Fowler: Fact, Fiction or Farce

I suppose it is a sign of us making progress that the status of player whose agent uses us to further his clients own ends is getting higher, but, for me, it all amounts to the same thing - we have been used again!

I really should know better, but my basic faith in human nature makes me fall for it every time - as the days went by, I began to believe that Fowler would choose us, but, past experience should have told me that when an agent says as much as Fowler's did about our bid, we are being strung along! In my defence, I would say that, because of Fowler's personal wealth, this case appeared to be different to others because the impression given was that there were other factors besides money that would influence the player's decision - however, the signal sent out by today's news is that Fowler is just your every day modern professional footballer who, it seems to me, would be prepared to up sticks and move from Plymouth to Darlington if it meant another pound a week in their pay packet!

Frankly, I find what Mr Scott has to say about us in today's Western Mail (click here) pretty patronising and, in itself, it would be enough to make me look elsewhere if it was my decision to make. However, there are better reasons than this as to why we should tell Fowler we aren't interested any more;-

1. Even if Fowler decided to come here in the end, it's now obvious that we would be a step down that he didn't want to make - under those circumstances, there would have to be a doubt about his level of commitment to the club.
2. After all the fine talk from his agent about wanting to get a move sorted out sooner rather than later, he is now talking about the possibility of waiting until the end of August before deciding his next step - how does this tie in with the guff we have heard about a player wanting to prove something to himself?
3. With every day he stays on holiday and making up his mind, Fowler is missing out on a days training. Two years ago, although he made an explosive start against Leeds, it wasn't until October that Jason Koumas started to play consistently well for us - Fowler is seven years older than Koumas was then and has had his share of serious injuries in the past, it would probably take longer for him to get full match sharpness than it did for Koumas (and let's not forget that we may have to wait until 31 August before Fowler decided to commit to us).

Unfortunately, the quote the Western Mail attributes to an "insider" at the club that "We're in with as good a chance as anyone else at this stage." suggests that we are prepared to play a waiting game - I think this is wrong, why commit all that money in wages and bonuses to a player whose heart obviously isn't in signing for us?

As for the Rowan Vine situation, that seems more complicated to me because I can genuinely see both sides of the argument to some degree. From our perspective, we valued the player at £1.2 million in January and, in my opinion anyway, Vine has done little at Birmingham to suggest that we should increase what we are willing to pay for him - I thought what we offered was a fair valuation for the player back then and I still do now. However, Birmingham could argue that it would be ridiculous to sell a player for less than half of what they paid for him six months earlier and there is also the fact that the value of players at promoted clubs generally tends to go up - Vine is now a Premiership player and Birmingham could argue that he must now be worth more than they paid for him.

Because of this, if it was my decision to make, I would go some way towards meeting Birmingham's demands by immediately putting in a bid of £1.5 million for Vine, but, if that was turned down, then I would end our interest in him.

The question then would be where do we go from here? There have been a few potential targets mentioned on here with names like Maynard and McLeod being mentioned from the lower divisions - my concerns with those two players would be that Maynard has only just come into the game and may suffer from "second season syndrome" this time around, while the fact there has been speculation linking McLeod with big clubs for a couple of years without anything actually happening makes me wonder if those within the game know something that we don't - even if that's not true, I'm not sure about McLeod's temperament and, if he ever did come here, I hope the first thing Dave Jones would say to him is you will never take a penalty for us while I'm manager!

Anyway, here's a few suggestions for alternative targets for us;-
1. Steven Naismith - I notice that Kilmarnock manager Jim Jeffries said yesterday that he is resigned to Naismith leaving. He is available for £1.5 million, but the downside for us, is, if we had a bid accepted, then there has to be every chance that Rangers would be forced into putting in a bid which matches what Kilmarnock want for him.
2. Matt Fryatt - I've always rated him and with Wolves having had a bid of £1 million for him rejected, we now have the resources to test Leicester's resolve by offering something like £1.5 million for him.
3. Derek Christie - available on a free and was a very good finisher with Derby and Middlesbrough. The obvious downside with Christie is that he has spent an awful lot of time on the injury list in recent, but I wonder if he is a gamble worth taking because he certainly wouldn't cost us as much in wages as Fowler would.

Peter Ridsdale is fond of telling us that we will start the new season with a stronger squad than we had last year, but, so far we have lost an established Championship goalkeeper and the man who was our sole goalscoring threat whilst replacing them with a couple of free transfer signings who made around 20 Championship starts between them last season - if we hang about until the end of next month hoping that Robbie Fowler will deign to sign for us, it's hard to see how Mr Ridsdale's promise will come true.