Coventry City: Deadline day Chelsea gamble did not pay off - View | OneFootball

Charlie Wakefield failed to make the grade with the Sky Blues, and has since dropped into non-league

Key Takeaways

As the days, hours and minutes continue to tick down towards transfer deadline day, you can’t blame clubs for making hasty last-minute additions to their playing squads.

An extra body or two through the door can make all the difference in the season ahead, so year on year we can expect a scramble to get eleventh hour signings over the line as managerial fear starts to loom.

Sometimes these late arrivals can flourish into stars, and sometimes they can crumble in front of your eyes, and in Charlie Wakefield, Coventry City got the latter back in 2019.

The Chelsea youngster arrived to the Midlands with a glowing reputation having been part of the youth team at Stamford Bridge, but it was soon apparent that Mark Robins and his backroom staff had got the move horribly wrong.

Coventry City make late Charlie Wakefield signing as League One campaign starts to falter

Wakefield joined a Cov side who were very much on the up after a number of turbulent years, with the 18/19 campaign seeing them back in League One after emerging through the fourth tier playoffs.

Robins had already overseen one promotion with City, and was on the hunt for another title charge when the next campaign got underway, although a run of three wins in 12 league matches soon saw their early season optimism start to dwindle.

With City struggling throughout January, further additions were needed, and Wakefield was a final day purchase from Chelsea, with the winger jointing the club on a one-and-a-half-year deal with hours remaining in the window.

Robins seemed delighted to bring him in at the time, with the boss telling the club’s website: “We are very pleased to have signed Charlie. He has a very good upbringing through the Chelsea Academy, where he worked with Adi Viveash, and he was successful in his time there.

“He is a player with great technical ability and a lot of pace too, and will really add to our squad. We look forward to working with him, as he is a player who also has great potential to improve even further.”

Charlie Wakefield fails to shine at Coventry City before dropping into non-league

There was plenty of hope for the former Blues man, with the expectation that he was going to the the added bit of quality that could help contribute towards a second successive playoff push.

But in reality, Wakefield never made the starting eleven during his time with the club, and played just 51 minutes of league football before the season came to a close.

With that game time spread over eight appearances, that made it an average of just over six minutes on the pitch for each time he put on a Cov shirt in the 19/20 campaign, before a whopping 11 minutes in his only league appearance the season after.

A succession of hamstring injuries put paid to his time in the Football League, and with his body repeatedly giving out on him, Wakefield made his way into the non-league circuit, where he has since appeared for the likes of Woking, Yeovil Town, Bromley and Braintree Town.

Football can be a cruel sport at times, and Wakefield is an absolute testament to that, with a promising career slipping through his fingers due to things out of his control.