Wigan interest in Routledge. How about N’Zogbia the other way?
Posted on July 23rd, 2011 | 25 Comments |
The Sun is rumouring that Wigan might be preparing a £2.5m bid for Wayne Routledge to replace Charles’ N’Zogbia if he leaves the club as expected. N’Zogbia has in fact not gone to Austria for pre-season yodelling practise along with the rest of the Wigan squad, thus creating some sort of expectation that his transfer out of Wigan is perhaps close.
Apparently a £9m bid for N’Zogbia by Villa was rejected by Wigan recently.
Maybe Ashley will quote a ‘special price’ of £5m for Routledge for non-Champions League contenders, rather like Wigan allegedly did for us when we first showed some interest in The Zog!
Rumours tend to snowball, so of course this particular one has resurrected our interest in N’Zogbia and plays to the idea of some sort of swap deal being arranged.
Personally I think that, even if we took £2.5m off the N’Zogbia’s price and gave Routledge to Wigan instead, it might still be seen as too expensive for another midfielder given that, presumably, some money will need to be kept back for a striker of some sort. I suppose there’s always the possibility that Ben Arfa could be used as a striker and another midfielder could be recruited in his place, although I tend to think we want to recruit an out-and-out striker as a priority.
Geordie opinion is somewhat divided over The Zog with some who would welcome the addition of his talents on the back of the good record he had last season, while others think he’s a petulant risk who is mercenary in his approach to a transfer and has no particular interest in Newcastle. I certainly tend to think he can show petulance when things don’t go his way, but as to the ‘mercenary’ allegations, I think we have to be aware that players’ agents play games that might not reflect a player’s personal opinions.
N’Zogbia of course allegedly refused to play under Kinnear after his ‘insomnia’ comment and, whilst I can understand he might have felt insulted, I’m not keen on players refusing to play over things like that. Yes, put in a transfer request or whatever but get on with the job you’re paid to do until you move. If I didn’t work following every insult I’d never have stayed in a job for longer than five minutes!
So that sort of thing does make me cautious of re-signing N’Zogbia, although I recognise his talents and that he has banged in a lot of goals for Wigan considering he plays midfield.
Usual disclaimers apply to this post – it’s all press speculation and rumour and we’ll only really know what’s happening with both Routledge and The Zog when they sign on the dotted line.
NUFCBlog Author: Hugh de Payen
I'm a baby-boomer of the punk rock persuasion, currently exiled in Somerset for crimes committed in a previous life where locals keep trying to poison me with something called 'scrumpy'. Hates sprouts, coat-hangers, Cilla Black, ornaments, Steven Seagull movies and 50 Cent (he's not worth 10).
Hugh de Payen has written 634 articles on this blog.
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