The manager had had a frustrating summer transfer window, and was hoping for reinforcements before the season opener.
Martin O’Neill was keen to add a proven Premier League quality to his ranks as he got his squad assembled during his first pre-season at the Stadium of Light. But with the new season’s kick off away at Arsenal looming, and Carlos Cueller the only new arrival so far, it’s fair to say things maybe hadn’t gone as well as the Irishman had hoped, transfer wise at least.
Aidan McGeady, Jermain Defoe and Adam Johnson had all been perennially linked throughout the course of the summer – as had Steven Fletcher of recently-relegated Wolves.
The Molineux club had succumbed to the drop at the end of the previous season, and their 25 year old talisman wasn’t keen on the prospect of life in the championship.
Amid interest from Sunderland, Aston Villa and Fulham – and with Wolves refusing to sell below their hefty £15m valuation – Fletcher handed in a transfer request.
However, Sunderland’s three bids – which had topped out around the £11m-£12m mark – were still someway short of Wolves’ asking price. And in a bid to resolve the situation one way or the other, the club’s Jez Moxey had gone public.
All parties need to draw a line under this matter, which has now dragged on for over a month. We need to focus on the season ahead and these disruptions to the squads preparations are unhelpful.
Jez Moxey on the speculation linking Steven Fletcher with Sunderland
We have always said we want to keep our best players. If our valuations of them are not met then they will remain at Wolves but we cannot allow this speculation about their futures to drag on indefinitely up to the closure of the transfer window.
Fletcher, it was thought, was interested in making the move to the north east, and it was thought O’Neill may offer Connor Wickham as a makeweight.
The 6ft 1in striker had started his career at Hibernian before joining Burnley in the Premier League for the 2009-10 season. The £3m transfer fee was viewed as a gamble in some quarters, but he scored eight goals in 35 league games and won Burnley’s Player of the Season award.
Upon relegation, he stayed in the Premier League with Wolves, costing the Midlands club a club record equalling £6.5m. He scored 10 Premier League goals in his first season at the club, and 12 in the second, despite relegation.
Inflation being what it is, and Moxey being renowned for squeezing every last penny out of a deal, his fee had now more than doubled again.
It would be a week or so later – with the transfer deadline looming – however that Sunderland’s game of brinksmanship paid off. £12m, rather than £15m, was the price O’Neill paid to bring Fletcher to the club, and he started well – scoring twice on his league debut away at Swansea, as well as scoring in his next three, as well.
His early form did not go unnoticed, winning the Premier League player of the month award for September, however as was so often the case during Ellis Short’s reign, managerial changes disrupted and unsettled his form. The manager who bought him was dismissed and Paolo Di Canio took over.
Fletcher, around the same time, suffered a season-ending injury on international duty, and wasn’t available for the first team until early September. At the end of September, he was ruled out for another month or so, by which time Guy Poyet was in charge. Fletch of course scored in Poyet’s first home game – the win over Newcastle – and is also remembered for scoring in Sam Allardyce’s first game win over that lot, as well as smashing Steven Taylor’s head into the post at St James.
Overall, Fletcher did well for us, scoring 23 goals in 108 games, but in hindsight it is another ‘what could have been’. He arrived as a 25 year old striker who’d scored well in the past three top flight seasons. That should have been a springboard to perform at a very high level for the next five or six years. He didn’t achieve anything like that level – although I don’t think that was all down to him.
Category: General Sports
