A long ramble on the Jimmy Bullard situation

Roy’s pre match video

Key info: Zamora’s only trained one day this week, so may not start.

Then the real fun:

JIMMY BULLARD TOLD HE CAN LEAVE FULHAM (my caps for excitement value)

Sky Sports News sources understand Jimmy Bullard has been told he can leave Fulham in the January transfer window.

Then Roy explains all.  As ever, he makes fair points, but points that sound like a manager who is not rushing to put out a metaphorical media fire.

“We’re still waiting to see what happens because he [Bullard] has his own ambitions. I’m not a party to those discussions when Jimmy sits down with this agent and Alistair Mackintosh [Fulham Chief Executive].

“He hasn’t been told he can leave in January. We’re not trying to get rid of Jimmy Bullard, but Jimmy Bullard is trying to get a contract which suits him. He’s not sure that we can provide that contract and, as a result, we must be realistic and there might be other clubs out there who can offer him that, and can pay the transfer fee we think he’s worth. If that happens, it happens.

“Certainly Jimmy’s wage demands and where he sees himself are at a very high level and it’s not certain that Fulham Football Club will be the Club that can match that. With the January transfer window coming up, we cannot rule out that if the Club at the moment is not satisfying him, telling him the things he really wants to hear, there might be other clubs coming in and attempting to sign him – that’s a situation that I think a lot of football clubs are going to find themselves in this transfer window.

“At the end of the day it’s the Chairman’s Club. Alistair Mackintosh and I will say what we think on the football front and we’ll certainly have plenty of advice to give about any potential deal that comes our way and I’m sure that the Chairman will listen. It will be his decision because he’s the one who pays the money, it’s his Club.

“If an offer came in which he and the Club finds very, very attractive then it wouldn’t be very easy for me to say ‘no, I don’t want it.’ It’s not quite as simple as that, I don’t think it’s like that at any football club. Every decision that is made at this high level has to be made for the good of the Club. You can’t make decisions for the good of the Club without involving the owner who puts in all the money. We wouldn’t be sitting here today with his support.”

Bullard wants a new contract, and his agent has seemingly used all kinds of tricks to get him one.  In the summer this meant touting the player to teams like Bolton, Wigan, Everton and West Ham, all of whom were interested.  Bullard, we are repeatedly told, likes life at Fulham, and does not want to leave.   So the shopping around thing was almost certainly a negotiating ploy.   The club stood its ground then, and rightly so.  Bullard’s been great for Fulham, but has played about a season’s worth of games for us, and certainly does not necessarily ‘deserve’ any special treatment at this point.

Negotiations have perhaps tilted in Bullard’s favour since he got his England call up.   Good job for him that he did really, as his form at the time was not great.   But anyway, Bullard is now the nation’s favourite ‘character’, touted as being ‘underrated’ to the extent that he is now probably overrated by the media.  Everyone loves him.   He has the England squad, the profile, but not, alas, the big money contract.  And now he wants it.

So Roy Hodgson, very reasonably, says that if he wants silly money he’s going to have to find a club prepared to give him this, because unless MAF decides to resolve this long-running situation with a surprise handout, it ain’t going to end well.

It’s worth considering that Harrod’s is unlikely to be performing especially well at the moment.  While MAF’s financial clout may be built on the booty of many adventures, Harrod’s is his thing, his front, his empire.  With retail suffering and wallets being kept in bags, he may wish to be careful until the economy improves.  True, we have TV money, but equally we’re already deeply in debt to our man, and the interest free loans can’t go on indefinitely.    So we may lose players if we get good offers.

The question, then, is can we afford to lose Jimmy Bullard?

The answer, I think, is yes.    Jimmy Bullard currently does everything in the Fulham midfield, possibly to the detriment of the equally able Simon Davies.    What, I wonder, does Bullard do that Davies could not?   Davies passes as well as Bullard, his shooting, though hardly seen this year, is decent, his crossing better.   Tackling is a non-issue for both, as neither get involved with this side of things.   Lose Bullard and you have the following options:

A – Let Simon Davies run the midfield
B – Let Zoltan Gera come infield
C – Involve Leon Andreasen again
D – Let Clint Dempsey loose in the middle
E – Something else

I’d be happy with A, which I believe would be a fairly seamless transition.   Gera would worry me, he seems to lack presence in the middle of the park, but I could well be wrong.   I think Leon Andreasen could do a job in the middle.  We’d lose the accuracy of Bullard’s passing, but Andreasen is a better tackler, has goals in him, and can contribute aerially.   I’d love to see Dempsey given a run in the middle, not least because this role would suit his jack of all trades master of none style well.  Something else?  Well, we’ll see.    But losing Bullard doesn’t exactly devastate us does it?

I’m not forgetting what he did last year.   When the chips were down – and they were down, very down – Bullard came in and pinged a couple of very important free kicks into the net, brought some dynamism to a choking side, and generally lifted things.   That’s great; none of us will forget this.  But do we need him now?  Can we do without him?  Yes.  Yes we can.

One problem is that any sale would probably net the club £5 million tops.   Looking for a replacement at that price is not easy.   An England player – and that’s what Bullard is being talked of as, so we might as well roll with it – is worth silly money.  A young England player in the middle of the park is worth £18 million:  Carrick, Hargreaves, Barry.   Bullard’s age and health and ability knock money off that, but he is rightly a valuable player, and should command a price that reflects this.    Against this, he only has 18 months on his existing contract remaining, and he may opt to run this down and leave the club with nothing.

Do we need the money from the sale?  Not really, especially as Bullard’s presence will help us to stay in the division, the rewards for which dwarf any transfer fee we might receive.   So why sell?

Hodgson’s answer seems to be along the lines of “the player wants this (contract), he can’t get it here, so he has to go elsewhere for the money he feels he needs”.    It’s difficult though, isn’t it?  We (probably) really don’t need the money, we don’t owe Jimmy Bullard anything (he kept us up, we helped him stay in the game), so again, why sell?

This I can’t answer.  I don’t think we need to keep him, and I don’t think we need to sell him.   True, his value will never be higher, but that value, however inflated, will still not be life-changing money.   If we were talking about £12 million I’d say yes, go for it, but £4-5 million?   That’s a journeyman midfielder.   Which Bullard may very well be, but his reputation outstrips that now, his value to the club is more than that too.    Rightly or wrongly, he is idolised by the fans, presumably rated by his colleagues; what does selling him achieve?

If MAF wants the money, if Bullard’s making himself a nuisance over this, if Hodgson doesn’t rate him, then fine, sell.  But I don’t know that any of the above apply.  So we find ourselves faced with shipping out a decent (if overrated) player because he wants more money.  That doesn’t suit the club, I don’t think.   The club’s best interests are not served by suddenly reconfiguring a central midfield pairing in January.   If Bullard is to leave, let it happen in July.