The Charles N'Zogbia Situation

As it stands, things aren’t looking too good for 25 year old Frenchman Charles N’Zogbia. The winger has made it abundantly clear  to the Wigan board of his intentions to leave the DW stadium this summer and things seemed to be going well for him as several good Premier league clubs were reported to be interested in securing his services. However, the player now seems to be stuck in limbo as each of the clubs that want him have hit a stumbling block.

Aston Villa appeared to be the front runners in the race to sign N’Zogbia but have recently had a reported £9 million bid knocked back by chairman Dave Whelan. Villa certainly have the money available to sign N’Zogbia having sold both of their first team wingers from the 2010/11 season in Stewart Downing and Ashley Young bringing in somewhere in the region of £40m. Despite this, the board is not willing to pay the £60k per week that N’Zogbia is demanding for wages.

Dave Whelan has been quoted as saying, “There are two others (clubs) interested. I can’t name them as it would be disrespectful but there is one club that are mad, mad keen to sign him. They just need to find the finance.” I can be fairly confident in suggesting that this club he is referring to is Everton who have been strongly linked with the winger since the start of the summer but the widespread belief is that David Moyes will need to sell players in order to bring in fresh talent. However, Moyes has also made it clear that he will not be selling any of his first team stars which he has backed up by rejecting Arsene Wenger’s £10 million bid for strong centre back Phil Jagielka. Everton will have to find buyers for their out of favour players such as Joseph Yobo and Aiyegbeni Yakubu if they are to stand any chance of raising the funds to secure N’Zogbia’s signing.

In the meantime, it seems that the temperamental Frenchman is going to have to wait it out at Wigan where he is clearly frustrated and if neither of the two clubs mentioned above change their stance then he may face an unhappy season in front of the Wigan fans once the season begins on the 13th August at home to Norwich.