I may be being very naive here but I am sure some of the more regular posters will straighten me out. We allowed Neds contract to expire as we needed to cut wages.... Ned has not found a new club..... We need defenders...... Ned at some point surely needs an income.........?
Not sure he needs the money. Rumour that as he saw out his contract he got a very nice loyalty bonus.
Ollie on Quest EFL highlights show mentioned Ned saying he is still without a club and we would do well to look at bringing him back. I know a lot of fans didn't rate him but I do and would love to see him back especially after seeing that shambles against WBA when our backs were all over the place and falling over each other
If he is a free agent, seems a no brainer. He probably still lives fairly close by, and even if he came back on half his previous wages that'd be better than not having an income. He's soon going to turn 32, which is younger than I thought he was and surely too young to retire.
I thought the reason for him leaving, apart from money, was to move north. Apparently he was close to joining Hull.
Lets be fair he was with for 6 years and 200+ games. Doesn't deserve any stick for wanting to try something else as he moves towards the latter stages of his career. Was a good servant in my book.
It doesn't matter if he's had some kind of loyalty bonus, no player would be happy not playing football. He needs game time to be considered by any future club. So a contract until winter or end of season is essential for him.
I also think he may, at this point, be quite desperate. Maybe we could sign him on the same wages as Baptiste now.
The reality is that none of us know for sure what his wages were. We can only guess and shudder given that that it was Mark Hughes who recruited him and Phil beard who did the negotiations on the basis of what Hughes and then Redknapp told him was a fair rate. Once we had to tighten our belts the offer may well have been a tiny fraction of what he was previously being paid. Unless someone can come up with some facts I'm prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt and accept that the offer we made was too low for us reasonably to expect him to accept.