Lee Dykes on the club's recruitment policy
Head of Recruitment Lee Dykes spoke to us about the club’s recruitment policy as this season’s final transfer window draws to a close.
“What we will never do is panic,” he said. “I know some of the fans have been thinking that we do need to see new blood in the building, so it was good to get Martin Smith done with Sunderland, and we’ve obviously been working away with Louis Pedro as well.
“We’ve had a lot of targets that we’ve gone for but we haven’t been able to get them over the line yet. We’ll be revisiting some of those in the summer.
“What we don’t want is to get into a situation where the football club was two years ago, where we were panicking and throwing money at players who turned out to be the wrong characters.
“If we do that, slowly but surely we’ll see Carlisle United in the bottom half of the division again. We don’t want that because our immediate aim and ambition is to be competing in the top half.
“To do that you need the right characters and we’re working diligently behind the scenes to bring one, possibly two more faces in before the loan deadline closes.
“Please don’t forget we have a very good squad of players here. There are 13 professionals who don’t feature every week, and every single one of them wants to be playing a part.”
Speaking specifically about the process for bringing a player based abroad into the fold, he said: “In my job you can’t see every minute of every game and at our level you don’t get people who can go abroad and be an eye on your behalf.
“However, what we do have is a strong network of people we can trust. That’s something I have built up over a number of years.”
“With Louis Pedro, when we watched the first bit of footage we wondered why he hadn’t been signed by clubs higher up the ladder,” he continued. “We decided to look into it further and we managed to get him into the building. That gives us the chance to confirm with our own eyes what we’ve seen on video.
“We spoke to people to find out more about his background and he’s had a really good upbringing at an academy in Holland. Is he ready to go and start a game for us yet … who knows? Only time will tell on that.
“As with any player, you do your due diligence and you hope they will be a success because, if they are, the club will benefit as well.”
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