Gary Doherty: Why I wouldn’t negotiate too much

If you, like me, take a sneaky peak at the Evening News in your lunch hour, you would recent have spotted this article in that same paper about the man we affectionately call the Doc.

It seems Gary Doherty is currently negotiating his contract to stay at the club; apparently having refused an initial offer. Fair enough, you may think - if you’re entering in to a contract you want to get the best price possible. But looking at it from the other point of view, you have to wonder exactly what it is Norwich City FC are getting in return.

Well, in the Doc you get someone 100% committed to your cause. No one can doubt his effort. And you get a player who had a reasonable season last year as well. Few would argue that Doc’s form was better than previous and the statistical anoraks among us point to the number of goals conceeded with Doc in the team being significantly lower than without.

Ask any manager for the most difficult position of a player to sign and I reckon they’ll tell you central defender. Talented central defenders are quickly whisked away as valuable commodities to the rich elite of the Premiership. Curtis Davies is a great example of this; a player of obvious ability, too good for the Championship. He was whisked away as one of the first of Martin O’Neill’s Villa revolution. So any central defender with experience is obviously in demand.

Add to that City’s precarious squad as it is and you begin to see why Doherty is able to negotiate. He knows he’ll get another good club if he leaves here. He can afford to demand top dollar for his services.

But let’s be brutally honest for just a second; is Doc good enough to be a part of a promotion winning team? The answer has surely got to be a resounding no.

Doherty is still a player that offers little in set pieces, surprising considering his height and strength. He will and does make calamitous errors that result in either world class saves from our keeper, or goals for the opposing side. He is quite often found hugging the player he marks - often resulting in free kicks. His distribution is hit and miss and quite likely the contract he has just ended is probably quite a lucrative one, having signed for us from Premiership Tottenham.

We should not be held over a barrel by Gary Doherty. Yes, I think he’s an alright player - a useful player to have around, someone more than capable of doing a job when needed. But if Roeder were to come out today and say that negotiations had ended, would I shed I tear?

No. And neither, I suspect, would you.