Black Cats turn down Spurs’ £15m Jones bid
Jan 27 2009 by Mark Douglas, The Journal
SUNDERLAND have fought off the advances of Tottenham Hotspur for striker Kenwyne Jones by offering him a lucrative new four-year contract – after rejecting a huge £15m bid for the Trinidad & Tobago forward from the North London club.
Harry Redknapp yesterday admitted that his pursuit of Jones was over after Sunderland resisted their latest offer, a straight cash bid which would have broken the Black Cats’ record transfer fee received.
Sunderland want to “build a team” around the striker and have recognised his market value by offering him a vastly-improved contract which would keep him at the Stadium of Light until 2013.
With Jones apparently relaxed about the interest shown in him, there is now confidence from the club that they will be able to keep hold of their star striker in the long-term.
It is a measure of how highly he is valued that before the latest offer, the club had already turned down a significant cash bid that included England striker Darren Bent, although Sunderland retain an interest in the forward and may yet return to Spurs to talk about a possible deal for him.
But that will not be part of a deal for Jones, who is considered a crucial part of Sunderland’s team building.
“I think he is the future of Sunderland football,” Sbragia said yesterday.
“He’s 23, there’s a lot for him still to give. The good thing for me is he hasn’t indicated that he wants to leave – he wants to stay. A lot of players would say they wanted to at least talk to Spurs but
he didn’t and that is pleasing.” While exhaustive steps are being taken to keep Jones at Sunderland, the club hope to sell Rade Prica for around £1m this month. Danish sides Aalborg and FC Midtjylland have both registered their interest and are preparing bids.
Sbragia admitted yesterday that “slower than anticipated” progress had been made on incoming players and added that he is now considering a pair of foreign players, after seeing an approach for a defender with Premier League experience turned down yesterday.
The Journal understands that Sunderland were hoping to sign James Collins from West Ham, but the Hammers decided he was too important to sell.
An enquiry has also been made about Calum Davenport but that interest has not been taken further.
Portsmouth’s veteran defender Hermann Hreidarsson is also on Sbragia’s wish list – but is not the player that Sunderland hope to hand a debut at St James’s Park on Sunday.
“We thought we had one last week, but he is now in the picture again, so that looks like a no now,” Sbragia admitted. “That is part of football, I’ve got to learn from it. It’s been more difficult than I thought – I thought we’d have someone in by now. As much as I’ve said I don’t want a player it might have to be a foreign player because of the rejections we’re getting from a lot of the clubs in the Premier League who don’t really want to release their players. We might have to look that way.
“We’d earmarked some in the summer and we’re looking at them again. They’ve got to have played some sort of football for me.
“There has been contact from agents representing players who haven’t played since August – that wouldn’t do for me.”
In a piece of business that made sense for both parties, Pascal Chimbonda completed a £3m move to Tottenham yesterday, the club he left to join Sunderland last summer.
While the Black Cats are perilously thin on resources at the back, a parting of the ways had become inevitable with Chimbonda patently unhappy on Wearside.
He has taken a sizeable pay cut to secure his return to the capital, and Sunderland recognised that there was little point in keeping an unsettled player on their books when a good offer had been made.
His agent Willy McKay said: “Niall Quinn has been different class as a chairman with Pascal because he knew that he was struggling to settle in the North East because his wife had not moved up from London.”
