One thing that happens quite often in football that seems to happen less in RL is player signing for a club and then being immediately loaned back to their 'sending' club.

I guess that, in our sport, the 'buying' club wants to play a much bigger part in developing the player, including control over their fitness, nutrition, lifestyle etc.

Still, it might have been an option for Saints to sign Bentley and then loan him back to us for the season, with the caveat that Saints staff would keep tabs on his training regime etc via John Kear. He would then be carrying on in a familiar environment (as it turned out, a good environment, albeit that was less known when Bentley actually signed), and then joined Saints at the end of the season having played 25-ish games at the top end of Championship 1 in a winning culture under a well-respected coach.

All hypothetical of course. That didn't happen. So good luck to the lad, I hope he breaks through this season

I hope it's only in case of extreme emergencies though. I can't see us using it with the size of squad we have plus second team.

Yeah I can't see there been many Cas players play for us this season.