As far as I'm concerned DDV can naff off as quick as he likes. It appears that if the worst happens, he wants to continue his Premiership wages whilst we are in the Championship. What a recipe for disaster that is!!! Remember what happened to us when we fell out of the old First Division? We were forced into a fire sale of our players and the club plummeted into the depths of the Football League. It took us almost a generation to recover and we nearly went out of the League and out of existence in the process.
No, Mr De Vries, our club does NOT exist to provide you, or any other player, with a cushy living and a fat pension irrespective of results. The whole situation makes my blood boil. Where does this exist in any other form of working life? Not only do footballers demand utterly obscene wages to start with, they expect to receive them for the length of their contracts whether they produce the goods or not. It is conceivable that the day after signing a lucrative contract, a player could suffer a drastic loss of form (or decide that he can't be bothered to put in the work) and spend the rest of his tenure at his club sitting on the bench. Yet he still expects, and gets, his full wages. CRAZY!
I'm sure Huw is of this opinion as well and I hope that ALL player's contracts will contain a "wage reduction" clause in the case of relegation. It should provide some incentive for them at least.
As for DDV, the player, would he be that big a loss? His ability on taking crosses is sub-standard. Period. I believe that Premiership players will exploit this and we will ship goals galore because of it. Fair enough, he is an accomplished shot-stopper but, he has to be, to make up for his glaring deficiency on crosses. As for his distribution, I am sure that any good quality keeper can be trained to do this our way. I would certainly place the ability to take crosses and command the penalty area some distance above distribution in any goalkeeper that I employed.
If DDV isn't prepared to change his stance, and quickly, wave him and anyone else of a similar mind, goodbye and get players in on OUR terms. If that means that our stay at the top is limited, so be it. The future of our club is more important than any money-grabbing football mercenary and I would sooner see us exist as a solid NPC club than flirt with extinction as we did before.