Not surprised. I've had this as a very poor Sunday morning and Saturday afternoon footballer in the long ago. I was ****e anyway, and no doubt Ross will have treatment a universe better than I and other hackers had back then. But I was told then in no uncertain terms that it was a bad injury for anyone wanting to play football. It more or less did for me running around chasing and tripping people up! Hopefully he'll be okay, and I'm assuming that these days he should be. But he and we will only know when he's had a good run of games.
Think the club need to give Stewart until 31st Dec to sign a new contract. If nothing develops, then he's up for sale on 1st Jan and we have targets lined up. If he thinks getting £30k per week playing in front of 15,000 at Stoke is better than £20k per week in a full Stadium of Light in a young team with genuine promotion prospects then best of luck to him. This club existed for 144 years before him and will exist long after him.
If we sign a Championship-ready striker in the next couple of weeks,this situation changes dramatically.
Id be putting the lad up for sale now, especially if he has turned down the latest offer. Most will be gutted if he leaves but nobody is bigger than the club. It’s still very early in the pre-season so we have loads of time to find a replacement.
Problem with putting him up for sale is no club will pay anywhere near a sensible amount until he has proved his fitness and form. Even if he is back for roughly the start of the season, it only gives him 3 maybe 4 weeks to prove that before the window closes. Realistically clubs will wait till January to assess and then we are in the position where he can go for free 6 months later or agree a pre-contract with clubs like Rangers. We are stuck between a rock and a hard place, i think it will depend more on who is available this summer and at what cost
It is hard not to like Stewart as a big strong goal scoring striker, (when fit) he is an asset. This new contract is frankly taking too long. This amazing Speakman needs to move us on.
Yeah, fair point. Think his value might be higher once he's proven to be fit and still able to score goals. None of these options are the favourable ones. It's irritating to see us pull a lad from nowhere, give him a platform (which has HAS performed on) then get greedy and look for a bigger pay day.
He was a massive part, probably the main part of us getting out of league 1 - paid his transfer fee and wages back several times over for that alone imo.
Agree Daz and I would go one step further, if there are no takers and he is still here when the window closes I would leave him out of the first team squad and let him train with the 21's
