Wrexham made U-turn on £19m January transfer that would have broken Championship record

Wrexham director Shaun Harvey has revealed the Championship club aborted a £19million January move for forward Sidiki Cherif.

The Welsh club were linked with the 19-year-old last month, but it did not represent value within the EFL’s spending limits.

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Cherif, who had impressed with French club Angers, joined Fenerbahce instead in a £21.7m move.

In a bid to bolster their squad ahead of a promotion push, Wrexham considered signing the Guinea-born star in what would have been a Championship-record transfer, only to U-turn on a deal.

Taking no risks

Despite the wealth of Wrexham’s Hollywood owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney, adhering to profit and sustainability (PSR) regulations was the defining factor.

“What being sixth in the league did was give us that scope to have the potential to spend every single penny possible that we had available under PSR regulations,” Harvey told the Fearless in Devotion podcast.

“He (Cherif) was one that we looked at that was definitely going to be at the top end of the money that we had available.

“When I say available, I mean under the PSR limits, so you are limited.

“It doesn’t matter how much money you’ve got, you can only lose so much in a three year period.

“We had a look but the challenge with that deal was that he’s a player that’s on the up and it was going to be expensive.

“We had the money to spend, but the final analysis basically came down to that it didn’t represent value in this particular transfer window.”

Spending wisely

Wrexham opted to spend their £5m January budget strengthening multiple areas of the squad.

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The Red Dragons completed the acquisition of Davis Keillor-Dunn from Barnsley, while Bristol City centre-back Zak Vyner also joined the ambitious Welsh club.

Their final signing of the January window saw Sheffield Wednesday striker Bailey Cadamarteri arrive in a £1m deal.

Harvey went on to explain Wrexham’s approach to the window with maintaining squad harmony at the forefront of their thinking.

“January is never going to be a big transfer window,” he said. “We took our normal approach and that was to look for those opportunities where they existed to strengthen the existing squad.

“Phil [Parkinson] has made his name at the club by keeping a harmonious dressing room as far as is practically possible.

“On the basis that you can only pick eleven players to start any one game, there’s always bound to be some disquiet at some stage.

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“But how he’s managed that has been massively successful. It was against the backdrop of making 13 new signings in the summer window.

“The fact that we can’t get away from is that we are sixth in the league. Whilst we want to strengthen, we definitely don’t want to be upsetting the apple cart.”