Imps Winger Makes League Two Switch
Read all the reaction as Charles Vernam has left Lincoln City to join local rivals Grimsby Town.
Charles Vernam has left Lincoln City to make a permanent switch to League Two side Grimsby Town this evening.
The transfer activity continues at the Imps, with Charles becoming the first departure of the summer, excluding the ones on the retained list. It’s been a busy few weeks for Mark Kennedy in this transfer window so far with Alistair Smith, Reeco Hackett and Lukas Jensen all joining up with the squad, and the departure of Charles is seemingly one we had to make as we look to add more quality into the squad.
Charles moving to Grimsby was on the cards in the previous transfer window, but when a deal fell through for another player, which we presume is Hackett-Fairchild, his move to our Lincolnshire rivals was seemingly abandoned. Charles has been with Grimsby before, and it’s a good move for him in terms of location, being a local lad. It’s a good deal, we’ve got a player off the books that isn’t good enough for where we want to go, Charles gets himself some regular minutes and Grimsby get themselves a really good League Two player.
We are now left with Danny Mandroiu, Dylan Duffy and new man Reeco Hackett-Fairchild to play on the wings, which surely means we are likely to be bringing in another wide player. Maybe Shodipo, or potentially a loan winger. Hackett looks to be an upgrade on Vernam, the former is relatively proved at League One level, while the latter struggled and looked out of depth at times last season. We are making upgrades and hopefully this is a sign we are being ruthless with clearing out the players that aren’t good enough.
Charles showed flashes of brilliance. His performance against Southampton was excellent, he was our best player on a big night away at a Premier League side, but he was inconsistent. One minute, he’s giving Premier League defenders hell and the next he was ineffective away at Burton Albion on Boxing Day. League One is a tough league and if we want to compete in the top half of it, we need quality across the board and we can’t have players that don’t turn up regularly for whatever reason. He’s been unlucky with injuries, the one before the season started didn’t help him at all, because he was possibly one of the most impressive players in pre-season leading up to the first game of the season. There was a degree of bad luck with his injury later in the season, that saw him miss out on more gametime with Jack Diamond having his loan terminated.
I wish Charles all the luck in the future, he seemed to really care about the club and was a real presence in the community, but football doesn’t wait around for you if you don’t hit the ground running, and Charles has paid the price for not performing at the vital moments.
