Burnley gaffer Brian Laws and Middlesbrough scout Gordon McQueen were at Spotland last Tuesday night watching the League 2 game between Rochdale and Darlington. According to the Mirror it is understood they were both checking on Rochdale’s 19-year-old centre half, Craig Dawson.
Although Rochdale surprisingly lost that match 1-0 to the already relegated bottom club they yesterday confirmed their promotion to League 1 after beating Northampton 1-0 at home.
After a spell on Manchester City’s books as a youth player, the locally born Rochdale lad started his career with Unibond League side Radcliffe Borough after signing for them in the middle of the 2007-08 season.
He signed for Rochdale in March 2009 although for a time played on loan for his former club before eventually making his debut for Rochdale away to Port Vale in August 2009. Dawson has therefore in his first season helped Rochdale secure their first promotion since 1969!
Rochdale seem resigned to selling the player
Dale manager Keith Hill said:
“We will have to sell again this summer – I won`t stand in Craig Dawson`s way as long as we get the money we expect for him.”
It is understood though that Rochdale would not be willing to let their young starlet go for less than £1 million.
Clarets fans would probably be surprised if the rumour of our interest is true. Although some of our back four players may well leave the club, especially if we are relegated we do also have players like David Edgar and Kevin Long in the squad and it would be difficult to imagine that the club would let all of our other more experienced central defenders go like Michael Duff, Clarke Carlisle, Steven Caldwell and even Andre Bikey. Do we really need to strengthen even more in this area
It would also be questionable whether a player effectively at League 2 level could make the jump to the Championship assuming we are relegated and surely we need to set our sights higher if we seriously want to try and achieve promotion back to the top flight.
It is rather worrying that already we appear to be looking at lower leagues and I just hope the accountants report from ‘Dolittle & Spendnowt’ extoling the virtues of how good Brian Laws is at bringing in players on a lower budget is not already dictating the amount of money that Laws will have at his disposal from the parachute payments.
Come on let’s show some proper ambition, let’s mean business and get the players in we know can do a job not just at Championship level but also with potential to play in the Premier League.
Can we seriously believe a player in League 2 could be expected to make the grade in the top flight in a season?
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