Exeter City must get firm making £2m transfer demand to Bradford & Bolton | OneFootball

Jayden Wareham will surely not be at Exeter City next season, but the precedent set by Millenic Alli's departure could be a ray of hope.

As the final whistle blew just before 5pm last Saturday at a rain-sodden St James Park, it signaled the merciful curtain call for a disastrous season for Exeter City.

The Grecians had just been relegated from League One despite being 10th in the third tier on the 24th of January following a swashbuckling 3-1 away win at Port Vale.

That win came two weeks after City's 10-1 FA Cup Third Round mauling at Manchester City, but few would have predicted that Gary Caldwell would soon jump ship for Wigan Athletic, or that the Devon outfit would pick up just one more win from the remaining 20 league games on offer.

Despite that horror run, a win on the final day would have saved City's bacon with results going their way, but it never really felt on the cards, especially as Matt Taylor's interim Reds meekly succumbed to the will of a Bradford City side who easily got the point they needed for a play-off spot courtesy a 2-1 win.

So, not only are Exeter back in League Two after a four-year spell in the third tier, but there appears to be a mountain of issues off the pitch to contend with going into next season.

There's the managerial situation, a plethora of problems caused by financial mismanagement during the Caldwell era, and the resulting mass departure of senior players as City's stand-in stalwart Taylor essentially admitted that everyone out of contract this summer was going to be released as the club is in no position to offer them respectable fresh terms.

With Exeter doing so well in the transfer market over the last decade or so, attention naturally turns to star striker Jayden Wareham to save them off the pitch, and he will certainly not want to be plying his trade in League Two next season after scoring 22 goals in 53 appearances across all competitions for the fourth-worst side in League One.

Wareham will have plenty of transfer interest this summer

Wareham, 22, is an excellent young striker who still has plenty of scope to improve and, who knows, maybe he could even be strutting his stuff in The Championship next season.

Football League World exclusively revealed last month that Bolton Wanderers and Bradford are both keen on the man who picked up seven awards at the Grecians' end of season presentation at the weekend.

It's not hard to see why there's interest and, given the widely-reported problems with the bean counters at St James Park, plenty of clubs should be asking how much the former Reading and Chelsea man will cost them this summer.

However, while City's players surrendered on the pitch for a large portion of the latter half of the season, those in the corridors of power at Exeter need to stand up and be counted when it comes Wareham's impending exit.

And, if any reminder was needed about the kind of transfer fee that would be acceptable for the striker, then City's top brass need look no further than the January 2025 sale of Millenic Alli.

Alli was sold to Luton Town for around £1.5m 18 months ago and anything other than a decent increase on that for Wareham would be a huge disappointment - regardless of financial pressures to sell.

If Wareham goes this summer, as seems inevitable, then both he and Alli would have spent 12 months at St James Park and the former is streets ahead of his predecessor in terms of ceiling and progress towards reaching his potential.

Wareham still has 12 months to run on his current deal in EX4 and the club hold the option of a further 12 months as well, so a good fee should be on the cards.

Exeter must get better fee for Wareham than Alli

With Alli you were buying outstanding physicality but an unpredictable output in a player who did score goals, if in bursts, from out wide.

The Luton winger spent the second half of last season on loan at Portsmouth in the Championship, where he made 21 appearances, so the Irishman is clearly not a bad player; He's just one with plenty of flaws.

Wareham is an excellent striker who's got aerial ability you wouldn't expect from someone who's 5'10", knows exactly where the goal is, and just lives and breathes for those moments inside the area.

Who wins the race for Wareham remains to be seen but, whatever's going on behind the scenes at Exeter, a decent increase on Alli's sale is an absolute must for those in charge at St James' Park this summer.