The Walters Affair

The transfer window may have long closed, with Jon Walters immediate future at Town being confirmed, but some questions remain regarding his long term future. Darren isnt entirely convinced by the statements issued by both player and club.

Much was written about Jon Walters future over the course of the summer.

At one point, it seemed almost certain that he was going to be leaving, with bids apparently made by Stoke, his family moving back up North, Walters being sent away to get his head together and having supposedly made a transfer request.

Yet, its whats been said since the transfer window closed which has put most doubt in my mind.

As we all know, Walters stayed and is starting to slowly but surely show the form that made him our current player of the season. In an interview for the matchday programme, he went out of his way to calm fans concerns and explain what happened through the summer and how he still wants to be an Ipswich player. But that interview just seemed to further confuse the matter.

Walters states that he didnt ask for a transfer. Simply, his wife moved back up north to give birth, which, given ipswich were travelling around for pre-season, made some sense. Then, with Walters clearly distracted, the club instructed him to take two weeks off to be with her. They gave him a training programme to enable him to keep up with pre-season training whilst away from his teammates. He then returned to training, thanked his manager for the time off and then got back on with things.

All of which is more than reasonable and certainly would, on the face of it, go a long way to calming fans fears. Yet, there are some answered questions.

Why was there such enormous speculation regarding his future, both in the Ipswich and Stoke press, with the club refusing to make an outright denial? (instead simply denying there had been an "official" bid)

Why couldnt Walters have simply denied the stories if there was nothing in them? The player himself claims that, what with the birth of his child and then the season starting, he didnt have a chance to put his own side of the story. Yet it takes two minutes to make a phone call to his agent and get him to release a simple statement saying "Jon isnt going anywhere". Yet that didnt happen.

And why did Chesters chairman say that he was told by the players agent that Walters future was totally up in the air? Particularly given that Walters himself stated that when he was away from the club for those two weeks, he trained with Chester themselves? Couldnt the Chester chairman have easily got the truth from the player himself if he wasnt going anywhere?

Of course, its all speculation and cynicism maybe, but things dont appear to have been as straightforward as they have been painted. It seems our player of the year may have been a lot closer to leaving than perhaps has been suggested. We can only hope that there are not renewed attempts to sign him in January.