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Narcis Pelach's little black book of transfer targets as he insists 'not everything is about money'
Narcis Pelach does genuinely have a little black book of potential transfer targets as he reveals players who are currently ‘in a better league than the Championship’ are keen to join him at Stoke City.
Pelach is preparing to enter his first transfer window as Stoke head coach in January, although there are six important fixtures to focus on before the market opens for business on New Year’s Day.
He has been holding regular meetings with sporting director Jon Walters and the recruitment team – and Walters admitted recently that the head coach was bringing some ‘good names’ to the discussions himself, having previously been behind deals like Norwich’s swoop for Borja Sainz as a free agent last year. The 23-year-old is now the Championship’s 15-goal runaway top scorer.
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The Spanish market has more than one appeal – although Sainz was actually brought in from Turkish club Giresunspor – and with ongoing constraints regarding Financial Fair Play it may be even more tempting.
But Pelach insists money won’t always dictate what is make or break when he goes shopping for talent that can make the improvements needed at the bet365 Stadium.
He said: “I like to see players, I enjoy this part of the game as well. I like to evaluate players. We do it in our team, in our staff, after every game. We put a mark for every player from zero to four, with two a normal performance, four very good and zero a very bad performance. You can go to 0.5 or to 0.75 too.
“We enjoy that with the staff. We do a description, we evaluate every player as we have a meeting for a couple of hours talking about every individual so that when we do the reviews we are all on the same page and we can be doing fair line-ups.
“Then I do the same with players that I see with other teams, I’ve been doing it for five years, and I have lots of names of course from Spain as well and other countries. Spanish players are another market – and they are cheaper than British players. That’s a little advantage for us!
“There are players we perhaps cannot afford now but I know that not everything is about money and there are players who are willing to come to Stoke City who are in better leagues than the Championship.
“I will talk to them, I will try to bring them if we can. Not everything is about money. We can do things in creative ways and we have to try to do this because financial rules don’t help us much. There are many teams with money so we have to find a creative way.”
