Friday, July 29, 2016

Vermes Denies Latest Dwyer to Greece Rumors

The Dom Dwyer to Greece rumors continue while Sporting Kansas City continues to deny them. The latest reports do seem a little dubious though as The Blue Testament reports. The front page of a Greek newspaper reported that Kansas City had supposedly accepted a 4.5 million Euro deal ($5 million US) from Olympiakos and is just waiting on Dwyer to approve the move. The $5 million supposed bid is $2 million more than the initial bid that was reported on Sunday night. Inside the Greek paper though there was no mention of Dwyer, instead it mentioned a 4.5 million Euro bid for Gia Gonzalez according to TBT.

The rumor speculation was quickly put down by Peter Vermes today at practice saying that there was no truth to the reports that the club had sold Dwyer.

The reported fee, if true, is certainly a hard one to turn down for the club. A $5 million transfer fee would be the second largest in team history behind the reported $6 million that Kansas City received from Fulham in early 2008 for Eddie Johnson. It would also allow the club to look to build for the future bringing in new players over the winter, the preferred window for Vermes to bring in players to the team.

On the other hand there are other reasons for KC to not want to do this deal, both on and off the field. On the field Kansas City's offense has finally started to click and a main part of that has been Dwyer, who leads the team in scoring with 10 goals so far this season. The team's next highest scorer is Benny Feilhaber with five goals, but only two didn't come from the penalty spot. After that it's the likes of Brad Davis, Lawrence Olum, and Jacob Peterson with two. Replacing Dwyer's output won't be easy, and with the transfer (and trade) window closing in less than a week, KC's options would quickly become very limited in their options to bring in another forward.

A sale of Dwyer would be seen as the team waving the white flag on this season by many fans, and off the field it's really not a good time for that. The club just this week started season ticket renewal for the 2017 season, and selling one of the team's more popular players and top scorers is not the type of thing that will get people excited to spend quite a bit of money on the team. I've already seen a few fans that have said that they would question whether they should renew if Dwyer is sold. Not necessarily because they are a Dwyer fan, but because of the message that sends about the team less than a year after the club sold also sold Krisztian Nemeth. Kansas City has long seen teams in city trade or let their best players go for nothing over the past few years; it's what helped create the perfect storm that made Sporting KC what it is in the city in 2011. Now if Sporting gives the impression that they are falling into that same path, they're going to create a lot of apathy among many fans of the team.

No comments: