Sniffing around Bullard
Martin O’neill will head the queue to snap up Jimmy Bullard for a bargain £3million if Fulham fail to stay in the Premier League.
The Aston Villa boss has been keeping tabs on energetic midfielder Bullard since his winning goal against Villa last month.
And his reports say the 29-year-old has shown he’s completely over the cruciate injury that threatened his career. Bullard has two years left of the contract he signed when he left Wigan in a £2.5m deal in 2006 but wouldn’t want to drop out of the top flight.
O’Neill, who wants to add more depth to his squad, was amazed at match statistics that showed Bullard found a team mate with 91 per cent of his passes during a defeat that damaged Villa’s hopes of Europe.
My question: why £3 million? Why not £6million? Or 7 or 8? We paid a good amount of money for players who had proven themselves in the Championship this summer. Partly this was Lawrie Sanchez paying a British League Premium, but partly this reflected going rates. Jason Koumas was another to cost a team good money to step up a division.
So, if Jimmy Bullard has proven himself to be a usable player in the division above that, why would he cost less?
One answer is leverage: if Bullard has only two years left on his contract then this makes it harder to hang onto him. We remember what happened with Steed. But I think Coleman played the Steed thing all wrong, and wasted another year of that player for a small transfer fee and short-term ego boost (”I’m the boss, don’t mess” or something). If Malbranque had just played out his contract I suspect Coleman might still be in charge now.
The same should presumably apply to Bullard. Assuming there is no clause in his contract, Jimmy Bullard is more valuable to us than any transfer fee we would receive for him. If we go down then he would be central to our bouncing back. If we stay up he would be important in staying up again. I can’t see a situation where you’d sell him for £3million. There is far more at stake than that now.
So I guess it just comes down to the player. Players have more power than used to be the case, and I assume that if Bullard pushed hard for a move he’d get it. The fans would “understand” because Bullard’s Bullard, an extrovert, an all-action bundle of vitality who everyone can’t help but love. “He deserves to play at the highest level” people might say.
I’m getting a long way ahead of myself, and this is based on nothing but media speculation. But I think the game’s economics have changed so much now that if Bullard goes Fulham must be paid something approximating his worth to us.
Last summer introduced new, inflated transfer fees, and that could have been a bit of an overreaction to new TV money. I don’t think we have seen where typical fees will settle quite yet. That said, no reason not to ask for silly money for Bullard. If guys like Koumas, Kamara, Chopra, Kenwyne Jones, Marlon King, etc go for over £5, Bullard ought to fetch at least that much.
I got to thinking about the Bullard vs Steed comparison…2 years remaining on his contract isn’t a ton of time, but it’s better than nothing. I don’t have a good handle on how transfer values in football decrease as contracts come closer to expiration (mostly due to lack of information on contract details), but in the US, player trade values don’t really drop much until you get under 1 year remaining. It’s not entirely the same situation - American baseball and basketball players rarely negotiate new contracts when they are traded - but if anything, that would lead one to believe that football transfer fees less dependent on remaining contract length.
If there were a good source for contract info, I might have to back-test this a little bit.
Colin
24 Mar 08 at 2:54 am
Surely after all we did for Jimmy in helping him recover from his terrible injury, and given the fact that he’s only played a dozen or so games for us in total, he owes Fulham some loyalty. Or has that word gone out of the vocabulary these days. Look at the loyalty that the likes of Haynes and Cohen showed the club. Jimmy should think on this. Without Fulham’s patience and support and medical costs, he could have ended up on the scrap heap.
Mike H
24 Mar 08 at 10:07 am
Colin - true, I can only think of Steve McManaman going from Liverpool to Real Madrid…
Villa have let Olaf Mjellberg go to Juventus on a free and made use of him all year.
Dunno. It might be a bit difficult here, in that a player leaving under these circumstances will always sign a new deal, whereas in baseball he’d keep his MLB contract and the team would try to negotiate a new one. So I guess there’s more certainty for the team signing the player here.
Loyalty? It’d be nice, wouldn’t it, but I’m not sure that’s going to come into it. If he thinks he should be in the Premiership he’s probably going to try to do that. Shame, but that’s modern football.
weltmeisterclaude
24 Mar 08 at 11:54 am
If we go down, which of our players do people think might be transfer targets to teams still in the Premier League?
bostoncottage
24 Mar 08 at 1:53 pm
Davies and Konchesky will probably be allowed to leave. Murphy is on a one year deal, so he’s probably gone. A few others (Bullard for sure) might be in demand, but we shouldn’t just give them away.
Colin
24 Mar 08 at 2:33 pm
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24 Mar 08 at 3:01 pm
You can’t blame Jimmy if he leaves, but we had better get a good price for him. But I refuse to think long about it. Until we are eliminated, we are still in the premiership.
There was this same discussion on some other forum and there seems to be some thought that Dempsey may be gone as well if we go down, but Johnson stays. I think they both stay. Dempsey is probably my second favorite American player and as a USA supporter, you would hope there would be a high demand for him with another premiership side. I just don’t see it. His stock has gone down a bit as the season has wore on. He played his heart out and seems like he has very little gas left in the tank. If we go down, I think Clint will be there with us and will continue to improve his game and end the end, should we end up going down, Clint will be a key to us returning.
Now let me slap myself in the face because I’m still holding out that we will do just enough to avoid relegation this season.
Jason Gatties
24 Mar 08 at 4:01 pm
Rich - Ballack was the largest player that I can remember who walked on a free recently. Bayern would have sold him, but they kept holding out hope that he would change his mind and resign.
I’m sure that some of our most recent signings either have stated buyout numbers where if another team bids that amount, the owning team has to accept the bid (i.e. - Heinze’s recent transfer from ManU to Madrid or Bullard’s initial transfer to Fulham) or a relegation clause where if the team goes down, they will have to sell that particular player (there are certain bid numbers, formulas, etc). I would think that someone like Konchesky would have this in his contract since he’s a proven commodity at the Prem level, but don’t know about the others.
The rule of thumb is the more years that the player has left on his contract, the more leverage the team has in a bid situation because they have the player locked up for a long time. Once you get within the two years of the contract’s expiration date, the team’s asking price will only go down because they don’t want to risk the player walking on a free.
Another variable to consider is the player’s age. A player near or in his thirties will have his transfer value capped as he doesn’t have many of his quality years left so teams won’t pay as much. That’s why we can keep McBride on 1-2 yr contracts w/o having to worry about a team coming in for him.
Coleman probably let it get too far down the road with Steed and had to resort to some pretty harsh tactics in order to get him to agree to a move (dropping him to the U-18 squad). That’s the worst situation for the club to be in.
As much as we want to think that Bullard will have some loyality to the club, I would be highly surprised if he would turn down a move where he could stay in the Prem in order to stay at Fulham if we went down.
It’s really too early to speculate on what his market value would be as there’s so many variables in determining this.
Sorry for the rambling post.
George H.
24 Mar 08 at 4:59 pm
Nah, good stuff, George. My point is still that Bullard’s value to the club is far in excess of what we might get for him in a transfer. Being in the Premiership is worth many millions, conservatively 30 a year. So to sell Bullard, notionally our best player, for £3million just to avoid him going for nothing should be avoided if at all possible. Obviously it’s not that simple, but still.
weltmeisterclaude
24 Mar 08 at 5:31 pm
I’m glad to see that relatively little of this thread has featured concerns about “Player loyalty.” That’s a pretty outmoded concept. I’m sure that if a player is where he wants to be in terms of club and family, he’d be pretty happy to stay there. If we are a comfortably mid-table Prem club and the England manager keeps dropping in, I’m sure Bullard would happily stay with us, but if he has ambitions of trophies and England caps, he MUST go should we be relegated. And you can’t hold this against him. He’s got one career with perhaps eight seasons at a 90% productive rate. He’s got to get the best that he can get.
We American soccer fans are tempted to cry “ungrateful” if one of our beloved goes elsewhere for more money or position while, almost to a man [and woman] we low-rate Landon Donovan for NOT going to a more prestigeous and competitive league.
Setting all that aside, I agree that we should get top euro for the Bullards, the Koncheskys, and the Dempseys should we be looking at matches with Barnsley and Wednesday next season. Losing EVDS and Saha never bothered me because they required greater stages than we have, and we turned nice profits on them. Conversely, I’ll never get over losing Steed and Boa for next to nothing when they had so much left in the tank.
HatterDon
24 Mar 08 at 6:09 pm
I love Landon Donovan and if he wants to stay in the U.S., I’m fine with it. I’m one of the few who sees the benefit of him playing in MLS.
I agree that Bullard & Konchesky may be gone if we are relegated, but I just don’t see Dempsey joining them. Look at it this way, he could go to another premier club, ride the bench and that would serve Clint & USA soccer no good at all. I’ve watched Clint since College and I believe that if Clint could choose between PLAYING for Fulham or riding the pine for Liverpool, he’d stay at the Cottage. He won’t make a move unless he feels he will get a ton of playing time.
Jason Gatties
24 Mar 08 at 6:24 pm
It does seem that a lot of US fans overrate Dempsey. He’s been a reasonably productive player in one of the worst teams in the league, so I’m not that sure how many Premiership clubs would be after him. If, bizarrely, Stoke and Hull go up, then both would presumably be looking at the players from clubs who went down, but I’d assume being in London has something going for it. Put another way: I don’t suppose Dempsey would be that excited at playing for the clubs who would be interested in signing him. If someone like Everton wanted him as a backup to Cahill that might work, but not much else stands out (not that we can ever know these things).
Dempsey’s stated a few times that he is quite ambitious and wants to play in Spain, so I would assume that if he goes anywhere it’d be to a mid-level Spanish side.
Don, I’m with you all the way there, apart from the Boa point: at the time he was sold he’d clearly lost something, and West Ham were offering stupid money for him. It was really an offer we couldn’t refuse. Boa couldn’t turn it down either: West Ham were throwing silly wages around then. So it worked out for everyone.
weltmeisterclaude
24 Mar 08 at 6:34 pm
The other thing to consider is that we are awash with Championship quality players, should we be selling Baird, Kamara, Bouazza, etc. or keep them at lowcost and use them to come back up? If we keep them and use them does that mean we are turning into a Championship side? I fear so, its a very hard league to ge out of and the only way to get out of it is by keeping your premiership players like Birmingham last season.
Oh and by the way, I have a feeling we are going to get 6 points in the next two games, in a strange way the score on Saturday might have been just what we needed to get focused (i hope…)
bruno
24 Mar 08 at 6:47 pm
Rich,
Of course, we Americans overrate Dempsey. We’re still not known for exporting players so any US player who’s good enough to ply his trade in Europe, we think that he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread.
As a matter of fact, we tend to overrate everything. Our president thought the war in Iraq would be over in a few months and cost around $50 million. Unfortunately, we all know how that’s working out.
George H.
24 Mar 08 at 9:27 pm
Well said George, on all accounts!
Rich, I think if Dempsey had continued on a course like he had earlier on you would see him going. But I agree, as we have both discussed, he is very overrated by Americans and I don’t hear anyone saying that they’ve got to have that Dempsey on their team next year. Even though you and I both like the young man.
I just made a comment about Michael Bradley over at Soccer by Ives, who scored another goal this weekend for Herneveen. There are swarms of Americans ready to hail him as the greatest thing since either Ronaldo and think he could step into the EPL, La Liga or Seria A and do the same thing he is doing in the Eredivisie. As said before and as George stated, so many want so badly for Americans to do well that they get the old blinders on and can’t see the trees from the forest.
I would guess your correct Rich. If they go down, Dempsey gets to play with his buddy EJ and they both live happily in London. There playing at as high of a level as they would have been in MLS and have the opportunity to work themselves back to the top. Not a bad spot to be in for players of their caliber.
So maybe the question is at this point, who else might go? That is….if we go down, which even though it looks likely, is certainly not a given yet.
bqfootball
24 Mar 08 at 10:35 pm
Well, I’m a relatively realistic American, and I rate Dempsey for several reasons, and I think that — on the right Prem club — he could do very well. I think that Sanchez used him poorly, and thank goodness he did or we’d be looking up at Derby. I don’t think that Dempsey is a finished product nor, when he is a finished product do I expect him to be world class. He is smart, incisive, quick, clever, tough, and creative. He’s wasted with his back to goal, and he’s not really a striker. I don’t think anyone considers him a wunderkind, but many of us look at Fulham-at-sea FC with nobody appearing to be interested in taking the game by the scruff of the neck and that same nobody interested in doing anything but the safe thing … and then we see Dempsey on the bench, and we wonder why … and we wonder why out loud.
All of our problems last year and all of our problems this year have been weakness in the midfield — specifically in two places: we don’t have a commanding center-mid [although Andreassen certainly looks like he could do better than anyone else we have, if only he weren't playing right wing], and we don’t have a single left-footed threat. We take our best right mids — Dempsey and Davies — play one of them at substitute striker and play the other at left wing and wonder why they aren’t effective.
I am very interested in seeing who Roy gets rid of this summer — CCC or Prem. I have a feeling that the players he’s brought in may be the only ones who we’ll see starting in August. It may well be that the only American left on the squad is the one that most of us wanted in the Black and White LEAST — Eddie Johnson.
Sorry for the essay, gents. Good night, England
HatterDon
24 Mar 08 at 11:00 pm
vis a vis overrated americans see one Benny Feilhaber. Everyone was gushing about how he was going to bring touch and fair to the USMNT and he can’t get a game at Derby. Not to say that I think Benny is awful, it’s just that he’s the same player now as he was when he was playing in the Oberliga. Furthermore, Americans sports tend to have a much later time table. So we see a 21 year old Benny or even a 24 year old Clint, and in American Football, or Baseball, or Basketball, those players are still expected to develop their physical skills. But in football, they’re pretty much the finished article, except for mental toughness/experience etc.
WithAPlum
24 Mar 08 at 11:24 pm
Might not be Benny’s fault. He might still be adapting, he might be meeting anti-American prejudice, could be anything.
Don, I couldn’t agree more with you there. Clint does at least make things happen. Against that, I do think he needed a rest. That accomplished (and he looked quite sharp in the two cameos we’ve seen) he probably needs to be back in the team now. When I say overrated I meant that a lot of folks seem to think that Clint’s too good for Fulham, which may or may not be the case.
I guess we’ll look at the potential exits if/when we’re mathematically down. Not certain yet…
weltmeisterclaude
25 Mar 08 at 8:52 am
Hatter Don - I couldn’t agree with you more. Well said.
George H.
25 Mar 08 at 3:08 pm