So it turns out transfer deadline day could have been a little bit busier for the Blues.
A report from BirminghamLive yesterday states that City were incredibly close to making another signing in the forward department, however a bit of indecision on the part of the player meant that the deal didn’t go through in time. Mario Gavranovic was reportedly a late target for Pep Clotet’s men, but the enquiry came so late in the day that the Swiss international wasn’t left with enough time to get his thoughts in order. According to the report:
“They hoped to make him their second recruit from Dinamo Zagreb of the summer, hot on the heels of star midfielder Ivan Sunjic. In the end there wasn’t enough time for the forward to decide to move his family to the UK and Gavranović stayed with the Croatian champions.”
On the surface of it, I’m somewhat relieved that this deal didn’t go through.
Whilst Birmingham certainly need some help up front to take the load off of Lukas Jutkiewicz’s shoulders, I’m not sure this would have been the best way to go about it. He’s someone that has only had two double-digit seasons in his career so far, so asking him to either play alongside Jutkiewicz or act as his replacement if ever the squad needed rotating might have seen the team’s goal return go down rather than up.
Whilst this deal didn’t manage to go through this time, the one advantage that the Blues have now, is that we have a lot more time to get this deal done if we want to again in January, just don’t leave it until the last minute this time. The other benefit is that we can take a bit of a step back and reassess the situation in the coming months. Maybe this turns out for the best, Jude Bellingham becomes a 20+ goalscorer and we suddenly work out we don’t need him, then we can just simply stay away from him this time.
What about you? Do you think that the Blues should go back in for him in January? Or do you think everything will be just fine with what we’ve got?
