Your weekly round-up of the players jumping off the good ship Hull City at an alarming rate! And the one or two its vaguely suggested might arrive.
Sunday 11th June
According to The Sun, Michael Dawson is a target for
Burnley. The apparent cheap release clauses in the contracts of our players
following relegation are attracting interest after Curtis Davies went to Derby
County for just £500k.
Along similar lines, Tom Huddlestone, who is said to have
a release clause of £2m, was linked with Watford today but I can’t find any
source for this rumour. It was either in a printed version of one of the
Sundays or came from a crap “news” site and was given credence by appearing in
the gossip columns on more reputable sites.
Monday 12th June
City’s prize youngster, 18-year-old Josh Tymon, is almost
certainly leaving this summer having rejected a professional contract with The
Tigers despite Ehab Allam’s brilliant efforts to keep him. The Sentinel say
Stoke City are preparing a contract offer while ESPN claim Liverpool, Watford
and Aston Villa are also interested. Josh should be worth £10m+ in the current
market with add-ons or sell-on clauses. City will be lucky to get a fifth of
that at tribunal.
The Sun suggest Burnley's Scott Arfield is being chased
by West Brom, Hull and Fulham. Arfield is a wide midfielder who joined Burnley
on a free from Huddersfield in 2013 and has been an important player in their
two recent promotions to the Premier League and in establishing themselves in
the top flight. The rag claims the fee would be £2.5m for the Canadian
international who is a former Scotland U21 cap.
HITC – who are my least favourite news source, worse than
Clubcall! – link Rangers’ Josh Windass with a move to City. It’s not a story
that needs much putting together. It was reported last week that Josh will be
allowed to leave Ibrox. City are an obvious match given his father’s standing
in the City and current employment. I have asked Dean Windass for a comment on
this one. He wouldn’t say anything. That’s unusual!
Tuesday 13th June
Sky Sports reported today that City have “received bids”for
Harry Maguire and Andy Robertson. That wouldn’t be the worst thing in the
world. We know both are going and the last thing we’d want is for them to go
later in the transfer window when the job of replacing them (and the other half
a squad we’ve lost) would become increasingly difficult.
The Sun say the bid for Maguire is from Leicester City
and is around £17m. While this number varies in other stories, almost every
outlet suggest this bid is genuine. The Mirror claim Burnley are back in for
Robertson having failed to get him in January.
Radio Humberside tweeted that City are set to lose
yet another player with young defender Harvey Rodgers preferring a move to
Fleetwood over signing a new contract.
New Hull City manager Leonid Slutsky is a friend of Chelsea
owner Roman Abramovich speculation linking City with Chelsea loanees will be
rife over the coming weeks. In the first genuine link, Evening Standard say
Tomas Kalas is a loan target for City and Fulham. This story was confirmed by
the Hull Daily Mail who spoke to the player’s agent. Czech international Kalas
has had five loan spells away from Chelsea since they paid over £5m for him as
a 17-year-old in 2010. He was at Fulham for the last campaign having been
promoted with Middlesbrough the season prior.
In a far less believable story Tribal Football claim
Arsenal want to buy 21-year-old Russian international Aleksandr Golovin from CSKA
Moscow and loan him to City. Arsenal have been linked with the player for a
while but a loan back to CSKA is far more likely than to The Tigers.
Thursday 15th June
Harry Maguire’s move to Leicester was officially
announced today. The fee is officially undisclosed but is generally considered
to be worth £16-17m eventually. How much of that is before add-ons depends on
who you believe but is somewhere between £12-15m. Sheffield United will receive
around £1.4m due to a sell-on clause in the deal that brought Harry to Hull.
The Maguire fee shows the current strength of the
transfer market. He only has a year left on his contract and in the past that
risk of losing him for nothing would have lead to a token price. However the competition
for his signature, huge TV money burning a hole in pockets and the requirement
for immediate success has strengthened the position of the seller.
Ex-boss Marco Silva isn’t just being linked with current
City players. The Mirror say he wants to be re-united with last season’s loan
signing Lazar Markovic from Liverpool while Clubcall (Yes, I know) claim a bid
for another of our former loanees Omar Elabdellaoui has failed as the Norwegian
right-back wants to stay at Olympiakos.
Friday 16th June
As promised the previous evening, we woke to an exclusive
story from Radio Humberside that Goalie Eldin Jakupovic is close to a £2m move
to Leicester City. The club took the highly unusual step of denying any bid has
been received in a statement on the website. However, the BBC still ran the
story on their site and claim discussions have taken place and Leicester are
definitely interested.
Exclusive: We understand Hull City keeper Eldin Jakupovic is in advanced talks with Leicester City and a move is close. #hcafc #lcfc— BBC Humberside Sport (@HumbersideSport) June 16, 2017
Harvey Rodgers officially joined Fleetwood Town on a free
transfer bagging a three-year deal. The 20-year-old centre half from Selby has
been in the City youth ranks for almost a decade and impressed during a loan
spell at Accrington last season. Losing him is a very careless act but not a
surprising one from a club that shows no aptitude for protecting its assets at
the moment. This isn’t a mistake on the level of Josh Tymon but is like the
releasing of another North Yorkshire lad, Rory Watson, last season. Both are
players who will go on to have very good careers. That would hopefully be with
City but if not – they’d sell for a good amount of money.
I’ve already mentioned how useless I think HITC are and
they run two stories on Friday that hopefully prove it. The first links City,
along with QPR and Ipswich, with a move for Matty Fryatt. The striker has just
been released by Nottingham Forest having not played for two years. He was an absolute
hero at City and one of my favourite strikers to have worn black and amber but
represents a massive risk.
The other HITC story suggests Southampton want our England U18
goalkeeper Will Mannion. While Will is well under contract and would command a
fee, I can’t comprehend losing another of the brilliant young lads I watch so
proudly whenever possible in the U23s.
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