Peter Ridsdale exclusive: Preston North End director on the transfer window, summer prediction, Jeppe Okkels and more

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Preston North End director speaks to the Lancashire Post after transfer deadline day

The mid-season transfer window has closed and Preston North End director Peter Ridsdale has now reflected on the club’s business over the last month.

Defender Lewis Gibson was signed permanently, from Plymouth Argyle, for a reported fee in excess of £1.5million. Young left back Jayden Meghoma then arrived mid way through the window, on loan from Brentford. And Ryan Porteous became North End’s third recruit on transfer deadline day, with the Scotland international joining until the end of the season from Watford.

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On the outgoing front there were no permanent departures from Preston. Kian Best went to Bohemians, Jeppe Okkels joined Aberdeen and Layton Stewart signed for FC Thun - all on loan, although the latter two club’s have buy options inserted. Josh Bowler’s loan from Nottingham Forest was cancelled by mutual agreement while youngsters Kitt Nelson, Kacper Pasiek and Kian Taylor all secured loans too.

“I’m pleased with it,” Ridsdale told the Lancashire Post. “We went into the window believing we needed an additional centre back. We knew we'd been targeting Lewis for a while and we've been making it clear for some time that we'd like a left wing-back, if we could find one, so that Kaine (Kesler-Hayden) could play on his more natural side on the right. So, the fact we brought Jayden in and then we brought Lewis in, relatively early, we were very pleased with.

“We weren't necessarily going to add more but it was always one of those... if there was an opportunistic one we could do then we might, but the budget was tight. Obviously, it depended in part on whether Josh Bowler was going to stay or not, because clearly we were paying for him. We managed to do a deal with Luton and Forest last weekend to free up some of that money. And then, sadly, I was at a game on Saturday with James Wallace and we got a message from Paul (Heckingbottom) to say that Jordan (Storey) had had a scan and it was worse than we thought initially.

“And therefore we should try, if we could, to use any money we got to bring in a right sided centre-half. We always have a list. James has got a list he talks to Paul about all the time. And the question then was who on the list was available. Ryan was number one on the list. We weren't sure if we could get him. Then we spent, following the game on Saturday when we left, time talking to Ryan's agent and to Watford and we did the deal at 12 minutes past nine on Sunday night.

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“With Kaine and Jayden, they're both Premier League players. Their clubs have put them in here to get experience in the Championship and at no stage have they ever intimated that there is a desire or willingness to sell those players. My gut feel, knowing what's happening in the market at the moment and that they are Premier League, is that their expectation level of what they think those players might be worth, is probably way above anything we've historically paid for a permanent transfer.

“You just have to look at some of the players we've had from the Premier League on loan and what value they've gone for when they've been sold. Whether it be Sepp van den Berg, whether it be Liam Delap, Jordan Pickford, you just go through them all. They're tens of millions; they're not half a million, two million. So, each loan falls into different categories. We have an option on Sam Greenwood. Ryan, I don't want to go into too much detail, but if he likes it here and we like him, there is a chance we might have discussions beyond the summer.”

North End boss Paul Heckingbottom had spoken about recruiting a midfield player in the final week or so of the window, following injury to his captain Ben Whiteman. One player strongly linked was Lewis O’Brien of Nottingham Forest but in the end PNE walked away from a deal and he joined Swansea City on loan for the rest of the season. A defender, as of Saturday, became the club’s priority but as it was PNE’s number one midfield target proved impossible to get.

“There's a balance between individual players who might be available and what positions you need to fill,” said Ridsdale, when asked if there was scope to only make one more signing. “If I'm sitting there just looking at the squad, apart from the fact that obviously Ben Whiteman’s injured, the one part of the field you could argue we are well supplied with options is midfield. And therefore, it was never a priority in terms of spending money in that position and particularly if it was not for a permanent signing. Having said that, there was a particular player that the manager would have signed if he could have done.

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“That player became unaffordable anyway, because of the deal that the club were insisting on. And irrespective of whether we'd done Ryan or not, we would not have been able to do the deal. It wasn't, in our opinion, value for money for a loan. It was way above anything that we pay any of our players in the squad... way above. So I talked it through long and hard with Paul on Saturday night. I talked to him on Sunday again. His decision, recognising what the demands of the squad would be, was that he wanted to bring in the right-sided centre-half. He wanted Ryan and that's why we went down that route.”

As for the Bowler situation it took North End time to get the Forest loan man off the books, due to his parent club being against a recall to the City Ground. Preston had to work to find Bowler - for whom the wage outlay was towards the top of PNE’s squad - a solution.

“Well, the issue was there was no recall clause and the only way in which Nottingham Forest would recall him is if they'd already got a deal with another club to take him,” said Ridsdale. “So, they didn't really mind about that. It wasn't their problem because they got a guarantee. We had to carry on paying him to the end of the year if he stayed with us. So, our challenge was to talk to other clubs about who might be interested in him and persuade them that they wanted him, which we did.

“We organised for Josh to talk to Luton. They then told Forest that they were prepared to take him for the rest of the season. Only on the back of Luton agreeing that with Forest did Forest then recall him. But that's a standard process you go through if you have no recall clause in a contract. We did exactly the same with Stoke City and Liam Delap a couple of years ago where there was no recall clause in that, but we'd done a deal with Stoke and Liam to come to us and Man City, on the back of that, recalled him.”

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Jeppe OkkelsJeppe Okkels
Jeppe Okkels | Camera Sport

A deal which generated plenty of discussion in January was the loan exit of Jeppe Okkels. Preston signed the Danish winger from FC Utrecht in the summer, one day after Ryan Lowe’s departure as manager of North End. The reported fee was £1.7million; Ridsdale suggests that is too high. Regardless, Okkels’ temporary move to Aberdeen - just five months after his seven-figure move to Preston - raised plenty of question marks among the Deepdale faithful.

“Yeah look, we've already as part of this discussion talked about the success of recruitment... whether or not you get 100% right or you don't, who decides on the players, and Jeppe is still our player,” said Ridsdale. “He's currently on loan at Aberdeen, he's hopefully getting good experience and he'll either come back because he's got more games under his belt, or he'll stay there because there is a buyout proposal for him to stay there, if that's what they want to do.

“But he came to us in exactly the same process as every other player. The recruitment team identified him, they put up the clips, the manager at the time wanted him, he insisted that we sign him... we went out and negotiated a deal. The headline numbers I've seen are not true, they're too high, partly because the way in which we structured it. Some was guaranteed and some was based on games, so again he hasn't cost us whatever publicly it’s saying he cost us.

“But all we did as a club was what we do with every other signing and that is the manager wants him and we try and get him. In that case we got him on a structured deal; at the moment he's out on loan to get experience and he's still our player. It was unfortunate timing because, clearly, Ryan was the manager who ultimately signed it off. We'd done the deal on the Friday we played Sheffield United. All the documents were signed. Jeppe just had to turn up here which he did on the Sunday and on that morning I didn't wake up expecting the manager to go.

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“So, it was a done deal. The timing was awful but would we have still signed him? That was the recommendation from everybody involved so we did the deal. But I reiterate that time will tell whether that's a deal that worked or didn't work. He'd already signed the documents on the Friday. It would have been embarrassing to (pull the plug). Was it possible maybe in the sense that on that Sunday, had we not uploaded it as we did to the transfer system? The recruitment team were adamant we should proceed.

“So was Mike Marsh who'd been involved in the discussion and you sign the player for the club don't you? Not just for a manager, because if you sign just for the manager, everybody changes every time the manager changes. So if I had my time again, I'd still have done the deal. Only because of the way in which he was recommended. It wasn't me saying we should sign Jeppe; it was everybody else who was part of the process. He still may come good. If he doesn't, we make our money back. But, three out of five, you know, the odd one may not work out for all sorts of reasons. This one might still, who knows?”

In the final few days of the window there was noise around potential offers coming in for PNE striker Milutin Osmajic - who signed for a reported £2.1million, in the summer of 2023, from Cadiz. He has scored 11 goals in all competitions this season and 19 in 62 appearances for Preston all together. The only approaches for him across the window were very easily rejected.

“I got a text from somebody on Sunday saying ‘I'm really scared, I'm told Osmajic is going’ and I said ‘Well, the only place he's going this weekend is to his sister's wedding,” said Ridsdale. “Look, Milutin will continue to attract interest as he, hopefully, will carry on scoring goals. They're the players that everybody wants. We had no permanent offers for Milutin this window.

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“We had a couple of enquiries about loans which we just laughed off. Why would we loan him? I'm not being funny but you know he's a goal scorer and has immense value which is growing every day. So, we had no permanent offers but we've had some interest and if that continues to grow, because he's scoring goals, that can only be good for the club.”

Attention now swiftly turns to the summer transfer window, which will be Heckingbottom’s first at Deepdale. Ridsdale is anticipating an extremely busy window for the Lilywhites.

“Well, if you look at who's out of contract and then if you look at how many loan players we've got, you have to assume it's going to be one of the busiest summers we've had for a long time,” said Ridsdale. “That's one of the reasons why we gave the contracts to Liam (Lindsay), Jordan and Andrew Hughes. The manager had made his mind up.

“He recognised that if he was going to add to the defence - which we've now subsequently done with Lewis and have another right-sided player to challenge Jordan - you can't go out and suddenly bring in six brand new defenders in one window. And, how much does it cost you? Are they available? So you have to have a balance sometimes between the known and what you're going to add to.

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“But if you look at the rest of the squad, we've got a number of players in key positions out of contract. And as I say, we've already got loans that will, presumably, more than likely go back. So I would have thought that we're going to be talking potentially up to 10 new players, subject to whether or not some of the players we've already got, the manager turns around and says: ‘Actually I have seen them for a bit longer, I'll extend that one or that one.’ That's his recommendation.”

There will be more to come from the Preston North End director over on the Lancashire Post this week - talking contracts, signing younger players, player trading and the club’s recent recruitment.

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