I’ve been away so long that a full catch up could prove a bit much for all of us, but before we dive into 2011/12 I suppose that a quick check back would do no harm, especially as I missed sharing my thoughts on the most emotion sapping 135 minutes that I’ve ever been through. The finish to the season was definitely one of those ‘except for my wedding day and the birth of my children’ moments, the difference being that you’ve a pretty good idea of the outcome when you walk into the church or hospital, anyone betting on survival come half time against West Ham would have been clinically insane.
And yet it was a perfectly serene moment, ok there was the odd whinge in the air, but largely the feeling was one of resignation, you’ve jumped, the parachute has failed and you realise that there’s no point in panicking anymore.
Of course that metaphor is over dramatic, a bit unnecessary in fact, but that’s the transfer window for you and the most immediate effect of Hugo Rodallega’s header at the Britannia was to plunge us in to the shark infested, murky waters of the gossip columns and pay per click football ‘news’ sites. Sky Sports News can understand all it wants but here at This Northern Soul we’ll keep a pile of salt handy and keep on understanding that all the speculation is just that, along with a sprinkling of down right lies.
But that’s not to say that we don’t get excited about some things and, for some of us, the best news we could expect arrived before the wheels of the transfer machine started to gain any real momentum.
In these parts, any serious offer from a ‘bigger’ club, only ever means another empty peg down at Christopher Park. Yet our summer started with the news that Bobby had somehow found himself at the front of the managerial queue at Aston Villa but had stepped aside to let the bloke behind him have a go. The debates have all been had on this subject but there are a couple of basic thoughts that should never be lost in all this 1) Bobby stayed 2) he did it with barely a second thought and c) BOBBY STAYED.
That’s the thing for me, for whatever reason, someone turned down more money at a more established club and actually chose Wigan Athletic. If you can’t turn that into a good news story then you really have been playing the cynic for too long. Then again, that’s something that I could have been accused of a couple of weeks ago.
This was the stage where the talk was heading towards us needing to pay £4m for Ali al Habsi. The weight of opinion seemed to be that we should just stop messing about and get it paid but there was the odd dissenting voice (myself included, or just me depending on what circle I was in) who questioned the value of paying that amount of money for a keeper who’d had one decent season in the Premier League. The root question being whether we’d be paying for last season’s emotions, or next season’s potential?
It all turned out to be largely irrelevant as we got our man in the end, I suspect for a fee that rolls in at a fair bit less than those initial quotes, a fee that sits better with the fact that no other club had shown any real interest in a decent, but far from totally rounded, keeper, one that’s hopefully left a little bit in Bobby’s war-chest, even if we don’t offload any of our ‘want-away’ stars.
It’s easy for us to believe that players like Charlie and Hugo fit the cliché of the unhappy foreigner hiding a desire for cash under the guise of the pursuit for achievement. Easier at least than accepting the economic reality which means moves for these two are almost certainly on the cards. “In these austere times”, it’s all about the money and the bottom line with these two is that Latics probably can’t afford to up their wages too much and equally can’t afford to lose out on any transfer fee for them.
As things stand, this transfer window probably presents the last chance for Latics to make a profit on the (about) £11m they paid for the pair and their transfer fees probably represent the only opportunity to generate funds that can be invested back into the squad. If they go on Bosmans next summer then we reduce the wage bill, but would be looking at free transfers to replace them and as we’ve seen, quality can be pretty short in that market.
The counter arguments to this are in the rumours that Shaun Wright Phillips is lined up to replace Charlie. Now, I’ve got my own views on the lad’s abilities (I think he’s rubbish) but they don’t even come into it, it’s that bottom line again and the talked about £60k per week wage packet that comes with the diminutive Eastlands bench warmer. This, of course, matches the numbers that are being talked about for N’Zogbia’s demands and begs the question of whether we need the net transfer profit (assuming there is one) from the deal that much. If we can pay another player the wage that Charlie wants, why not give it to the better player, who already knows the manager & his team mates?
The position for Hugo is less clear, with his Copa America dream over in just the three substitute appearances talk of interest from Arsenal and big clubs abroad seems more than fanciful.
The danger with these two is that we’re stuck in a Mexican stand off buying clubs know that we need to sell, we know that we need to make a good deal and would be better off with the players in the squad. The problem is that our need is greater. To get N’Zogbia now would cost the buying club about £20m all-in (£10m fee, about £60k pw over three years) wait a year and, even if those wages go up to £80k, you could get him at less than two-thirds of that price. The figures for Hugo would be lower, but the principle the same.
After all that I’d like to finish with a no news is… no news joke, but it really is the case that the longer this drags on the worse it could be for Latics. I can’t avoid the feeling that something has to give on our side of the equation whether it be the fee or Charlie’s wage demands and, despite interest from Aston Villa, it doesn’t seem that will be an easy process to go through. That leads us to the very real possibility of these two leaving too late in the window, for lesser fees than we are asking for, leaving us struggling to do any serious business to replace them.
The good news is that the interest that seemed to be circling James McCarthy and Momo Diame has died down to almost nothing and that we’ve apparently picked up a couple of promising youngsters. On top of that are the talks with Barcelona about link ups and loan players which sounds a very exciting prospect so it’s far from all bad, at least until the next time you turn on your television to be greeted by,
“SKY SPORTS NEWS CAN EXCLUSIVELY REVEAL THAT THEY BELIEVE THAT SOMETHING MIGHT BE HAPPENING INVOLVING A WIGAN ATHLETIC PLAYER IF YOU SQUINT YOUR EYES, STICK YOUR FINGERS IN YOUR EARS AND SING ABBA’S ‘MONEY, MONEY, MONEY’”
Until then, or sooner…
