Apologies for another post but have just been reading about the turmoil and fiasco currently going on at Hull. Allegedly Barmby and Pearson were offered the money to buy Billy Sharp back in Jan but they thought he would upset the Hull dressing room! He certainly didn't upset ours!
Don't know the article I read and the posters on the Hull board don't seem to know. Very odd. Clearly anyone would have been affected by what happened to Billy last year but can't see him being trouble. Always comes across as a top bloke in the interviews I've seen.
On twitter he comes across as a nice bloke and seems to have support from the rest of the team regarding his fundraising efforts for his charity...
I think this story is more about Nick Barmby than it is about Billy. He's the one in trouble with the owners over who said what about funding.
I agree, I listened to the interview Barmby is in trouble for ( it was posted on twitter by @Fourthofficial I believe) and he kept talking about we have to back up what was said and he did seem to indicate he was promised more funds than he got.... all he said about Sharp was that he was well out of their range....that was my intrepretation anyway
Sharp was very loyal to Donny, but he also wanted to make the right decision for his family when he moved. Hull were never in the running, sounds more like deflection talk by a club in crisis.
To be honest I listened to that interview and it didn't sound like he said a lot wrong to me! Bizarre what's going on there.
Perhaps if Sharp had signed for Hull his salary would have been more than some or all of the others. There's nothing that upsets footballers more than knowing someone else is on bigger bucks.
Quite likely, I remember hearing we are paying him considerably less than some other clubs offered, but he chose to come to us because he believed we had a better chance of promotion. I expect Hull would have been expected to pay him more than they were happy to part with.
Vaguely related - but I read yesterday (please don't shoot the messenger) that Sharp got married in 2010, and his young son who tragically died was actually conceived with his mistress (now his girlfriend). Apparently his wife only found out that he was expecting a son as the whole situation was unravelling last autumn. Its a bit easier to understand why he turned us down last summer then, and his situation was also probably a big factor in moving to the South Coast (i.e. as far away from Yorkshire as possible) in January. Of course, football reasons would have influenced his decision too, but people forget sometimes that footballers are human beings with lives and their own intricacies outside of the game.
I think we nearly got Sharp last summer but Adkins said he had personal problems. He nearly signed for Leicester after agreeing terms, but he said that he held off because it didn't feel right and he wanted to come to Saints.
