Walsall defender Scott Dann has followed former Saddlers team-mate Daniel Fox in signing for Coventry.
The centre-back, who is 21 on Valentine’s Day, joined the Sky Blues for an undisclosed fee and has penned a three-and-a-half year deal at the Ricoh Arena.
Dann has played regularly for Richard Money’s League One promotion chasers this season.
New boss Iain Dowie said he was looking forward to working with Dann.
He said: “Scott is an immensely bright talent with a promising career in front of him. He certainly has age on his side.
“He has been a consistent performer for Walsall in both their promotion campaign last year as well as this season and there’s no doubt in my mind that he will be a valuable and exciting addition to our squad.
“He is comfortable on the ball, with an excellent range of passing and he has also chipped in with a few goals over the last couple of years.”
44 Comments
BONSER OUT!!! HOW IN GODS NAME COULD HE LET THIS HAPPEN? AND WHERES THE SIGNINGS TO REPLACE FOX AND DANN? KISS GOODBYE TO THE CHAMPIONSHIP NOW SADDLERS FANS! AND DICKY DOSH WONT BE FAR FROM GOING CAUSE HE CANT BE HAPPY WITH THIS! BACK TO LEAGUE 2 IN 2 SEASONS AT THIS RATE!
NO NO NO ! ! !
VERY DISAPPOINTED WALSALL FC
LEAGUE 1 FOOTBALL NEXT SEASON THEN
JEFF BONSER COULD’NT BE THAT INTRESTED IN GOING UP !!
BAD BAD MOVE
:( 
NOT A HAPPY SADDLER
gutted, here we go again, no wonder the fans dont turn up same old walsall, feel like not going myself and havent missed home gane in years
We’ve just sold two of our best young talents to the same ‘going nowhere’ club. One of them possible the best of the young talents we had and both of whom had been part of one of the meanest back fours in the division.
What price would you get on Dowie going before the end of the season and DD returning ‘home’.
GUTTED
good old walsall
keep being ambitious
your just small club have fun in league 1 again, feel sorry for fans
well no i dont, after way you treated lee and money you get what you deserve!!!
(do feel sorry for non money haters though)
Okay, who’s going to be next. Through this transfer window we have decreased our squad. We had one of the smallest squads to start with. No doubt the story regarding Scot Danns departure will unfold over the next couple of days or so. Again a player has been sold for an “undisclosed fee” It will be very interesting to hear what Dicky D has to say on this one. If we have a run of injuries to any of the back four now, we will have serious problems. We had cover for Foxy, but Scot Dann is going to be missed big time. Nevertheless I am sure everyone will wish him well, he has been a good servant to the club.
Obviously a lot of people feeling the same way as I do. Dann going is going to be the last straw for a lot of people. Bonser was supposedly “beside himself” over recent attendances. Well after this episode he is in for a rude awakening. Just watch the numbers drop now he has done this across the loyal band. But I dont suppose he’s bothered. He’ll just do what he normally does, take cover and get his manager to take the flack. But I think there’s only so much DD can take. Surely even he cannot be happy with one. VERY DISILLUSIONED!!!!!!
Absolutly gob smacked.Typical walsall sell sell sell.Two months and dd will be gone too .Absolutly no ambition at all.Only way of justifying the sale is if they taken a seven figure fee.But same old walsall keep the fee to themselves.
Gutted. I can only hope that a minimum fee clause in his contract was activated otherwise this shows a real lack of ambition. Either way after this deal I very much doubt DD will be our manager next season.
Back again cant sleep fuming.If they think selling our best players is a way of getting more fans through the gate then they are completly wrong.This will keep even more fans away.The doom and gloom around the club is back and back with a big bang.Well done mr bonsor your pension has just got that little bit larger i hope your happy
First thing i wanted to know is how much and guess what a undisclossed fee. Tell you what the way I am feeling at the moment WALSALL FOOTBALL CLUB CAN GET STUFFED. So peed off and they are saying we cant afford to sign a player and that bloody idiot DD is saying WHY we are not getting better attendances NOW YOU KNOW WHY. I have 3 season tickets here 1 adult and 2 kids at this moment of time I am finished with WFC Thats the way I feel at the moment, and for that idiot DD telling us why the fans stop away NOW YOU KNOW WHY
I am finished with WFC. Just to make things worse SOD THE FANS A UNDISCLOSED FEE. What makes all of this worse is DD coments we cant buy players even for £50,000 this just proves what they think of the fans and have always done so. You are a disgrace WFC……………….
we ought to have a mass stay away im absolutley livid with bonser there i was waiting to see if we could add to a talented young squad and wot happens the inevitable i hope walsall sink like a stone now he dont deserve an attendance of 400 let alone 4000 is words last week were we have a bright future no jeff you have a massive bank balance you idiot
I am a life long Saddlers fan who will not be going to anymore games until Jeff Bonser sells the club, Thought we had turned the corner but was wrong again
Bonser Out !!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bonser Out !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Bonser Out !!!!!!!!!!!!!
Absolutely ridiculous decision to get rid of Dann and not bring anyone in as cover…especially as we are 4th in the league with a small and relatively inexperienced squad; and we are apparantly financially stable; and we already have lost Ricketts and Fox this week;
Shows how much a long term contract is worth with us….
This is a dark day for WFC - no wonder the fans stay away with this ambition shown;
totally gobsmacked with the latest sale, never saw it coming. yet again bonser takes the cash and settles for league 1 football rather than trying to push for championship football.
i live in ireland so can’t get to games but who would want to go to the games when all the best talent are being sold on the cheap. then the money not going to dd to strengthen. yet again its bonser lining his pockets and to hell with the loyal supporters
Richard Money is a good manager but he is another yes man!
Selling your best center-half without cover?
Come on DD, stand up for us!
WFC should be absolutely ashamed of themselves, utterly utterly ashamed.
Scott was a superb player who the fans had seen rise through to be a lynch pin. He was under contract for nearly another 3 years, we had no reason to sell him. Theres so much about this transfer that stinks, how late it was - giving us no time to find a permanent replacement, and the likely fact that it was for nowhere near the amount it should have been.
JEFF BONSER HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME. YOU ARE NOT A FAN OF WFC AND THIS ONCE AGAIN PROVES IT.
And you wonder why attendances are falling? Well after this great news, I’m sure they’ll be up for the next home game, you absolute flipping muppet Bonser, please sell the club ‘cos I really, really hate your guts you cowardly, money grabbing idiot.
woke up this morning, read teletext - OH DEAR GOD!!!!! kiss goodbye to the play-offs.
Bonser is a complete numbskull - how can he do this to us? He may not care about the club, but we the loyal Saddlers fans do. The sale of Dann just demonstrates why we never build our fan base - because there is just no ambition at Walsall while Bonser is the chairman. I’d rather be in debt with assets on the field than making a small profit each year with no assets. Bonser’s taking a very short term view - he’ll take the money and run - but we the fans are in it for the long term (whatever people say on the spur of the moment on websites!). I’m gutted!
Gutted. What are we a feeder club for coventry now. How he can sell a player who is under contract. At the start of the window DD said we dont need to sell anyone unless they make a stupid offer, so open up walsall and tell us what the stupid offer is. Dann gone, Fox gone and the reason Rickets went is cause were tight and wouldnt pay him the wages. And he wonders why people stay away. Give the fans some answers and stop filling your own pockets Bonser. We had a real chance of going up this year, and Dann was more important than Fox. Kiss goodbye to the play offs.
BONSER OUT
“And Now For His Next Trick”….. Groom Manny Smith for the revolving door at a bargain basement price?.Bonser,we’re going nowhere.You Know It,the fans know it but the hurtful thing is that for a brief moment we thought things may be changing for the better.You make me sick Bonser
How depressing is this? I have often threatened to turn my back on our club in terms of owning a season ticket but i don’t know how much more i can take from this money grabbing ******* Bonser!We have all had the life sucked out of us by his latest abortion, i feel like a boxer who is down for the count!
woke up just, turned on skytext, and i see this!!!
just wot the hell WFC r playin at sellin our best talent is beyond me, this lack of ambition is why fans arent turning up. at this rate we’ll be back in league 2, and i wont b around to see it.
BONSER CAN STICK HIS CLUB WHERE THE SUN DON’T SHINE! I am absolutely gutted. I have supported this ‘tin pot’ club for over 20 years and I thought we had turned the corner. We have hardly spent a penny this year on players due to the immense development of the kids and just when we need to spend a bit to strengthen us, what does the greedy ****** do? Sells 2 of our best players for fees that he aint got the bottle to divulge and does not sign Ricketts. I am at a loss!
Pathetic.
You fans should be fuming. How on earth your board can sell two of your best players and expect you to believe that they are ambitious is beyond common sense.
I really feel for you.
Expect a tumble down the league from now.
walsall want the fans to buy in to what the club are doing, well i’m not buying it JB, not no more, but folks don’t blame DD, he’s a top manager and it’s not his fault.
I just cannot believe all you fickle fans, you are appalling & disgust me ……
You just don’t know the story, let it evolve then make your comments. Sure I am as disappointed as anyone to see Scotty go, but no-one is irreplacable. Yea we’ll miss him but you have to consider the player, the club and things WE DON’T KNOW.
Get along to watch the kids we have a great youth system …..
This rubbish about Jeff Bonser and selling the club, IT HAS BEEN UP FOR SALE FOR 8 YEARS, & him not being a fan, total tripe, without him there would be no Saddlers.
2 months ago you were moaning about Ricketts coming to the Saddlers, now you’r moanin about him leaving. You are moaning now about Kevin Betsy - he will prove you wrong - he is a good player.
Just let Jeff Bonser (who IS just about the biggest fan of the Saddlers that there is, believe me) and Richard Money do their job, they are better at it than ANY of you.
AND REMEMBER at the start of the season the majority of you were heppy just to remain in the division, just shows how far we have come.
My bet with the bookies in August that we would finish in the play offs still looks good.
Can’t believe this! Not only have we lost a very good young defender in Dann, we’ve also lost an aerial threat in attack off setplays. The boy chipped in with a few goals!!! Losing Ricketts - annoying, losing Fox - not quite as bad, Losing Dann - stupid. My theory on the Jan transfer window is that if you’re in a good league position you strengthen! So, to lose Fox you get a replacement, lose Ricketts, get two strikers as we are weak there anyway and to lose Dann is stupid, lose him if you’ve got an equally - if not better - centre back signed sealed and delivered! Now, where’s that euro millions ticket!!
What a shambles !!! We are 4th in the league, and I’ve been more excited by the thought of what our young side might achieve if we can keep them together, than I can remember being at any time as a Saddler. Season ticket holders like myself should not be left thinking whether or not to renew when the early bird details come through the post, yet being let down AGAIN leaves me in that frame of mind, which is crazy when we are exceeding all expectations so far this season.
I only wish we could have someone like Pete Waterman owning the club(a genuine fan who would do right by us), and I wouldn’t ask him to use his millions to bank roll big money signings, but just to keep the young talent coming through and then keep them at the club !!! At the very least, get their real value if they do move on !!!
This morning I feel badly let down by WFC, and wondering whether I’m at the end of my tether this time.
We are 4th in the league but a Bonser protest is a must.
Absolute disgrace!
gerald.cooper said: Feb 1st, 2008 at 10:04 am I just cannot believe all you fickle fans, you are appalling & disgust me
if youre not jeff bonser posting under an alias youre a bigger idiot than he is wake up and smell the coffee weve been shafted thank you jb BONSER OUT
Well done Mr Bonser,superb piece of business.Lets weaken from a position of strength and dampen enthusiasm whilst wiping another 250 home seats from the next game.Gerald Cooper obviously things you are a genius,at least there are TWO of you,so you must be right.
Fans like gerald.cooper make me sick. You either have your head in the sand or somewhere about Jeff Bonser’s person !!!
Sure JB saved the club, but he also likes to hold us back because the prospect of Championship football and wages doesn’t sit well with him.
Do you reckon that a large proportion of WFC’s support couldn’t do a better job at deciding when and how much to sell our best assets ??? Hardly rocket science is it ??
Fryatt and Bennett sold cheaply and with no cover, ultimately contributing to relegation. Had we kept them a little longer, the season in League 2 may not have happened and we’d probably have got more for them having seen them progress with us further. How much would they have been worth if they had been able to benefit from Richard Money’s management ?
Also, how must our other younger players be feeling today ? WFC publicly talking about this season being where we build upon the young talent in the squad, then in the final week of the transfer window two of the better youngsters are sold, despite noises from the club about being financially sound and not needing to sell ??? What will Deeney, Nicholls, Taundry to name three be thinking today ?
I’m so angry about the sale of Dann! I was planning on going up to Carlisle for Saturday’s game (and probably still will weather permitting) but now I can’t help but wonder whether it’s worth it. I was feeling reasonably confident up until this morning that we could at least squeeze out a draw against what is an AMAZING home record. But now, that’s completely gone. Joe Garner is one of the best strikers in this league and he would’ve been a handful for Dann and Gerrard but Roper is just going to be picked apart. The lack of ambition that this last minute sale exposes just baffles me. At the very least we should’ve kept the rest of the squad following the Fox sale, as we had adequate cover in Boertien, and seen if that was good enough for promotion. But to have lost, in my opinion, our best player is beyond suicidal. Maybe DD knows something about Roper/Smith that we’ve not seen yet but until he shares it with us this move reeks of bullying from the board or just plain stupidity. The club must be in a pretty dire financial state to rationalise this transfer. Fill us in someone?
Dear Jeff,
As you can tell from the scale of this morning’s reaction, your latest decision has not gone down well. Just as we were building something, not least in the spirit of our club being as high as its been since the height of Buckley’s and Graydon’s days, you smash those hopes. We deserve answers: yes, the attendances are not as high as we might hope/expect, although history tells us they will never go much above 5,500 in this division. Along with most, I assumed that Fox’s sale was enough to tide us over and, hopefully, sign Ricketts — that was the line coming out from the club if you read it carefully. If this was a financial decision for the good of the club, then let us know: we might not believe you, but at least you will deflect the pension criticism (if you say nothing, why wouldn’t we believe that longstanding view). If the player was desperate to go, or there was a release clause, then there is no reason at all not to tell us. If we received a huge bid why keep that a secret? We won’t like it, but by next week will have calmed down and partly come back to the reality that if anyone bids a million for one of our players it is hard to turn down. We will at least know that our club has not been shafted by the bigger boys yet again getting our home graown talent on the cheap. Frankly this ‘undisclosed’ crap is tiresome and only encourages the rumours.
You cannot ignore this situation — in thirty years of supporting the Saddlers I can’t remember something which has upset the fans so much. And if you want to go someway to repairing the massive damage this does to us and restoring some faith that you want what we want — and make no mistake, we have as good a chance of promotion this year as we will ever have as the clubs around us are no great shakes excepting Swansea — then tell DD he has a warchest, can bring in the loans we need, and please, please, sign Ricketts.
Gutted!
I looked on the BBC Sport website after midnight last night for a summary of all the final day’s moves and Dann’s certainly wasn’t listed; in fact I was rather hoping we had at least another incoming loanee to beef up the midfield given that KB will ’strengthen’ the forward line (?) to maintain the momentum.
Presume it was an offer we couldn’t refuse, which seems very strange having received £3-400k’ish earlier in the week for Foxy. Either that or Money’s making a not-so-covert attempt to get back to Coventry himself and he’s drip-feeding our stars across in readiness?
Dann only signed a long-term contract in Nov/Dec? Another ploy then just to boost his market value?
I know the stated priority at the beginning of the season was to consolidate, but in the position we’re in, we could at least have waited until the end of the season to see how the final third pans out before the inevitable annual team rebuild.
Another spin on the sales could be that the Board consider that out target for the season has been almost achieved in that we’re virtually guaranteed to be safe from relegation with our points tally and aren’t prepared to push-on to the next level and therefore they can claim a doubly successful season with ’success’ on the pitch AND a healthy balance sheet despite p*ssing off the punters. Mediocrity Rules!
Is it any wonder that, apart from the weather and back-to-back games against unglamorous teams, the fans aren’t coming through the turnstiles. This looks like a ‘Catch 22′ scenario. The Board and DD blast the fans and are then able to use this as an excuse or justification for dismantling the team to improve the balance sheet and reinforces the lack of ambition which will drive the fan-base down further. And so it continues??
Or am I missing something? Do we have another ‘Dann’ in-waiting? Whilst Ropes has given good service and is committed, he’s getting-on and error prone and is our ‘Titus Bramble’.
The next few games will be interesting
next year you will go down back to league 2
congratulations walsall fans you get everything you deserve for slaughtering DD after all he done for you last year. serves all of you right if he ditches you in the summer. the bloke did excellent job last year and you lot wanted him out? crazy talk.
well done on confirming walsall will remain playing the likes of macclesfield, mansfield and wrexhams everyweek for rest of my live span
we8wba - walsall fans don’t want richard money out. Why don’t you go and do your homework and stop embarrasing yourself ?
woke up this morning to check any late deadline day deals and was shocked to find out that dann has been sold to the sky blues. told few of my work colleagues and they too were disgcusted at the transfer.
We should have a mass stay out to protest agaist bonser!!!!!!!!!!!
He has no ambition,we should show him what we think of him!!!!!!!!
All we are doing is training our players for bigger clubs.
How is this promoting our club?
All we do is sell, sell, sell.
I agree with daleks2rule.
We must improve. We need to buy and not sell. We earned loads last season AND now from fox and dann. Why dont we spend it?
Why dont we invest the money into the club?
BONSER OUT!!!
I think dicky dosh should go to leeds at least they invest into the club.
We might well bring back merson because we have no ambition and all the rubbish.