Hard not to feel crestfallen as Blackpool's difficult summer transfer window ends with Josh Bowler's exit

Deep down, we all knew Josh Bowler was going to depart. But to see it in black and white and all confirmed still hurts.

For the deal to go right down to the wire before actually being confirmed beyond the 11pm deadline just took the biscuit, but I suppose that’s what you get with the utter farce that is transfer deadline day.

No-one can begrudge Bowler his move. He deserves everything he gets and more.

He’s been an absolute delight to watch in tangerine, the sort of player you’d happily pay the entrance fee just to watch him glide at terrified opposition defenders on one of his trademark waltzes into the box.

Players like Josh Bowler don’t come along very often, if at all. Only Wes Hoolahan probably compares in recent history.

Let’s be frank, whatever business Blackpool did on deadline day would have been overshadowed by Bowler’s departure. It was the shadow that loomed over the entirety of the club’s summer business for the second window running.

In a way I feel sorry for Callum Wright, because that acquisition appears to be a very decent piece of business from the Seasiders.

He’s very highly regarded in football circles and looks to be exactly the type of player Blackpool have been crying out for in their midfield.

Once Charlie Patino, Lewis Fiorini and Sonny Carey are all back to full fitness and available for selection, Michael Appleton’s men should be okay in midfield, which was the key major problem position for much of the summer.

It’s in the final third where I’m concerned now. The Seasiders were already lacking quality, guile and invention even prior to Bowler’s departure, but that problem area has only worsened.

But we’ll see how Blackpool acclimatise, adapt and cope with the loss of such a key, influential figure, because at times Bowler was absolutely essential to the side’s attacking play.

I know a lot of supporters vented their frustration on Thursday night and a lot of that was understandable.

But when you take a step back and analyse the list of ins and outs over the summer, it’s actually been an okay window. Bowler aside.

Has everything gone to plan? Far from it. There’s no point hiding it’s been a really difficult window and there’s been two or three specific points where Appleton has cut a frustrated figure.

The club has lost out on some big targets, some of their own choice, some not.

The Cameron Brannagan saga is one I never want to revisit. Ellis Simms opting to join Sunderland over a return to Bloomfield Road, that can happen. And despite what Portsmouth and Colby Bishop might have you believe, it was Blackpool’s choice not to pursue a deal despite everything being agreed.

To this day the club’s hierarchy remain adamant they did the right thing after issues were raised during the striker’s medical, despite his strong start to the season.

There’s a host of other names that have been linked but have opted to either go elsewhere or remain with their club. Ebou Adams, Fisayo Dele-Bashiru, George Hirst, Anthony Scully more recently and so on...

Of the eight players that did arrive, only Andy Lyons won’t be impacting the first-team straight away. We’ll have to wait until January for that.

But the other seven, when fit and available of course, will all be competing for Appleton’s starting XI.

Of the 11 that departed, only Richard Keogh and Bowler are a loss when it comes to the first-team, you’d say, so that’s got to be considered a plus.

There are still issues to be solved, of that there can be no doubt. As touched upon before, the Seasiders need to strengthen in their forward department. Whether that could happen with a free agent or two, we’ll have to wait and see.

The club are likely to have one or two spots left free though in the 25-man squad list they must submit to the EFL, so there is some wriggle room. But it might also be one for January.

But many fans will argue the club shouldn’t be relying on ‘freebies’ and ought to have done their business sooner. It was certainly a frustration seeing Bowler’s departure going right down to the final minutes, giving the Seasiders very little time to sort anything out.

Although how you go about replacing a player of Bowler’s calibre, I’ve no idea…

Unfortunately I can’t help but have a bad taste in my mouth over the way Forest dealt with Bowler’s arrival. For a player as talented as him to be used as a pawn in a group of satellite clubs absolutely stinks. There, I said it.

This isn’t necessarily even about Josh, this is a much broader issue that is beginning to plague our game, which I’m rapidly falling out of love with.

As I touched on before, it goes without saying that Bowler is fully worthy of his move. He’s earned it and then some. After arriving on a free transfer just over a year ago, he’s now preparing to play in the Europa League. Fantastic, what a story.

To move to a club as big as Olympiacos and play European football was clearly too good an opportunity to town down. No doubt he’ll have pocketed a handy pay rise too.

But for a newly-promoted club in Nottingham Forest, who signed 21 players in total this summer and forked out in the region of £200m, to snap up Blackpool’s star man like he’s a piece of meat before sending him to the owner’s other club really sticks in the craw.

And what does it say about the English game itself? That one of the Championship’s best players can be bought so flippantly by a club that seemingly don’t even want him, otherwise they’d have kept him around in their bid to stay up.

And for Forest to suggest this move serves the best interests of Bowler’s development, give over. This only serves Evangelos Marinakis and his ‘group’ of clubs, considering he owns both Forest and Olympiacos.

If Forest were really prioritising Bowler’s development, they’d have loaned him straight back to Bloomfield Road.

Only last week Forest ‘signed’ South Korean international Hwang Ui-jo before immediately sending him to Olympiacos, just as they’ve done with Bowler. In January, Joao Carvalho also made the move from the City Ground to Greece for an undisclosed fee.

Forest are far from the only club doing this. There’s also the Abu Dhabi-based ‘City Football Group’, that owns Man City and plenty more spanning the globe. The Pozzo group, meanwhile, own fellow Championship side Watford, Italian outfit Udinese and Spanish side Granada.

It’s not a particularly new trend but that doesn’t make it right, either.

Only recently Watford were accused of “abusing the system” after selling Hassane Kamara to sister club Udinese for £16m before immediately loaning him back, despite the defender only costing the Hornets £4m back in January.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out why clubs are doing this given the financial fair play rules clubs have to abide by nowadays.

But it raises some uncomfortable questions for those in charge of rule-making. And it puts clubs like Blackpool at an even bigger disadvantage. How are they supposed to compete with sides like Watford and Forest? They can’t, it’s plain and simple. There’s no point suggesting otherwise.

I’ve no doubt some will be reading this thinking to themselves “suck it up, that’s the way it is”. Well it shouldn’t be.