Grimsby Town hit seven-figure jackpot with 2015 transfer decision – They saw what Birmingham City and Charlton Athletic didn’t | OneFootball

Grimsby Town hit the jackpot with the signing of Omar Bogle, but he significantly underperformed after leaving Blundell Park.

Having began his career with Hinckley United and then Solihull Moors in the Conference North, Grimsby Town took something of a punt on Omar Bogle, but it was certainly a punt that paid off.

Having become prolific in the sixth-tier of English football with Solihull, notching 66 goals in 116 appearances across all competitions for the Moors, he moved to Grimsby in the summer of 2015.

It wasn't until his second season at Blundell Park that he became extra impressive, though, as he went on to notch 19 goals in 27 appearances in the first-half of the 2016/17 League Two campaign to earn a move to Championship outfit Wigan Athletic for a fee believed to be in the region of £1 million.

From there, though, Bogle’s rise halted, stagnated and then majorly collapsed as he became an EFL journeyman with underwhelming stints with the Latics as well as Cardiff City, Birmingham City, Charlton Athletic and Portsmouth.

Bogle became an excellent striker for Grimsby

Having joined Grimsby Town with no experience of playing above the sixth-tier of English football, there would have been some concerns whether Bogle could make the step-up to National League level.

He wasn't necessarily prolific in his first season at Blundell Park, with 13 goals in 41 fifth-tier appearances during the 2015/16 campaign, but he made up for that return with his all-round game supported by some massive and memorable moments for the club.

Perhaps the most memorable of those moments came in their final game of the season as they defeated Forest Green Rovers in the National League play-off final at Wembley Stadium.

In a delicately poised clash, Bogle notched what was to be a match-winning brace to ensure Grimsby would be returning to League Two, thus immediately proving his worth at the club, regardless of what had gone before.

He then kicked on in League Two and began to establish himself as one of the very best strikers outside of the Championship in just half a season as an EFL player.

Grimsby initially took a punt on Bogle, but it not only paid off on the pitch with promotion to the EFL as well as getting them off to a good start in League Two, helping them steady themselves back in England’s top four divisions, but it also provided them with one of their biggest ever sales and windfalls of cash.

Bogle’s struggles with Birmingham and Charlton

Having scored three goals in 14 appearances for Wigan as they were relegated from the Championship, Cardiff then brought him back up to the second-tier in the summer of 2017 for a fee of £700,000, according to Neil Warnock.

With the Bluebirds, he helped them gain promotion to the Premier League, but in doing so he had very little impact, scoring three goals in ten appearances and then being loaned out to Peterborough United mid-way through the campaign.

The summer of 2018 saw Premier League Cardiff deem Bogle to be surplus to requirements in South Wales. He joined a Birmingham City side that, under the management Garry Monk in his first full season at St Andrew's, would have been expecting to challenge for the top six and the play-off places.

Bogle joined in early August and had missed Monk’s first pre-season with the Blues, and that was something that the former Swansea City boss cited as a reason for his underwhelming time in the Second City, believing he had lost sight of the work he needed to do on his game beyond scoring goals.

Having been comfortably behind Lukas Jutkiewicz and Che Adams in the pecking order, and with City supporters becoming frustrated with his poor but limited performances, his loan to Birmingham was cancelled mid-way through the campaign.

Loan spells at Portsmouth and then ADO Den Haag rounded off his time as a Cardiff player, and he eventually made a permanent move to Charlton Athletic in the summer of 2020.

In League One on a permanent basis for the first time in his career, a move to the Addicks represented a chance to stabilise and build again to become or rediscover the player he had been at Grimsby.

He was the second striker through the door in that transfer window, after Conor Washington, and Washington’s Northern Ireland teammate Paul Smyth also soon arrived shortly after Bogle’s move to The Valley.

With Lee Bowyer at the helm, it appeared as though Bogle had been brought in to simply be a back-up, with Charlton’s squad also already boasting Chuks Aneke, and he also had the pressure of trying to fill in for Macauley Bonne, who joined Queens Park Rangers the week before Bogle arrived.

Those ingredients didn’t add up to a good recipe for a player who just needed some stability and confidence, so, after scoring just twice in 17 League One appearances for Charlton, he once again found himself moving on as he joined Doncaster Rovers on a permanent deal in January 2021.

Following his move to Doncaster, Bogle only lasted a year in South Yorkshire before a move to Hartlepool United, where he began to show flickers of the player he once was at Grimsby.

That time at Victoria Park earned him a deal at Newport County, where he did finally become something of a consistent threat again with 17 goals in the 2022/23 League Two campaign.

An injury-hit but still reasonably impressive second season at Rodney Parade has seen Bogle since move on to Crewe Alexandra, tasked with propelling the Railwaymen finally back into League One, but last season was once again an underwhelming one for the 31-year-old.

It will perhaps make them feel even more smug about themselves when they saw Bogle go on to flop and underwhelm with so many clubs, only ever showing a flicker with Newport, suggesting they didn’t miss out on much and cashing in was a bit of a masterstroke.

Birmingham and Charlton fans were burned by many risky and underperforming signings during that period, and Bogle certainly lands high on the list for those clubs.