When championship transfers get done as city wait for first signing

Coventry City are, like they did in 2023, going to be a tad behind their Championship counterparts in preparing for the new season having been involved in an unsuccessful play-off campaign.

The Sky Blues have only recently announced their retained and released list, which involves Jamie Paterson leaving the club but Jamie Allen being kept on having earned another year which was

in the club's favour. Frank Lampard will, no doubt, be after reinforcements in what is his first summer in charge. The club were actually pretty proactive last summer as they backed

Lampard's predecessor Mark Robins; the middle of June marked the arrival of Raphael from Macarthur in Australia, the permanent return of Luis Binks from Bologna and the capture of Jack

Rudoni from relegated Huddersfield Town. Only six signings have been announced so far across the division, including three loan deals made permanent (Jacob Wright to Norwich, Gustavo Puerto

to Hull, Alfons Sampsted to Birmingham). The other three are free agents; Hector Kyprianou to Watford and Daniel Iversen and Jordan Thompson to Preston. Iversen’s deal is believed to have

been sorted for a couple of months. In other words, it is quiet. The window doesn’t officially open until Sunday, June 1. It will close again on Tuesday, June 10 because of the Club World

Cup and then re-open on Monday, June 16 until deadline day on Monday, September 1. It is expected to get a little bit more lively next week – City will be working hard behind the scenes at

their Sky Blue Lodge base – but do not expect an avalanche of deals across the division before players start returning for pre-season training towards the end of the month. This time last

year, there were nine deals confirmed in the Championship waiting to be officially processed when the window opened on June 14 - but then there were only 21 more before the start of July.

Ninety per cent of all signings in the Championship were announced after July 1. In fact, 50 per cent of deals were done after August 1, nearly 40 per cent were done after the first game of

the season on August 10 and 25 per cent in the last two days of the window. For context, City - who signed only six first team players last summer and none on loan - didn't sign their

first, Raphael, until the 14 of June, then they completed deals for Binks and Rudoni the following week. The club had to be patient for their other recruits, though - Oliver Dovin

didn't arrive until the end of July and strikers Brandon Thomas-Asante and Norman Bassette only joined in August, when the season was either looming or, in the latter's case, well

underway. Phil Parkinson, preparing for Wrexham’s return to this level for the first time in 43 years, probably has more work to do than most but he has been preaching patience. He told the

Wrexham Leader: “I know the fans will be eagerly anticipating some signings and things like that but as we know in the past, we have always tried to be patient and bring in the players we

feel are right for the club. “What I have noticed the last three years the Tuesday after the Bank Holiday, the phone calls just go to a different level. Everybody has been waiting for the

play-offs to finish, the Premier League finished that weekend and now the recruitment level cranks up to a certain degree. “As we have always done at this stage of the season, we have some

initial meetings with players and agents but it is still very early in the summer. We are in dialogue with clubs all the time but that's just an ongoing process.”