Coventry City backed for £2m sale - "He wasn't James Maddison" | OneFootball

Tom Bayliss joined Preston North End in August 2019 from Coventry City, where his career quickly took a nosedive

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Tom Bayliss was once courted by the likes of Liverpool and Everton as a youngster coming through the ranks at Coventry City, but he would move to Preston North End in August 2019, where his career took a sharp decline.

Bayliss made his senior professional debut in November 2017 for Coventry, having come through the ranks at the Sky Blues, and would make his league debut just a month later.

The young Englishman fully integrated himself into the Sky Blues side in League Two under Mark Robins, making 24 appearances in his first professional campaign, scoring five goals and grabbing two assists, helping the club achieve promotion to League One.

In the third tier, Bayliss remained a regular in the side, and finished the campaign with 38 league appearances, scoring three times and grabbing three assists, and would be courted by the likes of Liverpool, Everton, Aston Villa and West Ham.

However, in the summer of 2019, Alex Neil's Preston swooped in with a £2 million offer to bring Bayliss to Deepdale, where his career would take a dramatic nosedive thereafter, which he has struggled to truly recover from.

Tom Bayliss switched from Coventry City to Preston North End amid Premier League interest

Football League World's Coventry fan pundit, Chris, has shared his views on Bayliss' £2million switch to Preston, and whether it was the right thing to do to sell the midfielder.

Chris said: "Bayliss was a good little player. I really liked him at the time. He was only here for two or three seasons. I think he played about 60/70 games for us, scored a couple of goals in that time, and he was handy.

"[He] obviously wasn't the finished article when we had him, and I think what people tend to forget is when they talk about how good he was and that we shouldn't have let him go so cheap, that we shouldn't have let him go at the time, and that he should've carried on developing with us, we were in League Two and League One for a couple of seasons.

"It's not like he was lighting up the top half of the Championship or anything like that, and if you look in hindsight at what he's done since leaving us, £2 million didn't seem like much at the time, but for a player who hadn't really achieved anything, he wasn't on par with James Maddison who we sold to Norwich.

"He went on to do very, very little for Preston, I think he barely played for them, went out on loan, didn't impress again. I think he then dropped a level to Shrewsbury and looked pretty decent for them, I think he played quite a few games, he was there for a good few seasons.

"And then most recently, he's looked fine for Lincoln. I see his name pop up every now and then. I think Lincoln fans like him, but again, I don't think he is anything special. He doesn't exactly light up the league.

"Sadly, I like the kid, but I don't think he's going to achieve much more than he's doing. He's a very good League Two player and an average League One player, and I think he will carve out a pretty decent career for himself at those lower levels.

"I can't see him ever making it. I remember him being fairly lightweight. He wasn't the most creative of players, he worked hard, he was one of those players that gave his all, he's a fairly local lad, sadly he's from Leicester, so maybe that plays a part in the fact that I wasn't that bothered by him.

"All the luck in the world to him, [he] seemed like a nice lad, seemed like he really enjoys his football, he enjoyed playing for us, I just don't think he has that killer edge about him to really succeed and be a top talent."

Coventry City will have no regrets about the sale of Tom Bayliss to Preston North End

The midfielder's first season at Preston was a tough one, having to compete with the likes of Paul Gallagher, Alan Browne, Ben Pearson, Daniel Johnson and Ryan Ledson for places in the squad, often missing out on matchdays entirely.

An ankle injury combined with strong competition for places meant that Bayliss made just one appearance for the club all season, coming on in a 15-minute cameo in the club's final game of the season.

Bayliss made just 11 appearances the following season, culminating in just 253 minutes of football, and in his third season, he failed to play a single game for the club, heading out on loan to Wigan Athletic in League One for the second half of the campaign.

A combination of injuries and strength of competition meant the Englishman struggled for game time in his three years in Lancashire, with the move to Preston proving to be the incorrect decision by the midfielder.

Having made just 12 total league appearances across three years at Preston, Bayliss requested that the club terminate his contract, which would allow him to move on a free transfer elsewhere, which they obliged to, and the Englishman switched to Shrewsbury Town in League One.

Bayliss spent two seasons in Shropshire and was a regular in Salop's midfield, making 81 appearances across all competitions before switching to Lincoln City in the summer of 2024, where he has remained a regular since.

In total, Bayliss, now 26, has made over 160 appearances in League One across his career, whilst only 12 in the Championship, having struggled to make the step up to the second tier for a multitude of different reasons.

Whether the midfielder will ever make the step-up remains to be seen, but he has forged a decent career for himself in League One, and with Coventry looking like real contenders for an automatic promotion place in the Championship this season, they will likely have few regrets over his sale six years ago.