Is this a case of being frugal and smart in the transfer window, or is there a slight hint of stubbornness in there as well that might prove to be our downfall?
Sheffield United look set to complete a move for AFC Bournemouth goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale in the coming days, but there is more to it than meets the eye. The Blades had been trailing Turkish goalkeeper Uğurcan Cakir for a number of months now, but now look set to go for the Englishman instead.
But according to a report from Turkish sports journalist Hasan Tüncel, the Blades decided to turn their attention to Ramsdale because Cakir’s current club Trabzonspor refused to budge from their €25m (around £23m) valuation of him, forcing Chris Wilder’s men to go for the cheaper option of Ramsdale instead for £18.5m (around €20m).
So in a sense this deal is really going to happen because Sheffield United wouldn’t shell out an extra £4.5m in terms of a transfer fee, a drop in the ocean when you consider what we’ve scooped in terms of Premier League prize money this season.
I just hope that we haven’t gone for Ramsdale for the sake of saving us a little bit of money.
Who would you rather have in goal next season?
Ramsdale
Cakir
Henderson
If we truly believed that Cakir was the better goalkeeper, and the fact we’ve been keeping an eye on him for a lot longer than we have Ramsdale would probably indicate that, otherwise we’d have looked at Ramsdale first. Should we really be backing down from our top target over the sake of less than £5m, less than 3.5% of the money that we scooped last season?
I can understand acting thrifty, but as we showed when we got promoted, as you progress so does your spending, and hopefully we haven’t let a better goalkeeper slip through our fingers for what really is a pittance in the grand scheme of things.