I have listened to what Drury said. He has clearly been speaking to somebody within the club purely from his knowledge of Chuba & Jonny. H expected to be being back in training. He has clearly been primed with insider information, from who though is the key, Carrick? Woody? Bausor? Scott? or a mixture of them?
I suspect it won’t have been Gibson, Carrick or Woody. My money would be on Scott more than Bausor. I read things as the club are wanting a certain narrative conveyed as a back story to say we’ve tried, we offered a decent contract but the player was out of reach financially. They claimed they now operate within certain parameters and wont budge from it, fair enough…… to a degree.
I suspect Chuba’s agent will have been in touch with a few clubs in the Championship as well as one or two from the PL. I think (and its pure assumption) the club are wanting to sell to enable purchases but they know Chuba has gone from zero to hero with the fans. I think they are laying the groundwork for self protection. We mustn’t assume Chuba wont be playing against us next season, it is entirely feasible a Championship club may be willing to offer £10M+ for him and meet his wage demands too, no reason it hhas to be a PL side. Boro would happily sell to Coventry, WBA as well as a Sheffield, Luton or WHU if the money generates the signings they need to make. I think Chuba is open to staying but his agent will have figures from others and Chuba wants them matching. I don’t blame him either.
There is a lot of cat and mouse going on, Boro have been let down with a gentleman’s agreement with Giles, sounds like we have been our usual naive selves as we were January 2017 (imho). They should have concluded it when they had the chance and Luton would have been missing out. I suspect now we may have a few understandings in place subject to certain criteria and am guessing we maybe need to generate some money but want more certainty on those irons in the fire before releasing Chuba. I think he is off, but not necessarily because he wants to, though the waters are muddy. I am clearly reading between the lines, maybe wrongly, but I think the club are trying to generate a position where they claim to have done all they could, but we had to sell to avoid him walking, when more likely in my opinion they need to sell to refresh the squad to bring in additional quality.
Just my thoughts like I say, all will come out in the wash, us fans are taken for granted at times but on the back of the SC sales I’d have thought it was the right time to invest in the squad and inject more quality than they appear willing to do. They have the ffp power to do so, but I appreciate fingers have been burned in the past and the clubs attitude to risk seems low at present, which in the climate I can understand. Last season was an opportunity missed that doesn’t look likely this year as things stand, but there is time.