Sunderland were last night poised to smash the record fee paid by a British club for a goalkeeper after tabling a £9million offer for Hearts' Craig Gordon. Roy Keane raised his bid after an £8.5m offer for the 24-year-old Scotland international was turned down. The previous record for a goalkeeper was the £7.8m Manchester United paid for Fabien Barthez in 2000.Scottish goalkeepers — Jim Leighton, Andy Goram and Alan Rough among them — have been the butt of jokes, even ridicule, over the years. But Gordon is seen as a potential great in the Scottish game. He impressed Arsenal's Arsene Wenger in Scotland's dramatic victory over France in the European Championship qualifiers and has been a regular at Tynecastle for five years.
At 6ft 4in, he has the presence to make a major impact in English football, according to Keane, who has chased him all summer. But his improved offer of £9m is still raising eyebrows, given that the highest fee paid for a British goalkeeper is £6m — the sum Arsenal paid for Richard Wright and Liverpool for Chris Kirkland in 2001.
Coincidentally, the bid for Gordon was tabled on the day Blackburn manager Mark Hughes criticised the inflated prices being paid by his Premiership colleagues in the wake of the £2.2billion TV rights bonanza. He said: 'There are a lot of players moving around at the moment and the value that has been put on those players is totally out of sync with what they are actually worth.
"I think it's just people looking around to see what's available, and who they can get into their club, and they are having to pay top dollar — over and above top dollar on occasions. "There's a lot of players going for five, six, seven and eight million, and I look at some of the players that have moved and I then look at my squad and think they wouldn't improve it."
Keane landed his fifth player of the summer yesterday with the £1.5m capture of Norwich midfielder Dickson Etuhu, taking his spending past £15m. Should he land Gordon and successfully complete his long-running pursuit of Wigan full back Leighton Baines, Sunderland will have spent £30m since gaining promotion to the Premiership.
That is unprecedented in the club's history. They spent £4.25m in 2005 when Mick McCarthy prepared them for their last ill-fated return to the top flight. Keane still believes he can tempt Baines to the Stadium of Light, despite the resistance of Wigan manager Chris Hutchings, who only wants to sell to a top-four Premiership side. He said: "Just because a club says a player is not for sale — if that was the case, nobody would ever move club. "I am sure Everton told Manchester United Wayne Rooney was not for sale but they got him, so we will see."