On This Day (27th June 2015): Sunderland pull out of a deal for Robert Snodgrass!
Popular Scottish midfielder Robert Snodgrass could have been a Sunderland player… if the stars had aligned. But alas, it wasn’t to be!
The summer of 2014 was a whirlwind of transfer activity at Sunderland AFC.
Paolo Di Canio and Roberto De Fanti spearheaded a flurry of transfers which saw an abundance of new players arrive at the club. The majority of the players that did join the club came from foreign countries and failed to settle on Wearside.
With Di Canio now departed from the club, Gus Poyet was hoping to secure more British players for his squad with whom their experience may help the club in their bid to become a solid Premier League side.
With this in mind, Norwich City’s Robert Snodgrass was identified as a potential player that could help bolster Sunderland’s attacking unit. Snodgrass had successful spells at Leeds United and Norwich and was now a man in demand.
Along with ourselves, former Sunderland boss Steve Bruce was also chasing Snodgrass, hoping to bring him to Hull City.
In the first few weeks of June a bidding war had taken place between the two clubs with Sunderland’s latest bid of £5 million rejected by Norwich. The Canaries felt they could get up to £8 million for the attacker which was almost pricing the club out of the race with Hull seemingly content in increasing their price.
Reports on this day suggested that Poyet was refusing to pay the ‘British player tax’ for Snodgrass despite his interest. His preference for British players was seeing prices for these footballers go through the roof.
Poyet would ideally like to sign some players with Premier League experience this summer, but if the Black Cats are quoted similar prices to the one that drove them away from Snodgrass, they will happily turn their attention back to the continent, where they have continued to scout players despite last season’s changes in backroom structure.
A Sunderland deal for Snodgrass went pear shaped as the club sought to learn from their lessons the previous season where vast amounts of money were spent on players that simply weren’t up to it.
However, Sunderland officials will not be returning to the negotiating table as they believe a fee in excess of £7m does not represent good value for a player who cost just £3m when Norwich signed him from Leeds United two years ago, and who would have been about to enter the final year of his contract at Carrow Road.
While Black Cats boss Gustavo Poyet helped identify Snodgrass as an ideal replacement for Jack Colback, who turned down the offer of a new deal at the Stadium of Light in order to join Newcastle, there is shared determination among the Sunderland hierarchy not to pay over the odds for players, as happened on a number of occasions under Roberto de Fanti last summer.
The club decided to pull out after £5 million and looked for alternatives on the market. Had Snodgrass been available for around £5m, a deal might have been considered. As it was, though, Hull’s willingness to pay a much higher fee became clear as conversations between the club progressed.
