By theimps.tk
May 8 2006

City's chances of keeping Gareth McAuley are disappearing as Peter Taylor admitted to being impressed with the defender. After sending his assistant and ex-Imp's boss, Colin Murphy to watch the defender, Taylor decided to come along to Sincil Bank on Saturday and saw a solid McAuley performance.

McAuley's performance in Saturday's 1-1 draw with Rochdale proved to be one of his best of the season and he scored his second goal in 7 days in front of the Hull staff and the Northern Ireland international seems destined to leave Sincil Bank on a free transfer when his contract expires in the summer.

After joining the Imps in the summer before last season, McAuley took a while to settle into the squad but eventually became an integral part of a formidable defence with Paul Morgan and Jamie McCombe, however, midway through this season, he hit out at the management at Sincil Bank for lacking ambition in the transfer market. With his contract expiring, McAuley said he would only consider the possibility of staying if the Imps either won promotion or brought big in the transfer market in January.

City brought in 3 players during the transfer window, Simon Yeo, Martin Gritton and Jude Stirling and whilst Yeo's return has been largely a success, Gritton and Stirling have already been rated as two of the worst signings in Imps' history by nearly everyone involved. This is hardly likely to re-install McAuley's confidence. However, there is a glimmer of hope as the Imps are just 270 (extra times not included) minutes away from League One.

Sunderland were believed to be interested in the defender but when McCarthy was surprisingly sacked by Sunderland (the surprise being that they didn't do it sooner), Sunderland's interest ended but the interest from Leicester and Hull has increased in recent weeks and this morning, Peter Taylor apparantly mentioned on the radio that he was about to sign "a League 2 defender who I saw score on Saturday."

At the time of writting, McAuley has made 75 appearances for the Imps, scoring a respectable 10 goals, not bad for a defender.