A Walk Down Reading Transfer Departure Memory Lane: 2023/24

It’s the international break and not a huge amount of meaningful football is happening in the UK right now, so I’ve decided to take a walk down memory lane to check in on those who have left the club since the summer of 2019 and how our alumni are now doing.

The final part has arrived, which I appreciate is during a season that is still happening. 2023 was a weird summer, wasn’t it? Bouncing between spells of being forlorn and optimistic, followed by managerial rumours, followed by finally bringing in Ruben Selles.

I imagine he was consulted around all outgoings that we had control over by one of of Mark Bowen (head of football operations) and Brian Carey (director of recruitment) in the summer. Or, at least a little bit more input than the “none at all” during the January “ALL ITEMS MUST GO” fire sale.

Anyway, the rules are that if they left the club in one of the transfer windows, they are counted. If they arrived on loan but are still there, they aren’t, which I think is a solid rule, as it also makes sure that Tom Holmes is only counted once. Well done for making it to the end - here’s your reward.

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2023/24

Manager: Ruben Selles

Club captain: Andy Yiadom

Player of the season: TBC

Final league position: TBC in League One – currently 17th, having been deducted six points, with another two suspended.

Money made from player sales: £4.54 million (Fees for Naby Sarr, Nelson Abbey and Taylan Harris are completely unknown, so not included within this total. Andy Carroll’s release-clause value remains a mystery as well)

Total players who left: 25 (including one loan deal but excluding both Zane Monlouis and Paul Mukairu who are still at the club)

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Departures list

George Puscas: I’ve had strong words for some of the departures during the series, but let me tell you now, this guy is the worst of the lot. I feel like this review may require some kind of parental guidance warning.

Puscas arrived in 2019 from Inter Milan as a promising young forward, having played in the Champions League. He also arrived as our record signing and remains as such to this day. We spent around £7.5 million on this guy and we were absolutely robbed. No club deserves to go through the hardships we have gone through lately, but my word we have not helped ourselves with stupid signings like this, reporting paying him £13,007 a week to be useless, disinterested, lazy, injured and overweight.

He actually started reasonably well in his first season, scoring 14 goals in 42 games. Well, that would be reasonable in most cases. But, again, for what we paid that is abysmal. Following that, we realised we had been sold a dud and did our best to find someone daft enough to take him off our hands, arranging a couple of loans with obligations to buy.

Rather sensibly, the obligations to both loan teams, in each case clubs in Italy’s Serie B, were that if they achieved promotion they had to buy him. The sensible element here is that it wasn’t based on his performance, because he couldn’t be trusted to not pee in his own bathwater and as such we would have never gotten rid of him.

This meant that, after 91 games, 20 goals and five assists (of which 14 goals and three assists came in his first season), we found a patsy in Genoa to mercifully take him off our hands at the second attempt. It was stated by Bowen that the price was “a significant amount of what we paid for him”, but reports in the media suggest this figure was actually around £3 million.

Photo by Charlotte Wilson/Offside/Offside via Getty Images

Personally, I don’t call around 40% of the purchase price ‘significant’, not unless you consider receiving any actual money for him at all as significant. Which, in fairness, is impressive given how… what’s the word for it …ill-equipped for a career as a professional footballer Puscas is.

In case you were wondering, he scored four goals and provided one assist in 27 games last season. Again, this is why we were sensible not to include obligations based on any aspect of his performance. It very much seems like Genoa got promoted in spite of him.

This season, he continues to steal a living with two goals and one assist in 20 appearances and I am absolutely a fully paid-up member of the Genoa FC Appreciation Society. God bless those delightful idiots. Genoa, by the way, are in a comfortable 12th in Serie A at the time of writing.

Puscas bafflingly continues to play for Romania, even to this day. If I were in charge of the national team, I’d cut down a tree in Bucharest, make a broom out of it, pin it in the pitch at the national stadium, put a shirt on it and call it my striker rather than play Puscas. But then, there´s probably a reason I’m not a football manager.

Tom Holmes: Holmes features as the first part of our “Tom Exodus” and was the first casualty of our fundraising attempts during the January 2024 transfer window.

Having spent his youth career with us, Holmes broke through into the first team as early on as the 2017/18 season, but didn’t really get a look into until the 2020/21 season, despite it feeling like he’s been featuring for us longer. This breakthrough was undoubtably aided by his loan spell away at Belgian side KSV Roeselare during the 2019/20 season, when he featured 11 times and provided one assist.

Since coming into the Reading first-team picture, the defender hasn’t looked back. This season, he started as first choice for the starting XI, but fell out of contention after a couple of bad performances at the start of the season. I do sympathise with Holmes – he’s featured prominently for the side during some rough times, and never had much stability around him for his growth.

Perhaps a spell away from the first team is what he needed, despite his performances for the under-21s this season not being great. However, he was recalled to the side towards the end of 2023 and found a new lease of life under Selles and formed a great partnership with Nelson Abbey.

Unfortunately, Luton Town sensed an opportunity with our financial insecurity and signed him during the January transfer window, as mentioned earlier. At this point, he had played 121 times for Reading, with one goal and two assists. It’s worth remembering that he still had 18 months left on his deal at this time, as reports regarding how much Luton Town paid vary from £400,000 to £1 million.

The first figure feels more likely given the desperate need for cash and the ownership’s poor transfer record, notably not even informing the coaching staff or Mark Bowen about the negotiations. However, £1 million feels closer to his true value.

Either way, Luton kindly loaned him back to us for the rest of the season, where he made another 11 appearances before picking up a back injury, albeit returning to the squad for the 1-0 win over Northampton Town. It remains to be seen how he does at Luton, though as they typically play a back three, and if relegated to the Championship, you can see Holmes slotting in nicely. I wish him the best of luck with the future.

Tom McIntyre: The second of our “Tom Exodus”, McIntyre’s story is very similar to his namesake but with one significant difference: he’s Reading born and bred.

He broke through from the academy in the 2018/19 season, making two appearances, before becoming a fully fledged first-teamer in 2019/20, much like Mr. Holmes. Also like Mr Holmes, a centre-back, though left-footed so he occasionally featured at left-back and even defensive midfield.

However, one unfortunate aspect of his development with the club has been injuries, and his knack of collecting them. This limited his playing time to a total of 117 games, with seven goals and four assists.

In January 2024´s notorious fire sale, League One leaders Portsmouth came in and reportedly offered us £75,000 for McIntyre and, with his contract due to run out in the summer, we accepted.

Photo by Nick Potts/PA Images via Getty Images

He made his debut for Portsmouth and had a bit of a shocker, to be honest. Sent off after 54 minutes, he also managed to break his ankle in the process and will be out for the rest of the season. Hopefully he will be able to recover to get some minutes in the Championship next season for Portsmouth, given they are likely to be promoted.

Though some have questioned his overall input during his time with the club, it’s worth noting that he genuinely loves this team and continues to make noises through social media about the issues going on at the club to help raise the awareness. Good luck for next year, Tom!

Tom Ince: The last of the three horsemen of the “Tompocalypse”, Tom Ince originally joined us during January 2022 on loan, in exchange for sending Liam Moore off to Stoke City.

Ince originally joined Stoke City back in 2018 for a significant £10 million transfer fee. He had a reasonable start to life at Stoke, with 41 appearances bringing six goals and nine assists. However, this was a good as it got for him at Stoke and his influence waned as time went on and eventually Ince fell out of favour, hence why he arrived at Reading.

While on loan at Reading, his 15 appearances saw two goals and one assist. Not setting the world on fire, but he really impressed with his work rate. Shortly after he joined, his dad, Paul Ince, came in as manager. You do wonder if the two moves were linked, as Paul Ince hadn’t managed a club since 2014 and Tom Ince was quite a high-profile player for us to be able to bring in.

Nevertheless, his contract expired with Stoke in the summer and he joined Reading almost immediately. In his first full season with Reading, his was a tale of two halves of the season. He started brilliantly, and absolutely ran his socks off for the team. However, as the wheels started to come off in the second half of the season, he was noticeably insolent on the pitch and got away with things like booting the ball out of play or berating young team mates for little or no reason.

Fans speculated whether being the son of the manager was giving him too much leeway to get away with this behaviour, but his work rate never dipped during this time. Shortly before Paul Ince was eventually sacked, Tom Ince picked up an injury and never featured again. Far be it from me to add fuel to the fire, but you do wonder whether he consciously decided to stop playing for the team once his dad had gone.

Anyway, during the summer of 2023 and after Reading had been relegated, his agent let it be known that there was a relegation release clause of £50,000 in his contract, which is a pittance. I mean, seriously? How difficult would it have been to add an extra “0” to that figure? It still would have been a more than reasonable price.

After winning the player of the season award, he packed his bags and went off to Watford, who were not going to look a gift horse in the month after he registered 11 goals and six assists in 51 appearances for a struggling Reading side.

Since his move, his career has stagnated once more and he is struggling to get any playing time at Watford, featuring only seven times in total this season. You can’t help but wonder what impact he would have had for Reading if he had remained, particularly given the sparsity of wide options we have.

Andy Carroll: And so it comes to pass, the telling of part two of the Andrew Thomas Carroll story. He left for West Bromwich Albion, was a bit rubbish and needed a new club. We fancied a bit of that and so Carroll packed his beard-grooming oils and brought his magnificent ponytail back to Berkshire for another stint, looking to try and recapture some of that previous form that had gotten him his move to West Brom.

He left the move a bit late though and had to take the number two shirt as Lucas João already claimed the number nine. Which, to this day, still remains weird. Anyway, ‘Carroll never really recaptured his previous form’ is about the summary of it all. In his only full season with us, he played 32 times and gave us nine goals and two assists. On face value, that’s not a disaster by any stretch. But given he was integral to how Ince liked his team to play football - long, direct balls to the big man up top - he was woefully bad in the air and even worse at holding up the ball, often either losing it, falling over or doing both.

In fairness, he never got the benefit of the doubt from the referee during his time with us and was fouled mercilessly. But then again, he got himself stupidly sent off against Luton Town and that did us no favours whatsoever.

Photo by David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images

By the time Selles came in, it was clear that he was no longer fit for purpose as his legs had gone and Selles likes to play a high-energy, pressing game that would have had Carroll blowing out of his behind after a few minutes. However, he was our only striker so we, Selles and Carroll had to mend and make do.

Carroll started the season and made two appearances, doing nothing of note, and all of a sudden he ended up making a move to French side Amiens due to a previously unmentioned release clause of some sort. Possibly relegation-related, possibly due to interest from overseas. Anyway, the mystery of this clause is enduring because nobody knows if we received any money for this or not, and if not, why not?

Off he went to France, where I imagine they have better-quality hair and beard products for him, and he has so far played 28 times with four goals and one assist. It does rather feel like retirement is just around the corner for him.

As a side note, when he originally joined Reading the first time, he really did take a massive chance on us by dropping down a league and accepting a comparatively low salary of £1,000 per week. Despite how it ended, full credit to Carroll because he really did give it his all for us. He just wasn´t quite the striker we needed, and that is the fault of no one.

Lucas João: Portuguese striker João arrived at the club in the summer of 2019 for an undisclosed fee (though unconfirmed reports place this value at £5 million) from league rivals Sheffield Wednesday. Naturally, big things were expected of him.

But did he deliver? Well, no. Not really. He was something of an enigma for us. Capable of scoring goals, the talent was there for all to see, but his work rate left a lot to be desired much of the time. Of the four seasons that João spent with us, only one of them (2020/21) I’d class as a success. In total, we got 45 goals, 16 assists and a whole bunch of time spent in the treatment room out of 117 appearances. All in all, not money well spent then.

Most disappointingly, once our relegation to League One was confirmed, João removed himself from selection contention. Departing the club as a free transfer, there were rumours that Sheffield Wednesday were looking to resign him. However, this never materialised.

Actually, interest was generally a bit thin on the ground for João but he found himself a home at Chinese Super League club Shanghai Port FC. He won the league with them, playing 10 times, scoring three goals and providing one assist and, when the Chinese season finished, he departed for Qatar in February 2024 to join Umm Salal SC on a deal until the end of the season.

He has so far contributed one goal and one assist in five appearances there. He has not played for national side Angola since 2022. His next move is unclear, but what I think we can agree on is that it was the right time for João to move on from us, as he wouldn’t have been the right fit for the style of play Selles prefers.

Luke Southwood: Academy goalkeeper Southwood, and all-round lovely human being, broke through to the Royals’ first team after a number of goalkeeper departures during the 2020/21 season, and impressed enough to not only become the number one goalkeeper for the 2021/22 season, but also earn an international call-up for the Northern Ireland senior team.

Unfortunately, mistakes started to creep into his game during the 2021/22 season and with Paul Ince’s lack of trust in youth, he was quickly shifted aside for more experienced cover by being loaned out to League One Cheltenham Town, where he became first choice and played 51 games, conceding 73 goals though also keeping 16 clean sheets.

A decision had to be made in the summer: do we reintegrate Southwood into the first team, or do we choose to focus on the continued development of the likes of Coniah Boyce-Clarke? Ultimately, it seems like we went with neither option and Southwood was released from his deal to rejoin Cheltenham permanently for the start of this season.

Photo by David Davies/PA Images via Getty Images

We’ve seen Southwood play for Cheltenham against us twice this season in the league, with Reading winning 1-0 and then drawing 2-2. In total this season, Southwood continues to be their number-one ´keeper and has featured 39 times, conceding 57 goals and keeping nine clean sheets.

His deal expires at the end of the season, but it seems most likely it will be extended, unless he is pinched by a bigger team. He last played for Northern Ireland in 2022 but remains in the picture as a back-up option for the national side.

Yakou Méïté: Méïté arrived at Reading all the way back in the summer of 2016 from PSG, as a young man full of promise. Did we see this promise fulfilled during his seven years with us? Sort of, yeah.

There’s no doubt that we needed and still need a player of his calibre that can play from the right wing, but his injury record was damning, to say the least, only being available for something like 46% of the games during his seven-year stay. With the wages he was on, it would have just been unsustainable to keep him, though we did try to make an offer.

After 165 games, 47 goals and eight assists, he departed in the summer after his contract expired and signed a two-year deal with Championship Side Cardiff City. How is he doing now? 31 games suggests that he is playing regularly, but one goal and 0 assists suggests that he is struggling to perform.

Injuries have played a small part of this, unsurprisingly, but he seems to be struggling to play as part of a front two. Hopefully he can rediscover his form again soon.

Naby Sarr: Sarr had a tough start to life at Reading – he was training with us for a number of weeks, with no contract signed and no guarantee that one could be signed, due to the financial restrictions that were in place. Eventually, once we were able to shift Pușcaș out on loan, we were able to free up wages to sign Sarr on a four-year deal.

During his time with Reading, the centre-back split opinion among fans. Undoubtably prone to a mistake, he just didn’t seem to suit Ince’s style of play and it seems to me that, once Ince left and Noel Hunt came in to revert the team to a 4-4-2 instead of 3-5-2, he was much better for it and we saw an improved, more confident and effective version of him.

In total, we had 25 games out of him, with one goal and one assist. I’d liked to have seen him stay, but in what became a theme for the summer, we were all caught out by an unknown release clause in his contract. As a result, he joined Al-Markhiya in the Qatar Stars League for an unknown fee. Considering he had three years to run, you’d imagine it was at least a six-figure fee. But, this being Reading, we probably set the fee as 1kg of scrap metal.

In truth, we haven’t missed him due to the emergence of players such as Nelson Abbey and Tyler Bindon. This season, he has featured 17 times for Al-Markhiya as he quietly goes about his business for them as their second-biggest star player after former Wolverhampton Wanderers man João Teixeira.

Caylan Vickers: Explosive winger Vickers emerged out of nowhere this season, having only ever previously playing at academy level. His first appearance for us came in August during a league match, but it all really took off for him after his energetic outing against Exeter City in our 9-0 EFL Trophy triumph. After this, he became a regular first-teamer, either starting games or towards the end of his time with us, coming on as an impact substitute.

Right now, we really miss him as we don’t have anyone in the squad who was capable of doing what he did. However, during the January 2024 fire sale, Brighton & Hove Albion saw an opportunity for a player who was allegedly being tracked by Arsenal and Real Madrid as well and swooped in to sign him up for their academy side to develop him further there. It’s not clear how much the fee was, due to it being undisclosed, but he was valued at £1 million at the time, so let’s hope it was something close to that.

Since leaving, he has played five times for Brighton’s under-21s, scoring one goal and assisting one goal. It would be optimistic to expect that he will break through into Brighton’s first team immediately, so I expect next season we will see him out on loan somewhere to gain more experience, then eventually make his breakthrough with Brighton and, after that, be sold to Chelsea for £80 million, as per Brighton’s standard business model for exciting, young players.

Nelson Abbey: Abbey broke through into the first team at the same time as Caylan Vickers, impressing during the EFL Trophy run. Most expected Jeriel Dorsett to be the first centre-back off the academy line, but Abbey seemingly came out of nowhere.

Reading-born Abbey was so good in fact that he often was the captain for the side when Andy Yiadom was not available. And my word, was he good. He featured 31 times for us in total, with 26 of those appearances coming this season, and he was one of the first names on the team sheet.

Unsurprisingly then, when the January transfer window opened and with his deal set to expire at the end of the season, he was attracting admiring glances. It seemed that he was set for a move to Luton Town, but in the end, he joined Olympiacos for an undisclosed fee, probably pennies, as he was only valued at £400,000 at the time of the move.

Photo by Bryn Lennon/Getty Images

It hurt to see him go, it really did, as he was on track to be one of the players of the season for us. So far this season, he has only featured in one game for Olympiacos, strangely enough. I can’t find any reason for why this is, but perhaps they see him a future prospect as opposed to an immediate starter.

If that was the case, surely allowing him to stay on loan with us until the end of the season would have better aided his development in the longer term? We all still love Abbey, and he still follows us as a true Royal.

Shane Long: Shane Long came home in the summer of 2022, signing a one year deal with the team. When he first arrived all the way back in 2005, it was a case of “who?” Now, returning, the Irish forward was seen as a big fish returning to a small pond, an established Premier League player.

It’s an odd set of circumstances really - he returned to help out a former side he cared about, as otherwise it’s not likely he would have joined. However, it felt like his name had more value than what he realistically would be able to offer on the pitch. Indeed, in his season with us, in 32 appearances he only contributed two goals and one assist.

However, what he did offer when he played was mobility. A trait we sorely lacked with Carroll, so he had his uses. And so, at the age of 36, he retired from football and closed the circle on his senior football career by starting it and ending it with Reading.

He’s gone rather quiet since his retirement, so I suspect he’s got his feet up somewhere and enjoying a well earned rest. In some ways, it´s a shame he retired when he did because if we had Smith and Long up top for us, we’d have had a devastatingly handsome forward line.

Dejan Tetek: Former academy midfielder Tetek broke through into the first team during the 2020/21 season. Apparently, anyway. He’s another one that I genuinely cannot ever remember kicking a ball for us, as he always seemed to be injured. How does someone get injured so many times? Was he like Sideshow Bob, constantly stepping on rakes?

He somehow, according to statistics and not my memory, played 21 times for the first team in three seasons. Unsurprisingly, the club chose to release him at the end of his contract in the summer of 2023. Unconfirmed rumours are that the treatment table and physios held a mournful farewell party.

In October 2023, he joined Aldershot Town on a deal until the end of the season, and has so far managed to play 14 times, totalling 734 minutes (that’s an average of 52 minutes per game, maths fans). He even made team of the week in the middle of February in the Vanarama National League.

Scott Dann: Scott Dann arrived in the summer of 2021, on a free transfer from Premier League side Crystal Palace. I imagine the motivation here was to add some experience to the back line, though we already had Michael Morrison and Liam Moore available to us at the time.

Anyway, he arrived initially on a one-year deal which was extended to a second year, and in his first season was initially a regular starter but then picked up a lot of injuries. The benefit of experience certainly rang more true for the 2022/23 season, though he rarely started for us, partly because of injuries and partly because he was so slow it looked like he was running through treacle when playing.

We most often saw him coming off of the bench as part of Paul Ince’s ‘safety-first, protect the result’ approach, to varying degrees of success. It was announced at the end of the season that he would be departing, after 32 games, two goals and one assist for us.

Really though, back in his day he was a solid Premier League level centre-back but he was long past his best when joining us sadly. Since then, he has remained unsigned by any club and has not officially made any retirement announcement.

Liam Moore: Ahh yes, so we finally arrive at Liam Moore. The centre-back arrived from Leicester City as a £1.5 million signing, and really seemed like a good signing for us.

And largely, he was. Often he featured in lists of “best players playing outside of the Premier League” in English football, and even won the 2017/18 player of the season award. Earlier on in his Royals career, he attracted attention from other sides. So much so, during the start of the 2018/19 season he missed the first two games due to allegedly handing in a transfer request after Brighton showed interest.

He later released a statement signalling his intention to stay, though this was the first crack in the relationship. He eventually got his head down and played his way back into the team and was named captain of the side for the 2019/20 season and in 2021 received a call-up to the Jamaica national team.

However, he seemingly didn’t fit Paunović´s style of play and the relationship with the club began to become quite strained, to the point where he announced he wanted to leave the club and had his captaincy removed.

He was sent off to Stoke City on loan and played only six games, and when he returned, it felt like his time with us should and had come to an end. However, there was nobody willing to take on his massive wages, reportedly £35,000 per week. He remained at the club but spent most of the 2022/23 season on the sidelines injured.

We assumed we’d never see him play again, but he made a return under Paul Ince. However, sadly, he was injured during a game and was visibly distressed leaving the pitch. And that was the last we saw of him, sadly bringing down the curtain on what was once a promising career with us after eight goals, five assists and 234 appearances.

Moore was without a club for the rest of 2023. He ended up joining league rivals Northampton Town in February 2024 on a contract until the end of the season and has featured seven times for them so far.

Dom Ballard: Ballard arrived on loan at the start of this season from Southampton, a promising striker who had previously played under Selles, so this move seemed like a no brainer. However, the reason why he features here is because, sadly, after 12 games, five goals and two assists, a loan spell that promised to offer so much was brought to an end after he picked up a serious injury during a league game against Wycome Wanderers.

It was later confirmed by Selles that Ballard had snapped his patellar tendon (ouch!) and would be out for the rest of the season. Ballard returned to Southampton and continues his recovery and rehabilitation there. I am sure that we all wish him the best of recoveries and hope to see him back playing again soon.

Photo by Lee Parker - CameraSport via Getty Images

Junior Hoilett: Hoilett came to us on a free transfer, signing a one-year deal, after leaving Cardiff City at the end of his contract. He had a pretty productive spell with Cardiff previously but seemed to fall out of favour with new manager Mick McCarthy.

Still, their loss was our gain. In his first season, he played as a left-winger for us and did reasonably well, not setting the world on fire. He rather surprisingly signed a deal to extend the contract by a year and adapted to a new position as a wing-back for the 2022/23 season and, again, was fine but not spectacular. In total, we got 62 appearances out of him, with four goals and two assists (the attacking output almost entirely came from his first season), and despite offering him a contract extension, Hoilett opted to depart the club.

A shame really, he would have been handy for us in League One. He signed for MLS side Vancouver Whitecaps, in his native Canada, on a short-term deal until the end of the season, featuring nine times. However, his contract wasn’t extended.

He was rumoured to have been seen training with Reading while he looked for a new club, and some fans got their hopes up, but he ended up joining Scottish side Aberdeen in February and so far has featured seven times for them.

During Hoilett’s time with Reading he represented the Canadian international team and continues to play for them, having been named in the 2023 CONCAF squad.

Ovie Ejaria: Ejaria originally joined us as a loan signing in January of 2019 and then rejoined on loan again for the 2019/20 season, with an obligation to buy him at the end of the deal inserted into the contract.

This was not a smart move, as we were already on the cusp of financial ruin at this stage and the reported £4 million figure that we owed Liverpool was not reasonably something we could afford. But pay it we did, because we had to. But were we at least getting a good player out of the deal that would financially ruin us, right? 39 games, three goals and five assists suggests not.

It really felt like he had a way into the team with John Swift leaving, as we desperately needed a creative midfielder, but he was nowhere to be seen after reported disciplinary issues. He resurfaced again, as he was seen training during the open day at the start of the season and indicated he was hoping to return from an alleged injury soon. But that just never happened.

Ejaria’s last game played for us was on November 8 2022 and he was eventually released from wherever he had disappeared to, with his contract being mutually terminated at the end of 2023 in order to save wages (he was allegedly earning £7,800 a week after relegation), leaving us with a legacy of “What If?” after nine goals, 13 assists and 127 appearances.

Sadly, it just didn’t work out for him or us. He was reportedly training with Plymouth Argyle as he continues his search for another club.

Taylan Harris: Academy striker Taylan Harris made his breakthrough to the senior team this year, coming on as a substitute in our 9-0 win over Exeter in the EFL Trophy, where he scored a goal and assisted another. Quite the debut!

He most prominently featured at academy level, but during the infamous and oft-mentioned January 2024 Fire Sale™, Luton Town surprised us all by swooping in and signing him. I don’t think any of us even realised he was on the radar of other teams.

It is unclear how much he left for, but I can’t imagine it would have been a significant amount of money, given his relative inexperience combined with our precarious financial situation.

The move was so under the radar that very few media outlets even realised it had happened, even now. As yet, I am unable to find any data related to any appearances made for Luton Town. It seems likely he is in the youth side somewhere and considered one for the future. Watch this space, I guess!

Nahum Melvin-Lambert: Academy striker Melvin-Lambert was released from the club in the summer of 2023 after not making any appearances in the senior team, and was picked up by Weymouth, where he has featured seven times and is yet to score a goal.

Rashawn Scott: Academy midfielder Rashawn Rivaldo Scott (apparently his real middle name) was released from the club after barely making any appearances in the senior team. He spent some time on trial for Derby County’s under-23s side during 2023 but does not appear to have signed a deal there and remains without a club. Not to be confused with an NFL player either, which explains the middle name.

Lui Bradbury: Versatile academy winger Bradbury, who could also play up front, was released from his contract in the summer of 2023 after not making an appearance for the senior team. There’s going to be a bit of a copy and paste theme going on here for these players.

He was picked up by Spanish side CD Almuñécar City, so is at least enjoying a bit of sun in his new home.

Ethan Burnett: Defensive midfielder Burnett was released from his contract in the summer of 2023 after not making an appearance for the senior team. He was picked up by National League North side Bishop’s Stortford, where has played five games so far this season.

Josh Green: Right-winger Green was released from his contract in the summer of 2023 after not making an appearance for the senior team. He can now be found at AFC Fylde.

Kian Leavy: Academy midfielder Leavy actually made it through to the first team! Featuring twice, he departed the club in the summer of 2023 after his contract came to an end.

He rocked up at League of Ireland Premier Division club St Patrick’s Athletic and has become a first-team regular there, with 20 appearances and one goal so far this season.

Claudio Osorio: Academy midfielder Claudio Osario, who shares a name with a Venezuelan entrepreneur, was released from his contract after making two first-team appearances. He is currently without a club, but is at least doing better than his namesake, who went bankrupt and has been arrested a few times on various criminal charges. So there’s always that.