The expert view on how Darren Moore will go about his transfer business at Sheffield Wednesday

It’s looking likely to be a busy summer at Sheffield Wednesday.
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It’s no secret that the Owls have a large number of senior players fast approaching the end of their contracts and that surgery will have to be performed on the squad, regardless of whether or not the club are able to stave off relegation from the Championship.

New boss Darren Moore arrived with a healthy reputation for his dealings in the transfer market, particularly in exploiting loan opportunities from Premier League clubs during his time at Doncaster Rovers.

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But what sort of player might Moore go after? And will he be able to transport his approach from the Keepmoat to Hillsborough?

Darren Moore faces a busy first few months as Sheffield Wednesday manager.Darren Moore faces a busy first few months as Sheffield Wednesday manager.
Darren Moore faces a busy first few months as Sheffield Wednesday manager.

We asked the Doncaster Free Press’ Rovers writer Liam Hoden, who knows Moore better than most, for the inside track on how the new Owls boss might go about things.

Moore had a great transfer record at Doncater, particularly with loanees. How much of that is down to him and how much was down to the club?

Liam: It’s probably 50/50 really. He didn’t have an awful lot of money to play with and so in terms of looking to make quality signings, he was having to wheel and deal a little bit. And he did that brilliantly and got some unbelievable value.

Whether he can do that at Wednesday, with clubs thinking that Wednesday have more to play with financially, we don’t know whether he’ll be able to get that same value.

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But he’s certainly got an eye for a player and it may just be that they are players Wednesday fans haven’t necessarily heard too much about as they come in.

What’s the sort of profile he tends to go for?

Liam: He likes working with young players anyway and he values a young squad with plenty of improvement in it. He’s always going to go down that route to a certain extent, whether it’s the case that he does what he does at Rovers somewhere else with stronger finances I don’t know.

He’s got that reputation and he’s only grow that while he was at Doncaster and the players he ended up being able to bring in show that, particularly this season.

I’m sure the loan market form quite a large part of what he does.

What about character?

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Liam: Before January you would have said really young players with a point to prove. You look at someone like Taylor Richards and there were so many questions over his work rate and attitude, yet he went for him and gave him a platform.

It was the same with Matt Smith who won promotion on loan in Holland, came back and had loan spells where he didn’t play. There are a lot of points to prove in who he goes after.

And then we get to January and he brings in John Bostock and Omar Bogle, which was a bit of surprise given what we’d seen before. That showed he wasn’t stuck to that and wasn’t going to live and die by it.

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