(02-02-2020, 08:08 PM)DAVE Wrote: There’s something about him on The Athletic but I can’t see it because I get sex without paying for it.
Rude. Anyway, here it is:
It was meant to be the dream move to the Premier League for a 19-year-old full-back tipped for the very top.
Nathan Ferguson has been one of the standout performers for the Championship leaders West Bromwich Albion this season and with six months to run on his contract he was set to complete a move to Crystal Palace last week in a move that could have been worth up to £11 million including add-ons.
Yet despite playing 90 minutes on Tuesday in Albion’s 2-1 defeat to Cardiff City, a routine scan on Wednesday that was part of his Palace medical put paid to the transfer and has cast doubt over the rest of his season.
With the results of the scan coming through on Thursday morning, both clubs spent the remaining 36 hours of the transfer window waiting for the other to call and to cede ground in negotiations over the transfer fee for the young defender.
The Athletic understands that Palace believe Ferguson’s knee injury requires immediate surgery and that had they completed a move yesterday they would have sent him to have the operation. The Premier League club anticipated that the rehabilitation period would have been likely to rule Ferguson out for the rest of the season.
Albion, meanwhile, will assess the player, but it is believed that they do not think surgery is essential. They were looking at the same scans as Palace and thinking that Ferguson could be out for only six to eight weeks, or that he could even play on if the injury was well-managed. Clubs are often called upon to decide the most suitable time to send players for surgery, and it is not uncommon for players to wait until the end of a season to go under the knife.
Ferguson is aware of the diagnosis by Palace’s medical team, however, and that may impact any attempts by Albion to reintegrate him into the first team. The club plan to hold talks with him in the coming days in an effort to limit the fall-out of his failed move.
Initially Albion had wanted a guaranteed £8 million for Ferguson, which Palace were willing to pay, but when the injury became clear Palace attempted to renegotiate the terms of the deal to compensate for the added medical risk. Albion compromised a little, lowering their asking price to around £7 million, but it was not enough to reach an agreement. Palace were unwilling to overpay for a player who could cost as little as £4 million (via a tribunal) should he join a Premier League club when his contract expires in the summer.
On Thursday morning, given there was no reason to suspect anything serious would be revealed in Ferguson’s medical, Palace’s plan was to announce his arrival well in advance of Roy Hodgson’s lunchtime pre-match press conference.
Yet by the time Hodgson was praising the youngster’s potential at the club’s training ground on Copers Cope Road, “awaiting more news from (the sporting director) Doug Freedman who is talking to West Brom and the player”, Ferguson’s move had been cast into significant doubt.
The scan had revealed a more severe knee problem than originally anticipated. Palace did a lot of research into the issue and the club’s American co-owners’ links to leading knee experts in the States helped govern their decision making.
A distressed Ferguson is understood to have returned to West Brom’s training ground on Thursday with his parents and his agent, his future unclear. His first professional contract at The Hawthorns, signed upon his graduation from the academy and worth less than £1,000 a week, is due to expire at the end of June. Talks over a new deal had been complicated and now his chance of a swift elevation to the Premier League on vastly improved terms, believed to be in the region of £30,000 a week, appeared to have been snatched away.
At Palace, the deflation was just as gut-wrenching. All those hopes that the long-term successor to Aaron Wan-Bissaka at right-back had finally been secured had been dashed. They had been willing to pay a premium to do so. The guaranteed payment on a deal that could have risen to eight figures was not insignificant given the player would have been available for a compensation fee under freedom of contract in the summer.
The agreed price reflected the reality that English talent is at a premium in this market, with clubs braced for prices to rise even higher once post-Brexit rules, still under consideration, are put in place. But they had scouted Ferguson heavily since he broke into the West Brom first team at the start of the season and were comfortable with the proposed outlay. What had surprised them had been the full-back’s involvement at the Cardiff City Stadium, not least because the teenager had not featured previously since December 29.
In the wake of that medical report, however, they faced a tricky decision: did they pull out of the deal altogether, or push on regardless in the belief that Ferguson’s potential will be realised post-surgery?
The latter course, which always felt the more likely, would also require a renegotiation of the payment plan with West Brom with more of the potential fee due for appearances made.
And so, by Thursday afternoon, a deal that had appeared on the verge of completion the previous day had lurched into another tortuous round of talks. It was only late that night that the germs of a revised proposal were thrashed out. There would be further discussions, occasionally fractious, through deadline day. Ultimately, although negotiations continued until the final hours of the window yesterday, the clubs could not find common ground.
West Brom, for their part, insist Ferguson was checked and was both fully fit and happy to play at Cardiff. He completed the game with no ill-effects but among the tests and discussions to come in the week ahead will be checks to determine whether Ferguson aggravated his knee problem while in action at the Cardiff City Stadium.
“I can only tell you that Nathan was fully fit and available for the game against Cardiff,” said Bilic in his weekly press conference on Friday. “He has that small issue with his knee, but for Cardiff he was fit. I had a couple of talks with him in Cardiff, but it was not about if he was physically fit. It was more about if he was mentally there because I was told he was going to go straight away. So when (Palace) told us there was an issue with the medical check, I was very surprised. That is what I know. There is an issue there. But he finished the game in a normal way.”
The whole experience must have been traumatic for Ferguson. This was a player who had been sold the dream, quite rightly, of immediate involvement in the top flight. A player with only six months of senior football and 21 Championship games under his belt had seen a flurry of clubs from the continent lodge interest with his representative.
Schalke and Marseille were apparently keen. Atletico Madrid, AC Milan and, more glamorous still, Juventus were tracking his progress, all aware that he would cost them a six-figure compensation fee.
Yet none of those teams, nor Tottenham Hotspur in the Premier League – albeit their interest had rather waned following the departure of Mauricio Pochettino in the autumn – could offer what Palace were proposing. Ferguson was to provide an immediate challenge to both Joel Ward and Patrick van Aanholt, the club’s only recognised senior full-backs, in the Premier League. Where life initially on the fringes, or even in B-team football, awaited abroad, at Palace he would play.
Hodgson confirmed as much on Thursday. “Anyone we bring in will be challenging for a starting spot in our current situation, with a squad that everyone knows is smaller than we would like it to be,” he said. “There is no point in bringing in people just to swell the numbers.”
This from a manager who tends to seek to bed in new signings, demanding they are patiently brought up to speed before offered a chance in his line-up. Ferguson would be an exception. A youngster whose opportunities would, in all probability, come sooner rather than later. The teenager is right-footed but can operate on either flank. Indeed, some of his most impressive displays for Bilic this season came on the left.
His arrival was hoped to be part of a freshening-up of the first team at Selhurst Park. Palace have one of the older squads in the Premier League and, while that has been beneficial in plenty of ways – they leant on their players’ experience to secure 30 points by mid-January, a feat they have matched only once in this seven-season stint in the top-flight – there has been a recognition throughout the club that the set-up needed rejuvenating, with the standard also being simultaneously raised. No easy task.
Ferguson’s displays in the second tier had drawn the attention of Freedman, whose background checks revealed glowing reports on the player’s attitude. Evidence of his ability was clear, earning the youth international an England Under-20s call-up in September. It is fair to say that, by then, his progress under Bilic had even caught West Brom by surprise.
On the West Midlands club’s books since the age of eight, plenty within their academy rated Ferguson. One experienced staff member described him this summer as the best defender they had produced. Others were less convinced and, crucially, the likes of Darren Moore and Jimmy Shan opted against promoting him into the first team — partly because he was considered then as a centre-half who, at 5ft 11in, lacked the required physicality to stamp his authority on games at that level.
Given there appeared to be no obvious route into the senior set-up as a centre-back, Ferguson’s contract was allowed to drift into its final year. His agent is understood to have approached West Brom at the end of last season in a bid to discuss a new deal, but came away sensing their priorities lay elsewhere.
Regardless, Bilic, appointed at the end of June, swiftly identified the teenager as a possible full-back and he duly thrived in this new role, an assist for Matt Phillips on his first-team debut in the opening-day victory away to Nottingham Forest setting an upbeat tone. A player who had previously been on the fringes suddenly became a mainstay of a resurgent side and, overnight, the dynamic over those contract negotiations shifted. Now, the power lay with Ferguson.
A new five-year deal was mooted, with a rough figure of around £20,000 a week proposed. The Athletic understands that Albion’s contract offer also included a £1 million one-off loyalty bonus to be paid upon signing. Yet whether that offer was ever formalised in writing is far from clear, with those close to the player claiming they were never made aware of the intricacies of the deal apparently on the table.
Sources at West Brom, on the other hand, claim they became exasperated from November onwards by Ferguson’s representatives’ reluctance to return to the table.
Ferguson’s relationship with Bilic has generally remained strong, with the youngster thriving under the former Croatia centre-half’s tutelage and reluctant to agitate openly for a mid-season transfer elsewhere. It is understood, however, that even the Croatian has become frustrated in recent weeks, having given Ferguson a senior chance he otherwise might not have had.
Yet suspicion was undoubtedly allowed to fester between the club and his entourage. West Brom were increasingly concerned that another of their youth-team graduates would follow Louie Barry’s lead by departing abroad under freedom of contract for a nominal compensation fee. Forward Barry left in the summer for Barcelona, with Albion threatening to report the Spanish giants to FIFA. The 16-year-old has since returned to England, joining Aston Villa earlier this month for around €1 million (£840,000).
The likes of Juventus or Schalke, both of whom are understood to have lodged an interest, could pay €490,000 (about £420,000) in compensation for Ferguson on July 1 if no renewal has been agreed at The Hawthorns.
The Athletic understands, however, that Albion had made clear they would pay Ferguson £20,000 a week in the Championship and matched Palace’s offer should they win promotion to the Premier League.
There had still been some pleasant surprise expressed at Palace’s offices in Soho, central London, that a deal was eventually struck in midweek. Doubts as to whether a fee could be negotiated had prompted talks with Tottenham over borrowing Kyle Walker-Peters as a stop-gap alternative until the summer. Once they had received some encouragement on Ferguson, however, they pulled out of the running with Walker-Peters eventually joining Southampton on loan.
But, at that point, Palace were blissfully unaware of the fitness issues that would complicate their week. The South London club are, for the time being, hopeful that a deal for Ferguson can be resurrected in the summer, by when his contractual situation will make negotiations more straightforward.
However, overseas transfer rules mean Ferguson is now free to sign a pre-contract agreement with the very European clubs who have already shown an interest, while Palace can no longer conduct formal negotiations, meaning they can only now hope that they made a good enough impression for Ferguson to reject advances from abroad or from any other English clubs who might enter the race in the summer.
For their part, Albion face a tricky few weeks attempting to reintegrate a player with whom so much bad blood now exists; if not directly then via those around him.
The contract offer will remain on the table but Albion know there is little prospect of Ferguson signing.
The best they can realistically hope for is an uneasy truce.
