It’s not often that the vast majority of Premier League clubs are all interested in the same transfer, but one talented homegrown player believes he received 90% of the league’s attention.
Greg Halford, a former Premier League player, claimed that 90% of top-flight clubs tried to sign him early in his career.
As a teenager, the defender, now 38 and still playing for Hashtag United, made headlines breaking into a Colchester United squad that he helped achieve promotion to the Championship with. His promise won him four Under-20 caps for England.
It also drew a lot of transfer attention. Halford eventually joined Reading in the January transfer window of 2007, before going on to Sunderland the following summer.
“It was the season where Sunderland were really struggling first half of the season, we ended up playing them away in December and got a draw,” Halford explained on Undr The Cosh.
“Back then, they had a home and away man of the match. Quinny [Sunderland chairman Niall Quinn] walks in and grabs me and Grant Leadbitter. ‘What are you doing in January, we’d like to sign you,’ he said.
“At the time, I had literally 90% of the Premier League interested in signing me.” I was thinking, they’re struggling in the Championship, and I don’t really want to go since I knew I’d be back in the Premier League in January.
“So I just said ‘look, I’m flattered, but I think things are going to happening differently in January’, knowing that I was going to the Premier League.”
In addition to his 90% claim, he went on to say, “I believe only Chelsea and Spurs did not make an offer.”
Halford failed to make an impression at then-Premier League side Reading, and newly-promoted Sunderland eventually got their man. But it didn’t work out with the Black Cats either, with loan spells at Charlton and Sheffield United before joining Wolves on a permanent basis.
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