I found this and thought I would pass it on to help you decide. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Fletcher fee getting ridiculous Everyone has said it, but the money Sunderland are willing to put up to land Steven Fletcher is getting ridiculous. The Scotland international is a capable Premier League striker, and, at 25, has his best years ahead of him. Heâs also a player that would fit well into Martin OâNeillâs preferred style of play. Sunderlandâs courting of him makes perfect sense. What makes no sense whatsoever, however, is that they are willing to pay in excess of £12million to get him. In fact, according to many reports, they have agreed to pay a whopping £14million. It is not unusual, of course, for a ridiculous premium to be placed on the head of a British player, but it must be slightly worrying from a Sunderland point of view that OâNeill has seemingly not learnt from his mistakes in this market before. Remember, this is a man that paid £8.5million for Nigel Reo-Coker, £10million for Curtis Davies and £6million on Stephen Warnock. OâNeill is hardly the only manager averse to looking abroad for talent, but surely there must come a time when he stops to wonder what sort of striker he could buy from overseas for £14million. To put things into perspective, Lukas Podolski cost Arsenal £11.9million earlier this summer and has scored 44 goals in 101 international appearances, compared to Fletcherâs one in eight. Whatâs more, Wolves are probably as desperate to sell Fletcher as Sunderland are to buy him. The player has made it clear he wants to leave Molineux before the end of this month, and, if the Black Cats were to hold their nerve, it is likely they could get him at a knock-down price closer to deadline day. Instead, they are giving the impression they will pay almost whatever it takes to land their man. Wolves hold all the cards. If Sunderland do eventually sign Fletcher â and everything points towards them doing so â he will likely be a success at the Stadium of Light. But OâNeill simply cannot go on overspending on British players otherwise there will come a time when, just like at Aston Villa, the money gets cut off. And that is something history tells us OâNeill will not stand for. Martinez makes a good signing Yesterday I wrote that Wiganâs signing of Ryo Miyaichi could count for little unless Roberto Martinez addressed their goalscoring problem. Well, 24 hours later the Latics have announced the capture of Ivory Coast striker Arouna Kone from Levante. The 28-year-old boasts an impressive goalscoring record, and has got exactly the right attributes â namely pace, power and aerial ability â that should allow him to continue hitting the net in the Premier League. Well done to Martinez for making me eat my words. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Very poor stuff, Ed. You canât just strip football of all context and reduce it to a numbers game. People speak about âvalueâ as if it is some set constant where in truth it is entirely subjective. Sunderland have a fundamental need for a proven and reliable Premier League goalscorer. At the moment there is Wickham, Ji, and Campbell. That is it. What if they look abroad and get a flop? People will no doubt cite Jelavic and Cisse but what about the many others who have been failures? Players like Boseli, Alfonso Alves, Elmander, Samaras, Grabbi, and loads loads more. Where would that leave Sunderland? A few million better off I am sure, but more than likely in a very real relegation scrap. So what value a forward with a proven Premier League product? One they donât have to worry about settling or adapting, and one that can provide it for the next 5 years or more? If Sunderland entered the foreign market for a striker they would be taking a huge leap of faith without a safety net. All or nothing. Do or die. Death or glory. It is fine to have a cheap pop at Martin OâNeill over it, but it was Steve Bruce who left him in this position. It is easy for people to sit on the sidelines and advocate other people take risks. But let me ask everyone this: If it was your club who had zero proven cutting edge with money to spend but relegation a serious possibility if it wasnât spent right, would you be urging your club to penny pinch abroad on a gamble or spend the extra to make absolutely sure?
The side of the fence I sit on is that O'Neill left it until the end of july to bid for a player who had no international commitments this summer. Regardless of whether we pay it or not this conversation should have happened months ago and other targets identified, it's quite obvious we don't have any other targets and that is the disgrace here. We will get humiliated by Arsenal on the opening day
i dont know it but it's obvious to a blind man, the media picks up on these things, when the fletcher big went in every media outlet in the country knew about it and was reporting it, if something was actually happening then we would be hearing about it but the silence is absolutely deafening. Regardless of what's gone on behind the scenes going into a premier league season with 3 strikers, 2 of whom have never played more than 15 premier league games between them and the other with a 1 in 9 scoring rate is totally unacceptable. it should not have been left this late
We have always been quiet with transfers, ever since Quinn said Phillips was coming back and WBA scuppered the deal. Fletcher got out because moxy of wolves let it out of the bag, he wants a bidding war, we dont for any player we are after, so we tend to keep things quiet. I am pretty sure there are more to come and we probably wont find out until they have the scarf wrapped around their necks.
Podolski cost £12 + the 4 or 5 million a year in wages and a massive signing on fee. If Messi let's his contract run down he'll go on a free. We'll still be roughly £30m too poor to sign him. Numbers are thrown around as if things are relative. They're not.
I am a massive MON fan but I have to admit Iam feelin very upset about this whole situation. Clearly from the word go SAFC have thought the Fletcher signing was in the bag, clearly it bloody wasnt !!! The massive absence of a plan B is astonishing..with 3 days to go before kick off of the new EPL season we have found ourselves in a situation whereby wherever we go in search of a striker, the selling club is going to be fully aware of our desperation and the price will be greatly inflated. MON needs to start looking beyond the Uk, I dont want to see him repeating some of his previous transactions at my club..lets not forget....Reo Coker 8 million !!!!..Curtis Davies 10 million !!!
Nor should we forget.... Downing - 10m Young - 8m Milner - 12m Petrov - 6.5m Sidwell - 5m Friedel - 2.5m Like every manager, including even the likes of SAF, O'Neil has made some costly mistakes and will continue to do so, it's the nature of the beast in this business. You can see though, by looking at his signings above and his management record, he is generally bang on. Mistakes will happen and some signings will flop. The position we are in now, we have no choice but to go with tried and tested, that means Fletcher and paying whatever Wolves ask or we are in deep ****. That's where you have a very valid point about the way we have conducted this transfer and without being certain, a lack of plan B. Like we say though, keep the faith, this is Martin O'Neils way, so we may need to adjust our ways for future transfer windows. I do believe we will see a few new faces but not until literally the last couple days of this month.
The idea of the media is they are helping clubs by advertising their player, and Wolves are hoping a club like Spurs or Liverpool come in. MON said he wants to keep his targets secret but them clubs want to let as many clubs know as possible and that is why Wolves are delaying any transfers. We should have held out for more for Bent and could have got the £35 m Liverpool paid for Carroll.
I'm sick of the whole drama. I rate him as a player, however, the problem is, tallent has a price and we feel that his ability doesn't match this price tag, no matter how rich we are. I suppose deep down, I don't give a **** how much we spend as long as we get our man, as the fee aint comiming out of my bank account. But like I pointed out on an earlier link, We have a limited warchest that will diminish after 15m is spent on only one player (if we don't make monies from sales, that is) in which case, putting our eggs in one basket would be suicide.
Pat, Martin O'Neill has said they have been working on it over the entire summer - Sam Allardyce came out and siad there are 10 players they failed to sign at West Ham that the media didn't even know about so how can you say "The media picks up on these things" when they blatantly don't. If you believe all you read in the papers then O'Neill should probably be sacked for his lack of attempting to get a player in - but O'Neill doesn't bid for a player - he simply tells the Chairman and CE who he wants. End of the day no-one knows what's happened at Sunderland and who we've approached over the summer -if a paper came out and said tomorrow than O'Neill was looking at Heskey would you believe it?
It's time to draw a line under the Fletcher farce, there may come a time when Wolves need to get rid of him, when it does I hope a lot of other clubs remember what has happened to us & only put in stupudly low offers knowing Wolves are desparate to sell.
It is not complicated we have needed a couple of strikers for the last 18 months, the current ones that are on the books ATM are not good enough. We got away without signing anybody in Jan, and had avery poor run in to the end of the season. It was said in Jan you got better value for money in the summer close season. Well it is getting close to the end of the transfer window and if we sign Fletcher for £15m plus, a reasonable journeyman at best, we hardly have got value for money. Also where is the other striker and a LB or a creative midfielder? Probably nowhere if we end up blowing most of our transfer budget on an average Scottish forward. It does seem to me that we have vastly underestimated the problems associated with bringing in strikers into the club, perhaps the powers that be have been distracted setting up all the sponsorship deals!
Well said SAFC83 and a couple of other sane posters. Pat. Pathetic. Absolutely ****ing pathetic mate. You know jack **** about what the manager, owner or CEO have been doing all summer.
