Dichio signs!

30 November 2001

Rising like a Pheonix from the ashes, the permanent transfer of striker Danny Dichio has suddenly burst back into life following a week of frantic negotiation. Described by Chairman Paul Thompson as "the impossible deal" because of the financial difficulty in bringing Premiership players down a division, it looks like Sunderland have cut the asking price for Dichio down to £1.2 million - still the second highest fee ever paid by Albion behind the £2.1 million for Jason Roberts.

Dichio has actually signed again on loan, in anticipation of the permanent deal going through, so that he is eligible to play on Sunday at Molineux - permanent transfers need to be registered by Friday lunchtime for weekend games and this couldn't be guaranteed.

"But Sunderland only wanted a million for him!" you may well cry. Well, yes and no. There's been a lot of discussion in the media about whether the fee had been agreed, and whether Albion were trying to make them lower it and so on - but the truth of the matter as we understand it is that the original fee of a million didn't include the contract payoff that Dichio wanted in order to leave the Premiership side. Sunderland wouldn't pay that - it would probably have meant getting in less than half a million for the player - and Albion wouldn't pay it either, as we didn't feel he was worth it (he would have ended up costing us something like £1.7 million).

But somewhere between Albion, Sunderland, Danny and his agent, a deal has been struck and yet again Albion's perseverance has paid off. OK, maybe we haven't got him for the original million - but it's not far off.

The arrival of Dichio, however, almost certainly spells the end of the interest in Windass as reported earlier this week. The Club announced yesterday that their bid to bring in a Premiership player had failed and that they'd go to Wolves with no new faces - although that could have been yet another stumbling block in the road to signing Dichio. With a bit of luck, we've still got enough left in the transfer fund to bring Koumas in as well - we wait with eager anticipation for news...

Previous Stories:

  29 November 2001:  Quinn off to County

  29 November 2001:  Windass for Albion?

  20 November 2001:  More live Albion for Scandinavia

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