Ed Waldron pulls up a slide. It shows: 10,782 minutes which equates to 180 hours, which equates to 7.5 days.
It is how much time he spent on the phone in the summer of 2023. Oh, and there were 6,683 WhatsApp messages. Waldron is the head of football operations at Oxford United and if that summer was busy then it was nothing compared to this year’s transfer window.
After being promoted via the League One play-offs, Oxford signed 16 players – no Championship club has recruited more – from a long list of 300. Some of whom they had compiled 30 scouting reports on and tracked for two years. Waldron, at 29 the youngest in his role in the Football League, was at the heart of every deal as the relative minnows were determined to give themselves a fighting chance of surviving – and maybe thriving – after 25 years outside the second tier.
They are currently ninth, just below the play-offs. There is another slide. This one shows an inverted triangle and lays out how Oxford recruited their players and built a squad.
“It starts very broad and then becomes very targeted and focused,” Waldron explains. Naturally much of that information is confidential but this is how Waldron and his team went about their work along with the manager, Des Buckingham. “If you sleep for a day in the window then you are behind,” Waldron says.
In fact sleep, during a transfer window, is tough. “Probably five, six hours from midnight. The moment you wake up you are on it,” Waldron says.
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