Chesterfield boss Martin Allen: '˜I'll have Shwan Jalal over Chelsea new stopper all day long'

Allen penned in his Daily Mail column this week how he wouldn’t swap Jalal for Chelsea’s new stopper Kepa Arrizabalaga, who cost the Blues £72m.

The Spireites boss, whose number two Adrian Whitbread is recovering from a bleed on the brain, hadn’t heard of Arrizabalaga before deadline day, questioned the price paid and stated his backing of free signing Jalal.

He wrote: “I didn’t even know the name of the goalkeeper Chelsea paid £72million for just before deadline day.

“The last few days, making trips to hospital intensive care units, watching doctors and nurses doing what they do, on what they are paid, makes the sums of money being paid for footballers even more difficult to grasp.

“That fee for a goalkeeper doesn’t seem quite right, does it?

“There’s no transfer deadline in the National League but we’d spent all the money anyway.

“A little bit more did come our way - 15 per cent of the £1m Ipswich have paid Shrewsbury for midfielder Jon Nolan, who we sold to them with a sell-on clause - but why would we want to waste our time and money bringing more players in?

“I’ve worked with these players for seven weeks, so why would I naff one of them off by going and buying some big-time Charlie now? There’s something very powerful about sticking with what you’ve got.

“My new goalkeeper, Shwan Jalal, came here on a free from Macclesfield, the team who won our league last season. Jalal or Kepa Arrizabalaga? I’ll take my man all day long.”

In his column, ‘Managing in the Real World’, Allen detailed how close he came to losing his job when a Sheffield consortium were interested in buying Chesterfield during pre-season, being brought to tears by Whitbread and rescuing geraniums.