Jonny Evans to City?

For the past 12 months us Albion fans have been biting our nails over the possible departure of one of our best players in Jonny Evans. Last season Arsenal had been courting him for the summer; this time round Everton and Leicester had been strongly linked. This afternoon, however, it has been reported that Manchester City have had (in Baggies supporters' view) an insulting and derisory bid rejected.

£18m may seem like a huge amount, especially to a club like ours, but in the current outrageous market where City themselves have already spent over £200m to shore up their backline, we would want much more than that to not only replace a very good centre half, but also an influential player and our newly appointed captain.

On social media, where Sky Sports have reported the story, many "top six" fans have been laughing at City's move for Evans. The fact that 1. he has been in the running for our Player of the Season both times since his arrival at Albion and 2. he is constantly linked with the best teams in the elite of English football, shows to us that these "fans" don't actually pay attention to the "irrelevant" teams lower down the league.

Yesterday, Evans' fellow Northern Irishman, Chris Brunt, celebrated his 10th year anniversary as a West Bromwich Albion player, a mere couple of weeks after James Morrison celebrated the same feat. Whilst it would have been most unlikely that Evans himself would have reached the same achievement with us there is a feeling about the place that it may be a long time before we will see this again, if we ever will.

With the departure of Darren Fletcher back in June, Evans was handed the captaincy in a possible ploy to persuade him to stay with us, but with the signing of Gareth Barry from Everton and now the news of interest from the North West, it now seems likely that it will be a case of how much we will sell him for. Gylfi Sigurdsson's arrival at Goodison Park paves the way for Nacer Chadli to head to Wales, so Albion could be looking at an influx of cash that should be spent on strengthening the squad. However, it may take a lot of work to convince supporters with quality when Evans and Chadli, both considered quality acquisitions, could be on the way out.

Personally, I hope we are able to hold onto Jonny Evans, as he is a very classy player whom many of us at Albion consider too good to be at B71. The sad reality is, however, that even though he will most likely be further down the pecking order at Manchester City, and their supporters may not deem him good enough, we have to face the fact that all we'll ever be is a stop-gap for players wanting to better themselves or a retirement home.

As is the way of the Premier League and lack of loyalty in football.