When a record transfer fee striker has such a fantastic first season at a club playing 30 Premier League games and reaching double figures in the goals department, you would expect the player to push on from that and carry on that form in to the next season.
What you wouldn’t expect is that player to suddenly do a massive U-turn with a move completely out of the blue three games in to the current season to the United Arab Emirates in a £200,000-a-week season long loan move. This is exactly what Sunderland’s Asamoah Gyan did.
The move to Al-Ain has baffled every single fan and person of the club and the footballing world. For Sunderland’s 11.2 million pound man and no doubt one of the best paid players at Sunderland, having only had one season under his belt at the Stadium of Light is beyond any sense or reason.
So there can only be theories as to why Gyan dropped such a massive bombshell, leaving manager Steve Bruce fuming with only three recognisable forwards in his ranks.
One idea is that it was purely for financial gain. The player is reportedly on £50,000-a-week at Sunderland which is in no way a small amount to earn for a Premiership forward. But the move to Al-Ain has quadrupled that wage, which will earn him a very cool £10m for his time in the UAE. Gyan denied that this was the main reason he moved over 2,000 miles to play football saying it was a challenge but it’s difficult to see how it was not a massive factor. And it’s not like Sunderland has lost out because of it; the six million pound fee they have received for the loan is a world record. But I’m sure given the choice between the money or the player Bruce would have kept the Ghanaian international whose team are still look for their first win of the season.
Another idea is that he wants out Sunderland. Though Gyan did shine last season, his goals dried up towards the end of last season with over two months in between his 9th and 10th goals as well as the hamstring injury that kept him out of the side until the last game of the season. Then he only scored once in preseason and didn’t score in any of the four games he played this season. This has reportedly created tensions between the management and the forward which could’ve put the striker in a position where a move away was the only option.
However though ties were strained at one point, it is clear that Gyan still has an affliction with the club and may still return to the Black Cats after he said he would donate a portion of his salary to Sunderland’s charity foundation.
The final theory is that the striker just wants a new challenge to rediscover the form he has been lacking recently. However he has moved to a country where football is new and still finding its feet and crowds of only a thousand come to see Al-Ain so the competition won’t be challenging for him at all. And as Steve Bruce rightly pointed out to the press after the game against Chelsea “He’s Africa’s Player of the Year, a hero in his own country and he leaves the biggest stage in the world to go and play in the Emirates. I can fully understand if players want to get to the top of the tree in their profession. But this baffles me.”
So it would seem that the first theory is the only realistic one, even if the player himself denies it. This transfer will go down as the weirdest of the summer and it will forever be baffling to fans and Steve Bruce. The only hope is that either he comes back better than ever and pledges the rest of his time to the club or not at all and Sunderland can bring someone else in who actually wants to stay and play for the Mackems.
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