Our man on Wolves’ £6.5m ‘bargain’
Tuesday 23rd June 2009, 2:00PM BST.
Wolves correspondent Tim Nash explains how more than doubling the club’s transfer record could actually turn out to be a bit of a bargain.
So Wolves fans, Kevin Doyle – deal or no deal?
Well, all the indications suggest that the club would be getting a good Premier League player – providing he agrees to come.
At £6.5million, the Reading striker is going to cost more than double the club’s transfer record and represents a steep investment, as well as a departure from the financial level of signings we have become accustomed to seeing.
Indeed, it was widely thought Wolves wouldn’t push the boat out as much as this. They will have raised a few eyebrows up and down the country with their commitment to splash out as much as this on a single transfer.
Few would be too naive to think this will be as straightforward as Doyle putting pen to paper at Molineux tomorrow.
No doubt there will be other clubs preparing to roll out the welcome mat, the whistle-stop tours of the training grounds and the sales patter.
But Wolves will present a strong and compelling case.
Mick McCarthy’s stock has never been higher and the man himself is quietly determined his previous Premier League experience – soured by inevitable relegation at Sunderland – isn’t repeated.
Boosted by Steve Morgan’s millions, the owner-chairman wants to see Wolves re-establish themselves as a top flight club and McCarthy will have told Doyle he can be at the forefront.
More than anything it’s a statement of intent from Wolves, as they try to make headway in the increasingly cash-mad world of the Premier League.
But the one thing that has been made abundantly clear by chief executive Jez Moxey and manager McCarthy – time and again – is that the policy of recruiting value for money signings will be rigorously pursued.
That policy applies whichever division Wolves are in. So there will be no return to the days of handing big-name players one last pay-day.
That’s why the links with some of Newcastle’s dozen or so £50,000-a-week players have caused more than a chuckle inside the corridors of power at Molineux.
Doyle, on the other hand, would appear to represent all that is good about Wolves’ young and hungry blueprint.
At 25-years-old, he’s coming to his peak years and he possesses the desire to improve. Something almost guaranteed under McCarthy, given his track record.
Sources close to the player also confirm Wolves would be getting an unaffected character, as willing and hardworking as they come.
Crucially, he has the Premier League experience McCarthy ideally wants in all of his summer recruits – and a decent record to boot.
Thirteen Premier League goals in his first season of top flight football is an exceptional return, from a player who cost Reading £78,000 less than two years before.
OK, so he dipped the following campaign, as most of his team-mates did as they struggled with the ‘second season syndrome’.
There was also suggestions that he would maybe benefit from a fresh start, after just two goals in the second half of last season when the ball just wouldn’t go in for him.
This ultimately cost the Royals automatic promotion.
Injuries – as well as missed chances at home – played their part however as Reading’s challenge fizzled out.
With his mentor Steve Coppell now departed, a natural parting of the ways opened up for Doyle.
But the challenge of establishing Wolves in the Premier League is surely as big as any he will be offered in the coming days.
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would be a fantastic signing. i really dont think it will happen though. ill belive this when i see him in a wolves shirt
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Can we wait until he has definitely signed before we discuss whether he will be a good signing or not???
Thanks
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SIGN HIM UP!!
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Isn’t this a bit premature? He hasn’t even agreed terms, signed etc.
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i hope we do get him but as tim said it is not going to be an over night thing a lot of clubs would love to have him and it would be a tremendous signing i seen him a few times and he is top class look last year when reading come to molinuex he demolished our defence and if he comes to wolves i no mick will get him back to his best again come wolves hope we get this one then jez will live up to what he said saying will we be spending but even if we sign doyle still need 3 or 4 more players :)
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surely if we are to compete in the Premiere League a £6.5 million deal is what we should be spending. We need quality players with a track record in the Premiership. THAT MY FRIENDS COST MONEY. If you pay peanuts you know what you get !
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looks like sunderland and fulham are set to bid for the player. If we don’t sign him it will be the fault of the e&s, mick and jez have always maintained they will do business quitely and with yourselves leaking the story yesterday it has simply alerted other clubs! supposed to be a wolves newspaper when all you care about is selling the damn thing!! thanks e&s once again your poor journalism may cost us a transfer.I think I speak for most wolves fans when I say keep your noses out until the deal is done!
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I don’t think you need to convince any Wolves fans that Doyle would be a good buy – the matter is convincing the player himself to move to us!
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lets not get carried away we are no where near getting him yet
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A good signing but 6.5mil is alot of money. But Doyle and Ebanks blake could be a fantastic partnership. I cant believe that Nolan is on 50k a week. If Newcastle do not go up they are heading for a leeds.
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i would love to see this man in a gold and black shirt.
keeping fingers crossed :)
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SIGN HIM UP!!
if its left to late bigger clubs such as everton will offer bigger contracts, and we will lose another signing yet again sort it out jez !!
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Absolute bargain.
Worse Premiership goals record than ‘Doesn’t score enough goals’ Fortune, at twice the price!!
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£6.5 million, so what does that make ebanks worth? Because he’s scored twice as many goals as Doyle.
Just because he has a clause in his contract, doesn’t mean he’s worth THAT much. I think we’re being ripped off here, or at worst, getting a little desperate for signings.
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I will be shocked if he comes to the Wolves. If Everton are also interested there wil be litle choice for him given the anticipated increase in wages and possibly the guarantee of Premiership football the following year. Ever the optimist!!
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Dont wish to sound negative but wouldnt we have signed him by now if he was keen to come to us???
If he goes for a look around villa and everton we would be third choice as we face a relegation battle whereas the other 2 are fighting at the top half!?!
If he rocks up @ molineux i will be very very happy yet a touch suprised.
come on mr american goalkeeper man, work your yanky charm on your former team mate!!!
On the other hand i think a cheeky bid for Owen wouldnt go a miss, as phil brown at hull said, he aint going to go anywhere for money as he has enough, it would be more for playing time and a comfy physio’s bed!! when he played he would be useful and i think ebanks and vokes would be capable with his words of wisdom when he is injured!! win win!
what about TUNCAY or OBEFEMI MARTINS?? or fatty viduka?!?! 3 experienced strikers to help!
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truee!!! i do really like this playerr.. i would definatley considerr signing him if iwas mick and co… hes irish aswell ;) haha you know how much our mick loves the irish lads.. but overall good player.. willing to run for the ball and battle when lost it iin a tacklee and can use his head.. something which sylvan hasnt actually gott!!!
sign him uppp!!
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No Deal – not worth the money.
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I fear we will be gazumped on this deal. Maybe I’m just being pesimistic.
I’m finding that good football transfers are akin to pulling a fit bird. You do all the groundwork, try and second guess the mood, woo them, and you’re still never guaranteed to get in there. Come on sexy Kev, we want you. Gold matches your beautiful complexion big boy.
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today i have bought my season ticket for the wolves,
if we want any chance of staying up we need to get some premier league players, 6.5 million for a championship player? are you going mad mick? You could get bloody owen and pay for his wages for that much! what the hell are we doing signing him,!
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Will the E&S please stop publishing these stories about potential signings until a player has put pen to paper. If anything, this cheap newspaper talk may actually cost us the signings we really want. I really wish the E&S wouldn’t publish any stories of who we’re talking to until the actual day they sign and we see their picture inthe shirt with Mick and Jez.
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yeah i’d love to see tuncay…
i’d love to see anyone at this point///
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£6.5m for Doyle… don’t think its a bad bit of business compared to the insanity of £3m for Zat Knight and £4m for Marc-Antoine Failure!!
Come on, back the 3Ms to bring in the right players. Just wish the rumours of pap would go away!
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I hope we do get Doyle! I think he’d be perfect and I don’t really rate Marc Antoine Fortune in the same league as Doyle and will people shut up about Owen, he aint got the desire to fight in a relegation battle. I’d also like to get Stephen Hunt from Reading and then we’d have the 3 most influencial players from Reading’s premier days. I recon we could get Mancienne for around the £6m mark and then we’d line like this!
Hennessey
Foley, Berra, Mancienne, Elokobi
Kightly, Henry/Jones, Milijas, S.Hunt
Doyle, Ebanks-Blake
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We are you blaming the express & star, try reading the Reading Chronicle from the 18th. Express & star were just following another papers article
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Have to agree with Dangermouse on this one.
As for the comment about Newcastle doing a Leeds, that’s an incredibly strong assumption to make. Any prospective buyer, and remember the club is indeed up for sale and if the press are to believe, Ashley wants out at pretty much any price, will be fully aware of the contractual obligations i.e. effectively contingent liabilities, and will stress test on a worse case scenario i.e. no promotion in 2 years, crowds of 20K/25K and loss of parachute money (and lost sales due to a horrendous new away shirt! BTW – loved the comment from a Sunderland site that said it looks like there was a fight between the Norwich and Blackpool shirts and this was the loser).
Ashley will have to absorb the losses, since this is a privately held company – remember Ashley bought it in 2007 so it is now 100% owned by him – or he will lose all his investment. He does have deep pockets (and indeed a deep belly). No prospective buyer will simply ‘hope for the best’
Leeds’ problem was that it was a publicly quoted company at the time, rather than privately owned. Massive difference. Leeds Sporting plc did not have deep pockets and could not raise finances from its ‘owners’ to cover its shortcomings, once it had already increased its net debt from £9.4m in 1999 to £78m in 2002, and didn’t even own its ground as a partially offsetting asset. Hence, it went bankrupt until bought by a private investment company fronted by Ken Bates on the cheap.
So, sure Ashley could effectively bankrupt Newcastle (or rather his holding company, St James’ Holdings Ltd) – and a new company would emerge from the embers (sounds vaguely familiar). But in doing so, he would be writing off his initial £133m investment (and subsequent debt paydown of £110m he claims to have made).
Or something like that
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he won’t sign unless we are his only choice so we probably won’t sign him anyway. june is nearly over & still just a 37 year old free transfer definatly signed!
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24. I hate your line up.. I give it an E minus!
My line up..
Hennesey
Foley Mancienne Berra Elokobi
Kightly Bodde Milijas Ledley Gai
SEB
My team will beat your team 5-0 at home and 3-0 away!
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Wolves are following Shakhtar Donetsk midfielder Oleksiy Gai.
The 26 year-old Ukraine international is rated in the £3.5 million class.
Keep the signings coming Merlin
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From the Reading Chronicle
Doyle on verge of joining Wolves
by Anthony Smith
Comments (2) | Print | Email
Swapping colours: Kevin Doyle could be wearing a Wolves strip next season.
KEVIN Doyle is edging closer to a £6.5 million move to Wolves.
The Chronicle broke the news of Doyle’s shock transfer in our exclusive last week.
And now we can reveal that a fee is thought to have been agreed between the clubs, leaving Doyle free to discuss personal terms.
Doyle, 25, met representatives from Wolves over the weekend and it is believed the deal could be completed within the next few days.
Wolves boss Mick McCarthy sees Doyle as an ideal partner for Sylvan Ebanks-Blake, who has just signed a new four year deal with the Premier League new boys.
And he is ready to shatter their transfer fee to land the Republic of Ireland star, eclipsing the £3.5 million they paid out for Ade Akinbiyi in 1999.
McCarthy has already been given the go-ahead by Molineux owner Steve Morgan to meet the Royals’ asking price.
Royals boss Brendan Rodgers is gutted to lose Doyle. But he has been told he needs to sell to raise funds to strengthen the squad.
And Royals will find it impossible to turn down that sort of cash as they enter the final year of Premier League parachute payments.
Doyle cost just £78,000 from Cork City and has scored 56 goals in 163 appearances for the Royals.
Rodgers admitted: “You always want to work with the best players but you have to understand the reality.”
And Royals chairman Sir John Madejski added: “Brendan knows we are losing the parachute payment after this season and we have to cut our coat according to our cloth.”
Aston Villa have also been watching Doyle while reports suggest Everton are ready to pay £10 million to get him plus winger Stephen Hunt, who has admitted he wants a “fresh start”.
Defender Andre Bikey is also attracting interest from Marseille.
Watford’s Tommy Smith, Rangers’ Charlie Adam and Chelsea’s Jack Cork are all possible targets for Rodgers this summer.
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wolves will sign the players required to keep them in the premier league, as for the comments on these pages they are pathetic and would be tragic if they were’nt so funny, especially the bit about a local newspaper alerting proffessional football clubs with (scouts) to the availability of players
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tomorrows edition
DOYLE TO BRUM!
they probably pick the paper up and sign who were linked with
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Kevin Doyle Is Currently Discussing Terms Over A Four – Year Contract :)
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birmingham will probablbley sign him at the last min . double his wages and slip him into their 200 man squad . and they ll still get relegated
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id like to see the Doyle deal done if it is completed in the next day or so.The longer it goes on the more obvious it becomes he’s using the club for his own personal gain.
One player who i have thought who i wouldnt mind seeing at the molineux(dont bite ny head off) is Nugent from portsmouth. Similar hype suurounded him before his move to pompey and i think we could get for a steal-maybe on loan and can hold the ball up and bring others into play as his scoring record would suggest even in the Championship not prolific. Im not looking at him as a cheap alternative but maybe a squad player alongside a big name (saha -pay as you play-you never know. )
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If I was him I would go to Everton. It is not all about cash.
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cant the exp and star keep bloody quiet for a change ….this story will probably ruin the deal as usual
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Seems an awful lot of money for a player who has scored in 1 in 3 league games and less than that over the last 2 seasons. Is a decent player but hardly Premiership quality.
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ticks all the boxes, but will we get the signature ? hope so !!!! But somehow I think this is another load of pap. if tis on the club site i’ll beleive it !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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Spot on #7. If he does end up moving elsewhere the paper can take a look at itself- on one hand there were a few fans on here last week mentioning this was going to happen but for the paper to blaze it across the headlines was only going to attract other clubs to swoop in with better offers perhaps- I can only hope the club have been working on the personal contract for the past two weeks and that it is more or less a formality, if he hasnt signed the paper already. I think its a tremendous signing and as for this article, i dont agree with the bit about it sending shockwaves up and down the country- Blues have been splashing the cash as they needed to, as we are now, by the looks of it. 6.5 is not a huge huge amount, its the type of money we need to spend on this type of quality. There will be more in this bracket, mark my words- the club said it was ready to compete and it is, even if neither the fans nor the paper took them for their word. They are doing their best, let them get on with it, our job is to support whoever they bring in from the first whistle.
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he won’t sign for us this is cover for two other players we are signing one on thursday the other on friday,WE ARE WOLVES
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I can’t believe what people are saying. What do you expect the E&S to do?
We wouldn’t be on here discussing a potential signing in the first place if they didn’t report it.
It is there job to pass on information.
Its more the club’s fault if we miss out on a player.
Ridiculous.
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Would be a great signing.So exactly the reason why we won;t get him. On to target C and D….Lawd help us !!
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He is not a prem striker which is why we`ll get him.No one else ie villa, Everton would pay that crazy sum or give him 4 years. He`s being bought more to score the goals to get us back the year after next than to keep us up.
For 6.5m we could get a top foreigner or fund 3 foreign loan signings.
Mccarthy is only comfortable operating in his own backyard.
Sorry, its just how I see it. Nevertheless I`ve got my season ticket and will be right behind whoever we sign.
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I think we should be sorting out our loan deals for the season whilst the permanent transfers in negotiations. Lets talk to Mr Wenger and get Aaron Ramsay on a season long loan. The word is Mancienne will talk to Ancelotti on his return and if he is not in his immediate plans he will join us on loan or permanently. Macheda from Man Utd could be a shrewd piece of business. I cant believe Kevin Nolan is on 50k a week!
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Just as I thought things were getting better we have been linked with 750k bid for Tommy Smith from Watford. Ronald Zubar and Gai have also been linked.
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Wolves are closing in on the signing of Marseille defender Ronald Zubar, skysports.com understands.
The Premier League new boys are believed to have agreed a fee in the region of £2.5million for the unsettled central defender.
The Guadeloupe-born stopper is due to arrive at Molineux for talks and a medical on Thursday as Wolves look to tie up his signature.
Zubar has been told he can leave Stade Velodrome as he does not figure in Didier Deschamps’ long-term plans and Wolves have moved quickly to snap up the 23-year-old.
Wolves boss Mick McCarthy has made defensive reinforcements one of his top priorities and he sees Zubar’s signature as a key addition to his squad
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To think in the second half of last year he only scored 2 goals, but he still managed 18 overall……….Blake and Doyle would make a great partnership but Id keep Iwelumo too as a bench player.
At least we are looking in the right places.
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waste of money, terrible signing and 6.5m is a joke!
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Yes interesting that Iwelumo has been linked with a move. The one player I think will be suited to the premiership is Keogh. A clever player who wasnt suited to the long ball lunging tackle style of the championship but links up play beautifully, I think he will surprise a few.
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BELIVE IT WHEN I SEE IT!
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No thanks.over priced and did nothing last season.ok he scored a few in the prem but reading were on a high and a unknown entity and soon got found out.theres got to be better for that sort of money.Doesnt do it for me!
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