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Opinion: Blues chasing after 30 y/o international would be a case of right place, wrong time

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He’d be a good fit, but probably not the right fit.

That’s my sense reading the latest reports when it comes to Birmingham City’s summer targets.

According to a report from Football Insider, Reading’s Welsh international defender Chris Gunter is set to leave the club when his contract runs out at the end of the season. Added to that, a tweet from Laurie Whitwell at The Athletic has claimed that the Blues are interested in bringing him in on a free transfer in the summer, although we will have a challenge in bringing him on board as we are set to battle it out with Middlesbrough for his services.

I’ve spoken before about our need to address the right-back situation when it comes to depth at the position, stating that there is a significant drop off in terms of production when it comes to first-choice right-back Maxime Colin and his understudy Wes Harding, so I think it’s worth investigating what we would possibly be getting when it comes to the Welshman.

Would Gunter be a good option for us?

Yes

No

When you look at his numbers compared to the likes of Colin and Harding in exactly the same categories as I compared them in before; tackles, passes per game, key passes per game and crosses, you’ll see that Gunter comes smack bang between them in all categories bar crosses where he comes out on top.

So whilst he’d be an improvement on our backup option, he’d still be a step down from first-choice, meaning he’d be OK as a backup/rotation option, but would he be willing to come to us and be a backup is the problem?

At 30 years of age, I can’t see him being in a position to take a step back at this point of his career, nor would I want to dislodge Colin on a permanent basis, given how well he’s done for us over the years.

So to take a line out of Dragon’s Den, it’s a no from me.

What about you? Do you want to see us go after Gunter this summer?

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