, you might feel aggrieved at having missed out but at the end of the day you weren't good enough to come up, it really is that simple. Better luck next time and all that. If you increase the promotion spots then you dilute the quality coming into the league, and I'm fairly confident that the EFL have absolutely no desire to let that happen any time soon.

Anyway, wrong thread for all this.

I can’t buy that it’ll dilute the quality, in fact quite the opposite. Attendances for 5-6 teams in that division last season outstripped the vast majority of this league for starters, shite sides cling on in this division for years whilst good ones pile up below and when they do come up, they never go straight back.

 

[shoddycollins]

Fair play for being brave enough to say that when Paul Simpson is your manager!

How many World Cups has Dave Challinor won then?

 

[shoddycollins]

Saw plenty of times we 'bent over and spread our cheeks' when we had your man in charge here, if I was a Carlisle fan after surviving the drop last season I would be looking over my shoulder with him around. I appreciate Carlisle is the only club he hasn't been an abject failure however.

Anyway, it's other fans on here bigging up the dream makers, every County fan will be happy to finish in the playoffs, hope you guys can avoid the drop as it's not nice to see the traditional clubs fall through that trap door.

You're talking about 12 years ago when a rookie manager was handed the job at possibly the worst-run club ever to play league football, what exactly did you expect?

 

[Son of Cod]

Are we still pretending Stockport's budget isn't that big?

Oh yeah, they were doing that all last season.

And yet they're getting picked apart. Cheltenham have just signed one of their centre halves. Wild's gone in for a couple where he can. I think Grimsby signed one.

And still none of you daft fuckers have touched their three best players (goalkeeper, Warburton and Spence)

We took their captain, and their only player in the NL TOTY?

I saw an awful lot of live NL football last season and a lot of it was nowhere near the level of L2. There are some good players for sure, and several financially capable clubs who would/will hold their own as EFL clubs, but those clubs are all there for a reason - they were too shite to remain in the EFL in the first place, and so far haven't been good enough to come back. No great underlying factor, just the hard truths. As hard as it is to come back into the EFL with 2 promotion spots, it's equally hard to be shite enough to go down in the first place with just 2 relegation spots, so it works both ways.

As far as I can tell, the only club with genuine reason to feel aggrieved at being relegated for many years is Luton Town with their -30 points. The rest of the clubs who've gone down have bloody well deserved it.

So yes, while there may be clubs who are strong enough to come up and be a nuisance, we haven't seen a club come up and dominate League Two straight away for quite a while now. FGR thought it'd be easy to sail right through, and I'm sure Salford thought the same. No idea how Stockport will do in truth as half the teams in the league haven't got close to completing their squads. I'm not blown away by their signings, they seem competent rather than stand-out. I wonder if their forward line has enough goals in it to be a proper threat at the top end - Madden is a good player but his best days are well behind him, Wootton scored goals a level lower but hasn't at EFL level (although is a good age to show that he can) and Quigley I'm just not having as a top end League Two striker at all.

Luton, Bristol Rovers, Lincoln and Cheltenham all made fairly light(ish) work of getting through L2 in a couple of seasons (Cheltenham might have been 3/4, can't remember?). The standard of L2 when we went down in 20/21 was absolutely pish. The teams that went up were decent and deserved it but beyond that you were looking at distinctly average teams making up the playoffs and upper mid table then a load of poor teams and then a handful of terrible teams saved by two complete basketcases in us and Southend. If that's still the standard of League 2 I reckon both ourselves and Stockport will finish in the top 10 and I'd say the top 6/7 of the NL last season would be comfortable.

 

[Ellis]

You're talking about 12 years ago when a rookie manager was handed the job at possibly the worst-run club ever to play league football, what exactly did you expect?

In what way was Paul Simpson a rookie manager when he was at County? He had about 8 seasons under his belt and had already managed at Rochdale, Carlisle, Preston, and Shrewsbury.

He was an embarrassment here and signed some of the worst dross in our history when our scouts had deals lined up for Jamie Vardy which is his wisdom decided Barry Conlon was better and letting is son steal a wage (hope he’s a better sports scientist than player!). I appreciate he’s a club legend for you, but as a manager he’s a serial loser. I hope his first full season in management after a decade out of a management job is a good one.

Can tell you for a fact that Challinor is a significantly better manager even if you won’t believe it until this season.

 

[Salvador]

I can’t buy that it’ll dilute the quality, in fact quite the opposite. Attendances for 5-6 teams in that division last season outstripped the vast majority of this league for starters, shite sides cling on in this division for years whilst good ones pile up below and when they do come up, they never go straight back.

Personally, I'm all for increasing the promotion/relegation places from L2-NL. But that attendance argument is weak. If all of that really mattered then Bradford wouldn't be three leagues below Bournemouth. Accy Stanley and Morecambe wouldn't be in league one. The clubs with the (relatively) big attendances in the NL are all there on merit, that includes the ex league clubs. They often were the shite sides clinging on or being basket-casey for years in the EFL... until they weren't.
I say all this fully aware that had relegation been in place in the old re-election era then clubs like my own (and the likes of Crewe, Hartlepool, Halifax, Stockport etc) which were regulary propping up the 4th tier would've been out of the EFL far sooner (or in ours and Crewe's case - for the first time ).

 

[Salvador]

In what way was Paul Simpson a rookie manager when he was at County? He had about 8 seasons under his belt and had already managed at Rochdale, Carlisle, Preston, and Shrewsbury.

He was an embarrassment here and signed some of the worst dross in our history when our scouts had deals lined up for Jamie Vardy which is his wisdom decided Barry Conlon was better and letting is son steal a wage (hope he’s a better sports scientist than player!). I appreciate he’s a club legend for you, but as a manager he’s a serial loser. I hope his first full season in management after a decade out of a management job is a good one.

Can tell you for a fact that Challinor is a significantly better manager even if you won’t believe it until this season.

It's ancient history and I know he's done other stuff since, in a number 2 role with Derby or Newcastle. But I can't look past this run.
2001-2 - Dale finish 5th, lose in playoffs.
2002-3. Paul Simpson takes charge. Dale finish 19th.
2003-4 Simpson takes charge at Carlisle. Carlisle relegated.

 

[Crewelad87]

Signed Rod Mcdonald, previously of Carlisle. Abit underwhelmed by this signing, there were a few rumors going around that it could be Micheal Nottingham who would have been an excellent signing. But that's now two defenders who struggled to get in 20th place Carlisles team and were subsequently released signed up by us. Can't say I'm massively confident going into next season, especially with our back line.

 

[Ellis]

I can’t buy that it’ll dilute the quality, in fact quite the opposite. Attendances for 5-6 teams in that division last season outstripped the vast majority of this league for starters, shite sides cling on in this division for years whilst good ones pile up below and when they do come up, they never go straight back.

Yeah it's bollocks, I agree its a bit of myth that teams go straight back up on their next season, but by and large most of them end up going up after a few seasons of rebuilding. The smaller bankrolled clubs at this level struggle as they're limited by the 55% wage cap rule but they still consistently do okay that from a football perspective they haven't diluted the quality.

When was the last time a team which got promoted, and that includes some of the plastic clubs, went straight back down or really struggled? Barrow have struggled and if the established league 2 clubs were better, they would have gone straight back down. They don't as there is always an existing league club worse than them through bad management and that is the crux of it. It's not possible to get into the football league by being a basket case, you're either funded well, extremely well run, or both. That always lends itself to positive outcomes on the pitch irrespective of the level of football.

To say going to a 3 up 3 down from the national league will result in the football league losing its quality is just a poor argument; I have more respect for being people being open and saying it shouldn't be expanded out of self preservation reasons.

 

[Ellis]

It's ancient history and I know he's done other stuff since, in a number 2 role with Derby or Newcastle. But I can't look past this run.
2001-2 - Dale finish 5th, lose in playoffs.
2002-3. Paul Simpson takes charge. Dale finish 19th.
2003-4 Simpson takes charge at Carlisle. Carlisle relegated.

I understand Carlisle really rate him, but objectively looking at his record there is a reason this is his first time back in senior management since he left us.

 

[Northenblues]

In what way was Paul Simpson a rookie manager when he was at County? He had about 8 seasons under his belt and had already managed at Rochdale, Carlisle, Preston, and Shrewsbury.

He was an embarrassment here and signed some of the worst dross in our history when our scouts had deals lined up for Jamie Vardy which is his wisdom decided Barry Conlon was better and letting is son steal a wage (hope he’s a better sports scientist than player!). I appreciate he’s a club legend for you, but as a manager he’s a serial loser. I hope his first full season in management after a decade out of a management job is a good one.

Can tell you for a fact that Challinor is a significantly better manager even if you won’t believe it until this season.

Challinor has done well at two heavily financially backed clubs in Fylde and Stockport, with Hartlepool the exception. He has never proven himself in League Two. Simpson has a League Two winners medal, an under 20's world cup winning medal and has also achieved promotion from the National League.

 

[Northenblues]

Signed Rod Mcdonald, previously of Carlisle. Abit underwhelmed by this signing, there were a few rumors going around that it could be Micheal Nottingham who would have been an excellent signing. But that's now two defenders who struggled to get in 20th place Carlisles team and were subsequently released signed up by us. Can't say I'm massively confident going into next season, especially with our back line.

Crewe was always a possession-based side at this level from my memory, I recognise the style may change under the new manager, but if he wants to play a similar way to Artell then McDonald and Mellor will struggle.

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

Crewe was always a possession-based side at this level from my memory, I recognise the style may change under the new manager, but if he wants to play a similar way to Artell then McDonald and Mellor will struggle.

Both only been signed because they're cheap and live locally. Club has neglected the defence and keeper positions for years and would rather spunk the budget on injury prone midfielders and forwards than address a young and terribly weak backline.

With them being on 12 month deals, I reckon they'll be cover. Think an RB will come in on loan to push Mellor to backup and can still see us signing another CB as if McDonald got injured, we'll be horrendously exposed by CBs who had a torrid time in L1 last season.

 

[Son of Cod]

Our fans begged for him back for years and he rejected us a couple of times, now I feel if anything it’ll be us rejecting him.

Having said all that, I’m convinced we’re the only place who will get the very best out of him, both he and Hurst will know that

I don't want Bogle back. Massive risk. Although if he comes back and is shite then at least we won't have to suffer the rumours on The Fishy every single window.

 

[Stocky]

Sick of these League Two flapping their gums about what a great league it is. It's rubbish.

I've seen County play in step 2 down to step 6 of the English football pyramid. It's not our first rodeo ffs. Seen it all, promotions, relegations etc. I know exactly what the standard of this league will be for the most part and that is shite. Whether this team plus the additions can be one of the best three teams, seven teams or whatever I genuinley couldn't tell you.

 

[Ellis]

Challinor has done well at two heavily financially backed clubs in Fylde and Stockport, with Hartlepool the exception. He has never proven himself in League Two. Simpson has a League Two winners medal, an under 20's world cup winning medal and has also achieved promotion from the National League.

Kids football has no relevance to how good of a manager in senior football, so I am indifferent on that one.

Like I said, appreciate he will need a season and more in the football league but he is an excellent manager who if I am honest probably won't be with us long if he can be as successful as he was last season. Non league or budget aside, not many managers could put together the run he did to save our season.

 

[pontoonlew]

Inbound for us today, i THINK it’s Glennon.

We’re also working on a deal for Jon Nolan

 

[Ellis]

Inbound for us today, i THINK it’s Glennon.

We’re also working on a deal for Jon Nolan

Nolan at Grimsby will add another layer to the GRUDGE match of County Grimsby. We will have our own pantomime villain to shout at.

 

[Conker]

.

Yeah it's bollocks, I agree its a bit of myth that teams go straight back up on their next season, but by and large most of them end up going up after a few seasons of rebuilding. The smaller bankrolled clubs at this level struggle as they're limited by the 55% wage cap rule but they still consistently do okay that from a football perspective they haven't diluted the quality.

When was the last time a team which got promoted, and that includes some of the plastic clubs, went straight back down or really struggled? Barrow have struggled and if the established league 2 clubs were better, they would have gone straight back down. They don't as there is always an existing league club worse than them through bad management and that is the crux of it. It's not possible to get into the football league by being a basket case, you're either funded well, extremely well run, or both. That always lends itself to positive outcomes on the pitch irrespective of the level of football.

To say going to a 3 up 3 down from the national league will result in the football league losing its quality is just a poor argument; I have more respect for being people being open and saying it shouldn't be expanded out of self preservation reasons.

Nobody is completely limited by the 55% wage cap rule in reality, the only way the promotion/relegation should change is if there is a mutual agreement to not give the likes of Stockport and Wrexham the financial freedom to spend obscene amounts, same goes for Salford and my own club for a season or two aswell. The leagues will have to fall in line with more strict financial fair play.

 

[hellogregory]

In what way was Paul Simpson a rookie manager when he was at County? He had about 8 seasons under his belt and had already managed at Rochdale, Carlisle, Preston, and Shrewsbury.

He was an embarrassment here and signed some of the worst dross in our history when our scouts had deals lined up for Jamie Vardy which is his wisdom decided Barry Conlon was better and letting is son steal a wage (hope he’s a better sports scientist than player!). I appreciate he’s a club legend for you, but as a manager he’s a serial loser. I hope his first full season in management after a decade out of a management job is a good one.

Can tell you for a fact that Challinor is a significantly better manager even if you won’t believe it until this season.

Not really true though is it. He’s actually won this league, won promotion from the league below and won an under 20 World Cup during his time with England. That’s not exactly the record of a serial loser.

Challinor may well end up having a better 22/23 season, that wouldn’t surprise me at all, but to state it as FACT that he’s a better manager is an utterly ludicrous statement considering Challinor is completely unproven at this level. It’s not possible for it to be fact. Opinion yeah, not fact, the only fact is that Challinor has done fuck all so far at this level.

 

[Ellis]

This must be what we're like when someone says Gannon is a bit of a shit manager I guess!

 

[GTFCfish]

Nolan at Grimsby will add another layer to the GRUDGE match of County Grimsby. We will have our own pantomime villain to shout at.

Why what other grudges are there?

Definitely nothing our side as we don’t hold grudges here............