Birmingham City: Heskey to Wigan; Pennant to Liverpool
Jermaine Pennant will give quite a bit of heft to Rafa’s outfit. Birmingham City has some good players in a terrible club and Pennant is already on his way to becoming a star. Heskey is really over valued at the 5.5 million that Wigan shelled out for him. He scored but 4 goals in Birmingham’s relegation performing season. IMO, Heskey is a talented forward who played some great years for Liverpool but somehow never performed upto expectations. He was one of Sven’s favourite and when he performed we got to see what Heskey was capable of.
Pennant on the other hand is part of the Arsenal system. One that seems to churn out talent for other clubs. Liverpool is paying £6m for his services.
Pennant has had to fight disciplinary problems crashing his Mercedes in a drunk driving accident which saw jail time for him. Arsenal paid £2m, a record fee for a trainee at the time. He impressed in his Arsenal debut with a hat-trick in 2003. But never saw him gain Wenger’s confidence and he was loaned out on spells to Watford, Leeds and Birmingham before he signed for City last summer.
Rafa is trying to lessen the load on Steven Gerrard who has had to play most of the season on the right flank. Pennant will take over that position.