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](https://i0.wp.com/www.flashfootballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Greg-Halford-2.jpg?resize=1059%2C703&ssl=1)
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.
![Greg Halford](https://i0.wp.com/www.flashfootballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Greg-Halford.jpg?resize=1188%2C668&ssl=1)
“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.
![Noel Tornqvist](https://i0.wp.com/www.flashfootballnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Noel-Tornqvist-2.jpeg?resize=1200%2C675&ssl=1)
“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.
Leave a Comment