McAuley Joins Leicester City

5th June 2006

As The Forgotten Imp revealed last Saturday, the announcement that Gareth McAuley has quit Lincoln has now taken place.

Leicester City are the lucky winners of the prize of McAuley's signature thereby dashing the hopes of a number of other clubs. The clubs who will harbour disappointment are Cardiff City, Crewe Alexandra, Doncaster Rovers, Huddersfield Town, Leicester City, Nottingham Forest, Stoke City and Sunderland.

Also disappointed are Lincoln City's supporters but overall, the majority had resigned themselves to losing McAuley. His departure had been expected for around seven months. It could have been sooner had McAuley agreed terms in January with Crewe, after Lincoln had accepted a £150,000 bid.

McAuley is now out of contract, which means that Lincoln will not receive a fee for the Northern Ireland International. The Imps had offered McAuley a new contract but their failure to win promotion will have sealed McAuley's decision.

McAuley joined Lincoln just 48-hours before the commencement of the 2004/05 season. It was a shock signing because he had spent the summer training with Stockport County. However, Stockport were unable to agree a fee with McAuley's then club Coleraine.

Lincoln had already enquired about McAuley so at this point, Imps' boss Keith Alexander seized his second chance and brokered a £10,000 deal with Coleraine.

His raw talent was apparent from his early matches for Lincoln but he has since developed into an excellent player at both right-back and central defence.

The void that McAuley leaves will be a huge gap to fill for Lincoln City's new manager. A situation made worse by the loss of McAuley's central defensive partner Jamie McCombe to Bristol City.

Sunderland, after the failure of Crewe to sign McAuley, emerged as the favourites to sign McAuley. The summer move was even described " a done deal" by sources in Belfast. However, Sunderland then sacked manager Mick McCarthy to leave the "done deal" undone!

Ironically, Leicester also came close to signing McAuley in January but they sacked manager Craig Levein before their initial interest could be finalised. New Leicester manager Rob Kelly has kept faith with the previous scouting reports although Leicester also watched McAuley during the latter part of the season.

McAuley has the distinction of holding the Lincoln City FC club record of the most capped international player. Since joining Lincoln, he has won five caps for Northern Ireland, which is a remarkable achievement for a League Two player.

Overall, McAuley made 84 appearances for Lincoln and scored 10 goals; several of which were vital to Lincoln's play-off qualification of the past two seasons.

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