Hereford United manager Graham Turner says: Criticism of our use of loan system irritates me (From Hereford Times)

Hereford United manager Graham Turner says: Criticism of our use of loan system irritates me

8:40am Thursday 26th February 2009

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ONE thing that has really bugged me, ever since we played Shrewsbury last season with Gary Peters’ outburst after the match, has been comment about our use of loan players.

Earlier in the season, a chap named Adrian Durham on Talk Sport radio, was telling the world it was basically cheating that we had got promotion on the back of our loan players and now, because of that, we were struggling in League 1 and our use of loan players had come home to roost.

What really brought it to my attention was Sky Sports’ George Gavin and Chris Kamara talking about our victory over Leeds and the shock that caused.

And once again, the loan system was referred to. It was suggested that we got promotion on the back of loan players, now we were trying to survive on the back of loan players.

Of course we have brought in, generally, younger players through that system.

But we had a decision to make a couple of seasons ago when transfer windows were introduced in the Football League.

We could not carry a big squad of players so we made a conscious decision to keep an eye on younger players at bigger clubs, cultivate connections with some bigger clubs and use the loan system to our advantage.

Last season, the contributions from Toumani Diagouraga, who was then on loan from Watford, Theo Robinson, Gary Hooper for three months, and Sherjill MacDonald, who had five outstanding games for us, proved crucial to our success.

And the fact their contribution was invaluable was probably the reason it has been brought to everybody’s attention.

We can look at the start of this season and quote just the opposite when, for whatever reason, our loan players had no impact.

But it is a two-way thing. We get an advantage from having players here and, at the same time, the players, and their clubs, get the advantage of playing in our first team.

Gary Hooper is a case in point. I believe that he would have been heading back to the Conference from Southend Reserves, where he was playing his football, until he came to us and scored goals.

Now he is in the top group of goalscorers in League 1 and, in my view, is quite capable of playing in the Championship.

But we gave him that break that was needed in his career.

What nobody seems to have seen is the likes of Leicester who are top of our table and look certain to get promotion yet I have still to hear anyone suggest that they are going to do it on the back of loan players.

Watching their televised game against Yeovil recently, on the pitch they had two loan players from Liverpool, one from Manchester United, one from Arsenal and one from Wolves.

Leeds, the biggest club in our division by miles, had three loan players against us last Tuesday yet I never see any adverse comment concerning that.

So it really gets under my skin when we are referred to as a club that is skint and has to use the loan market.

Maybe we had the sense to use it before anyone else saw its advantages and we will continue to do so.

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