Well, according to the press it is.
It seems Gillingham are in pole position for his signature, with reports suggesting the deal is all but done, the player has agreed terms and all that is required is the clubs to agree a fee. This might not be as closed as the Kent media are suggesting, especially as Jacob Murtagh at the Surrey Herald decided to bother asking someone at Wimbledon rather than accepting what Steve Evans thinks. Evans himself has ruled Crawley out of the running, but you wonder whether he might nip in with a late bid, considering his documented admiration of Kedwell and habit of stockpiling strikers. Then again, he might just be telling the truth…
The fact is, this deal is far from done. The Herald article suggests a fee in excess of £60,000 is being sought, do Gillingham have the funds and desire to make the deal happen? Who else is waiting in the wings for Gillingham to drop the ball? There has been a lot of interest in the money we might get for Kedwell, we are all interested in how much he is going to go for, but I think the correct thing for the club to do will be to ensure the fee remains undisclosed if at all possible.
For now at least, it’s not as if we won’t find out later down the line when the accounts are published, but publicly flouting how much money the club has burning a hole in their pocket won’t help when negotiating with Kedwell’s potential replacement. One replacement we know won’t be coming to the Dons is Marvin Morgan – also interestingly linked with Gillingham – but he’ll now be lining up with Shrewsbury next term.
On the subject of prolific twitterers, former Swindon, Portsmouth and, erm, Juventus forward Vincent Pericard has claimed he is in talks with the Dons, but the rumour mill is in overdrive this summer and at least that one was from the horse’s mouth (sort of…). Some classics already doing the rounds involves Celtic eying up Keds, Neil Sullivan coming back to challenge Seb for the number one shirt, and former Dons forward Delano Sam-Yorke joining Auxerre on trial… although I actually just made that last one up off the top of my head as I write, yet it somehow seems about five times more likely than the former two.
Presumably while he was on the phone to Cash, Murtagh also found a new centre half is in the pipeline, although this article is a little short on detail. What we do know is the target is a right-sided centre half with Football League experience… so didn’t necessarily play for a Football League club last season… For example the club have just released one right-sided centre half with Football League experience (albeit one still with serious question marks over his ability to play more than once a week…), and Yakubu was today unveiled by Newport County.
Lastly, the club announced our opening League fixture with Bristol Rovers has been selected for live coverage on TV, presumably causing a sharp intake of breath from those accustomed to such announcements involving the game being switched to a Thursday. Fortunately, Sky at least have the sense to schedule games in a decent time slot, and we should at least be grateful this time around we are involved with a sports channel whose desire to saturate the market with football is at least realistic, mostly because Sky provides decent money rather than inconvenience people and expect them to be grateful just to be on TV… It really is a case of better the devil you know.
The Anonymous Don 