£2.3M Good Money For Bednar?

It seems as though West Brom are close to finalising a deal to make Roman Bednar’s loan from Hearts into a permanent move.

The fee being talked about is £2.3 million, which to be honest is probably a sum that we’d have been doing cartwheels about had it been offered to us 12 months ago.

But as we all know a year can be a very long time in football, and Bednar has been an absolute relevation in the English Championship under the shrewd guidance of Tony Mowbray, rattling in 15 goals in 23 appearances for the Baggies.

Bednar is clearly relishing the new lease of life he’s been given under what would appear to be a conventional management set up, and with Mowbray (a manager I always rated highly during his time with Hibs) being his immediate gaffer, I think he can only go from strength to strength down there.

There are those who are a bit annoyed with Bednar for wanting to ‘jump ship’, but good luck to the guy I say. Along with several others, he has been managed appallingly at Tynecastle and it is clearly for the better of his career that he makes this move permanent.

For me Bednar always gave his all for Hearts, albeit with inconsistent results. To be honest he never really looked like a natural finisher and the number of goals he’s scored down there has genuinely surprised me, but then George Burley did always say he was one of the best young strikers he’d ever seen, and I’m quite certain that the Scotland boss is a slightly better judge of a player than I am!

As for the cash, well, it still is a decent sum of money, but as we’ve all been debating lately, what actually happens to it? Where does it go?

Who knows, but from a Hearts supporters’ point of view, Roman Bednar will forever go down as a ‘what if’. With proper guidance (if Burley had stayed perhaps?) he could have developed into one of the greats, but then equally he could have been just another also-ran despite his potential. Sadly we’ll never know.