Snowflake Royal We know that we took multiple players on trial we didn't sign. It's therefore clear we weren't just taking in people we definitely wanted to sign. That means it's very unlikely we started the signing process with the FL on the trialists we did sign from the moment they started training with us. Not least because it's far from certain we'd have wanted to sign Hutchinson or NGW given their age / pedigree. Therefore we can easily infer that many of our signings didn’t take this long.
We also know Loum was done within about a week of us stating our interest openly. Unlike Sarr.
With Hutchinson, it was fairly common knowledge that he was going to sign/had signed well before it was officially announced - to the extent that many were surprised to see him still listed as a triallist for the Brighton game. We have no idea when the paperwork went into the EFL but clear it was a done deal well before it was announced even if there was nothing "official" i.e. like the picture of Sarr in a shirt with his agent annoucing the deal.
NGW was a random one but I imagine that could be rushed through given the length of deal and his likely relatively small wage, imagine it will be around 3k pw max, possibly less. With a 4 year deal, they may want to see forecasts etc, who knows.
According to Bowen, we had been looking at Loum all summer and working on a deal for a few weeks, so again, we may have been able to clear some hurdles with the EFL ahead of the announcement. With Sarr, whilst we've been talking to him clearly for weeks, he has been rightly weighing up his options and certainly came over here to at least speak to Kaiserslauten - so the deal may have happened more quickly.
I've seen it reported that each deal has to go 3 stages of ratification at the EFL, it is possible that 1 or 2 steps could be done earlier but the final step only once a deal is fully agreed - with Sarr it's possible that all 3 steps could only start in the last week or so, so we are finally seeing the full extent of what needs to occur before we can announce a player.
Without knowing the full process it is hard to state that anything is "wrong" but will be interesting to see if we get an update in the press conference today esp. around if he continues to train with us. If he is, then I would suggest nothing to worry about at this stage but frustration at how long it is taking is understandable especially as being in this situation is a mess the club brought on itself.
