Tis time to discuss the Upson saga! Normally I wouldn't bother you folk with such a topic, after all it's soooooo yesterday and a bit tedious, but perhaps the debate is worthwhile even if it is merely for the purposes of stating the bleedin''obvious. It's still quite quiet out there. And a bit cold.
When a player declares that he wants to leave there should be no argument. Get rid. In an ideal world it would be great to throw them in the stiffs and let them rot but unfortunately this is not ideal either. Chelsea once signed a player on a thirty grand a week deal named Winston Bogarde. Quickly it was noticed that he was totally disinterested in training, playing, in fact just about everything. When questioned about his apathy he said that he had worked hard his whole life to land such a contract and if Chelsea wanted to put him in the reserves then he had no objections as long as they still paid his wages. For two years Winston claimed his undeserved brown envelope before his contract ran out and he strolled off to the next cash cow. David Batty said that he hated playing football but it paid well. Stuart Pearce recently quizzed a Manchester City youth team player about his ambition and asked him if he would prefer an England cap or a Ferrari. Without hesitation the lad went for the car.
There is a huge amount of money in football and the players are calling the tune. The Bosman ruling was brought in to help the poor unfortunate players obtain employment at the end of their contract without the need for a transfer fee. This was intended to bring them in line with other workers who were allowed to move from employer to employer once a contract had ended. But footballers being the greedy bastards that they are have used the shredding of the contract at the end of the deal as a bargaining tool to rape even more money from the likes of you and me.
Years ago the transfer of young talent to the big clubs was the lifeblood of the smaller teams. These clubs scouted their local areas in search of precocious kids to train, clean boots, serve apprenticeships and learn the trade before being traded in a deal that suited everyone and allowed the influx of the next generation of kids. The money flooding football is not filtering down to these feeder clubs, instead the rich continue to rake in sums of money that are beyond our reckoning with the end result that they pull further and further away from other teams with the inevitable lack of competition. The Premiership is boring. The same four teams at the top, lining their own pockets with the immoral wages of sin from prostituting themselves to the Champions League and Sky and a bully policy of buying anyone talented enough to threaten their hold by playing elsewhere.
The rest of the country try and join in but the catastrophic price of failure and the panic of the transfer window forces sane men to make insane decisions.
Birmingham City have been accused of being a selling club. So what? Some people have to wake up and smell the coffee. We are not a Premiership team, if a bigger club comes in and offers ridiculous money for one of our talented players then we have to seriously consider such a deal and if the player states he wants to leave then the deal should be completed. Would you trust that player to give all he has got for the rest of campaign if he stayed?
The annoying thing is not Upson's departure. He can go and swim in the Thames for all I care. The problem for most of us is the lack of a contingency plan. For weeks every journalist in the country was saying that the biggest deal in this transfer window would be Upson to West Ham. Bruce himself had said that Upson would only leave if ‘silly money' was offered. West Ham stumped up the silly money so why hadn't we organised a replacement? Did no one consider even once that the deal might go through?
Did no one think of saying to West Ham ‘ok Upson is yours for £6.5 million but only once we have completed the deal for XXXX'? I don't blame Upson leaving. This is the age when players like life long Liverpool fan Lucas Neill turn down the chance to join their dream club to go to West Ham. Why? A better standard of football? Don't make me laugh, look at the league. This is in no way meant to be derogatory to West Ham. They are staring relegation in the eyes and are doing what we could have done last season by buying big during the transfer window of opportunity.
The disappointment is that two big deals went through towards the end of the month, two big wage earners were despatched and no one came in to replace Dunn or Upson. This is a crucial time in our season. Derby, Preston and the Baggies have caught up. Southampton are also pressing hard and once again when the opportunity arose to show everyone we mean business we only actually showed the world that they could come and take our best players for a certain price.
We are fighting hard to join the big boys. They don't want us to gatecrash their party. We set off with some Stella and some Budweiser but are walking down the garden path towards the music with four cans of Carling. The truth is that it might just be enough to get us in but everyone will know we did it on the cheap.