Lincoln City: Ex-Leeds United player attracting Championship transfer interest | OneFootball

Paudie O'Connor is a wanted man following his Imps performances

Multiple clubs from the Championship, and some top League One sides, are considering making a move for Lincoln City's ex-Leeds United defender Paudie O'Connor.

Journalist Pete O'Rourke has claims that the Imps' leader is a target for higher ranking teams this summer, as O'Connor enters into the final year of his contract with Lincoln.

It's been a begrudging summer for the Sincil Bank outfit so far, with their star goalkeeper and right wing-back departing.

Lukas Jensen has joined second tier outfit Millwall for an undisclosed fee, and Lasse Sorensen moved to a league rival in newly relegated Huddersfield Town. The deal for the ex-Stoke man could net the Imps up to £500,000, as per BBC Radio Lincolnshire.

They have just signed Burton Albion defender Tom Hamer though, as well as the previous signing of Tendayi Darikwa, so they have now filled that gap left by Sorensen.

After their success at the end of last season where they went on a monster run of only losing two games after New Year's Day for the rest of the season, Michael Skubala would have hoped that this summer would have propped his team up to go again and do what they narrowly missed out on last time: reach the play-offs.

It's still possible. The football that the boss had the Imps playing during that spell was some of the best in the division, but it's hard to maintain that standard if you don't have the players that helped you to get to that point.

Paudie O'Connor interest emerges from Championship and League One clubs

The City skipper is a wanted man, and the interest is coming from far and wide, as per O'Rourke.

Clubs from Lincoln's division and the one above are said to be keen on the Irish defender, who has been at Sincil Bank since joining as a free agent in the summer of 2022 from Bradford City.

He is now into the final year of his current deal, which puts the club in a bit of a precarious position. They are now at risk of losing him for free in a year's time. There is now a working out process that probably needs to be done; do they cash in now or hope that they can agree new terms with the 27-year-old?

O'Connor formerly played in the second tier for Leeds United. He made four appearances in their 2017/18 Championship campaign but that is as good as it got at Elland Road.

The centre-back had two loan spells, one with Blackpool and the other with Bradford, before departing permanently in the summer of 2019, when he switched from one part of West Yorkshire to another and joined the Bantams permanently.

He stayed at Valley Parade for three seasons before uprooting and arriving at Lincoln.

Losing Paudie O'Connor would be a big blow for Lincoln

If the captain were to join one of the teams that he has been linked with, that would mean 60% of Skubala's preferred defensive unit from his five-month spell as boss at the end of last season would be gone. No matter who the players are, that's going to be hard to take, and hard to replace.

He's the representation of solid, stable, dependable League One defender. They don't come round very often and, at this stage of the summer window, finding another one and getting them will not come cheap.

Of course, if the financial offer is good enough, then they will likely sell, in part because of his contract situation; better to make something now than nothing later if that something is quite a good something. But it'd be a tough pill to swallow, even if, in the long-term, it may make them better.