Barnsley’s deal to sign Oli McBurnie on loan from Swansea City fell through at the eleventh hour.
Barnsley manager Paul Heckingbottom could hardly hide his frustration after the deal to bring highly-rated Swansea City striker Oliver McBurnie to Oakwell fell through on transfer deadline day.
According to the Yorkshire Post, The Football League rejected the season-long loan deal due to, in the manager’s own words, an ‘error with the paperwork’, meaning McBurnie was forced to return to South Wales rather than begin his first ever full season in senior football at Championship level.
“It was not nice to tell someone who, for a couple of months, had been thinking he had got a chance of playing for us. And he was delighted. For it to not happen, I just feel for him at the minute,” Heckingbottom told the Yorkshire Post, before admitting that a deal could be revisited in January.
“We have got three strikers and I have always said I wanted four. So further down the line, I will be thinking (of him).”
And the Leeds-born 21-year-old has wasted no time in reminding Barnsley what they could have had. McBurnie shone as Swansea’s Under-23s put Derby County to the sword on Monday night, scoring two in a 5-2 victory while the returning Wilfried Bony also got on the scoresheet.
Barnsley, meanwhile, have won just two of their opening six Championship fixtures, with strikers Tom Bradshaw and Ike Ugbo netting just three times between them so far. McBurnie, then, would have been a welcome addition in attack and is crying out for an opportunity to prove himself in the professional game.
The Scottish striker hit 20 goals for Swansea in the Premier League B last season, earning the competition’s Player of the Year award to boot. For the next four months at least, however, it looks as if he’ll have to make do with academy football.
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