https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...-year-contract.html?ito=amp_twitter_share-top Fresh bid rejected according to The Daily Heil.
If he's one of two CBs we sign then fine. But there have got to be better options than him out there. If West Brom are gonna try and rinse us for a 29 year-old who supposedly wasn't at his best last season, then we really should look elsewhere.
I agree. You’d imagine the fact that he’s homegrown is half the attraction. I think he’s a competent CB who is similar in ability to Cathcart, maybe a touch better but nothing really in it. While we have to be smart with our funds and be prudent, my concern with signing players like this is they hardly send out a statement to bigger and better players about the club. Nobody dreams of playing with Craig Dawson. But I’d take him as he improves what we have and we desperately need to do that. But I agree, there must be better out there in our price range.
How much did we offer for Dawson & who are the better options? With no resale value on CBs, Pozzo will have tight financial guidelines on this one.
Last year of contract. wants to leave and is no spring chicken. No way are we breaking the bank for this one.
Every cloud .... would be interesting to finally be able to judge whether he could perform at premiership level.
It’s on SSN rolling transfer feed.... A reasonable fee for a reasonable defender. I really hope the defensive refresh doesn’t start and end with him though. More is needed.
Excellent signing. Very pleased about this. £5.5m is at a good price too. A strong, dependable, solid Premier League defender. Exactly what we need.
I think he's decent but definitely better at right back than CB. A classic Pozzo defensive signing. Can slot in immediately with absolutely zero resale value.
Burnsy nailed it. He’s solid and probably better than Mariappa/Kabasele but if those 4 are our centre back options for the year we’re still going to have one of the weakest defences in the league.
If we do sign him for £5.5m, by waiting a year, the club has saved themselves £4.5m. We put a "drip feed" offer last season for £700k on loan plus an option to buy for £2.5m, plus add ons which would have totalled £10m. West Brom turned that down, but have now agreed to a £5.5m deal only 12 months later. Another blinder from Gino.
Except, you could theoretically say that had we signed Dawson at that point, we might well have made Europa League, or at least not entirely **** our pants in the last month of the season and finished one, two or three places higher, potentially earning more money than we have saved on him.
Leventhal says its a 4yr deal. Happy we are signing a competent CB but he's 29 - why the need to dish out such long deals to older players?
We are frequently extremely generous with our contract lengths. We then end up stuck with old crap for years after they're anywhere near good enough. Good times.
Often you sign a long contract to amoritise the fee. So it pays out over four years you can borrow and finance around it more creatively.
Not sure that applies as much in this case though. What would you offer him? 2 seems like it would be taking the mick, as 31 is far from over the hill, so the debate is surely between 3 or 4. And that just isn't worth worrying about if it secures the signing. Plus isn't there an accountancy benefit to spreading the transfer fee over more years in the accounts or something like that?
You may well be right and I'm guilty of looking at it in a very black and white nature I agree. Personally 2 years with the club retaining an option of an extra year sounds more in line with what we should be offering a 29yr old IMO but I agree the length of the deal is likely what entices him.
You find that's often the case everywhere thought. The cost of the wages when they're just past their prime is probably worth the option over the cost of signing a replacement. Utd just signed a 32 year old Mata up for another 2 years which will cost them 14m in wages - will that be a decent cheap option or would they have been better off upgrading now? Time will tell but that's the gamble of squad building, Dawson could still be a solid squad option at 32/33 but the Pozzos aren't fortune tellers, but since I doubt his wages are extravagant it's probably worth the gamble.
I would argue it’s not actually something we do regularly or have been stung with badly either. I’m not saying those in charge can’t be criticised at all, but one thing I’m always impressed with is their ability to re-sell or often loan out players not getting game time and clawing the majority of the money back. Yeah there’s the occasional one that doesn’t work, but overall their approach always seems extremely good to me. Either way, I’m happy with this. He probably won’t be a world beating signing but hopefully he’s at least like Cathcart, a fairly regular 7 out of 10 pretty solid CB and almost certainly an upgrade on our other options.
We have fought off two prem teams for him. I know for a fact from directors of clubs third hand. And we have him for less than asking price. Pozzos done well here
