Alan Hardy: 'Notts County inundated with interest from players who want to join club'

Alan Hardy has spoken of how Notts County's standing has risen dramatically in the last 12 months and mentioned how an international player was interested in finishing his career at Meadow Lane.

This time last year, the Magpies were all but destined to tumble out of the Football League and perhaps out of business until Hardy completed his takeover and set about restoring the club's infrastructure.

Now Notts sit in the League Two automatic promotion slots and are looking ahead to a FA Cup third-round tie at Championship side Brentford.

In his weekly Nottingham Post column, Hardy wrote: "I’ve been surprised by the amount of action that has already taken place because I presumed it would only become busy in the final few days. It’s certainly much more frenetic than it was last January.

"I have been inundated with players who want to move from a lower club to a bigger club, and vice versa.

"I think the biggest difference is that we are doing incredibly well this season. Players can see the progress we are making and naturally want to be part of that.

"It’s a far cry from 12 months ago when I wrote in a previous column about a player we wanted driving straight past us to join somebody else.

"But when you are second in the league, players and agents know we are looking for a big push for promotion. We are everybody’s target at the moment and it’s like bees round a honeypot.

"One call I took this week literally had me falling off my chair because the player he offered to us was an international who wants to have a swansong in England.

"I thought he had us mixed up with the other Nottingham club because he couldn’t possibly be interested in playing in League Two.

"But he sees the potential here because in two years we could be playing in the Championship. The bottom line was we couldn’t afford him.

"Players see Notts as a club rich in tradition and they want to be part of our history. We have unrivalled history and an incredible future."

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