The Bristol City boss was asked about the Newcastle United and Liverpool owned players, among others.
Bristol City manager Lee Johnson has explained why his side were unable to recruit a striker such as Newcastle United’s Aleksandar Mitrovic or Bournemouth’s Lewis Grabban in January, and admitted that one player he did sign – Liverpool’s Ryan Kent – has failed to match expectation so far.
Mitrovic moved from Newcastle to Fulham on loan in January, as Grabban left Bournemouth for Aston Villa under an identical arrangement.
And the former has scored 10 goals so far, with the latter having found the net five times himself, to strengthen their respective sides’ push for promotion – as Bristol City slide down the Championship table.
When asked about the potential to add Mitrovic or Grabban at the start of the year, Johnson told Bristol Live: “We’re just not in that market. We’re not. It’s where we are as a football club. Do you know what I mean?
“People can speculate but the wages that it took to get Mitrovic in for example was right up there with a top Premier League player, if you include the loan fee and the wages.
“And if you balance that out weekly it was a huge amount to pay, and obviously it’s been successful and Mitrovic is a very good player and everybody will have their version of that.
“We tried to be creative for the wages that we pay and the way that we try and recruit. There’s not an awful lot of names that come into the funnel if you like, in January, because it’s very difficult to get a standard player out of a club that you’d be looking for like the two players you mentioned there.”
Bristol City fought off competition to borrow Kent from Liverpool, but the winger has struggled to make an impression at Ashton Gate – failing to appear in seven of 17 Robins matches.
And Johnson told the same website: “Ryan hasn’t done it to how we would have hoped in our team for whatever reason.
“He came into a club with big expectations and for whatever reason it hasn’t quite worked as we would have all hoped.”
However, the 36-year-old added of the Liverpool talent: “Ryan, let me tell you, is a great player. If you told me he was coming through our academy as a 20 year-old, I’d tell you he was going to be a £10 million player in the next few years.”
Where would Bristol City be with Newcastle United’s Aleksandar Mitrovic on board?
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