Oxford United goalkeeper James Beadle “turned down some big, big clubs” in the summer, according to goalkeeping super agent, Richard Lee.
Speaking on Fozcast – The Ben Foster Podcast, Lee mentioned to the former England goalkeeper about Beadle’s summer move to Grenoble Road.
He said: “You’ll get one goalkeeper, for me this season, and I’ll be quite open and mention his name, was James Beadle.
“He’s 19, just turned 19, now playing top end League One, just over two meters tall, unbelievable distribution, etc.
“I think he had 12 options this summer. Which was great, 12 loan options, he turned down some big, big clubs, he’s ended up going to Oxford, obviously a big club and they’re doing really, but the only thing with that is that while we were waiting for him to make a decision, there’s 11 other clubs that are waiting on that decision, so it just holds the whole market up.”
He added: “It’s tough. You want to keep all the clubs informed and I think it ended up, quite quickly it boiled down to about three clubs. So those three are the ones he went on Zoom calls, he went and met all three clubs.”
Beadle has been one of Liam Manning’s standout signings of the summer. The 19-year-old, who joined the club on a season-long loan from Brighton, has started all seven of the U’s league games.
He has kept two clean sheets in wins over Carlisle and Fleetwood and shown maturity on the ball when playing out from the back, as well as making some top-class saves.
