WHAT price Dimitar Berbatov? He's scored a few spectacular goals this season, including one against Boro, so he will be worth a few bob. What about the pricetag on Darren Bent? He is hot property after Charlton went through the trapdoor and will no doubt 'spark a summer scramble'. How about Dirk Kuyt? How much to buy him?
It bears thinking about because they all scored fewer Premiership goals than Mark Viduka this season. Check out the netbusting roll of honour.. And if you want to sign someone who scored more if will take the best part of next year's TV bonanza: Drogba, Ronaldo and Rooney will not come cheap - they will not come at all - while former target Benni McCarthy is unlikely to to rush to Boro: we were close to signing him once but his agent moved the goalposts late on in the talks so Gibbo chased him and McClaren signed Massimo Maccarone instead.
The key to the Mark Viduka dilemma for the Boro big wigs as they bite their nails in the tense contract brinkmanship is not how much it will cost to sign the Aussie hitman on a new deal but how much it will cost to replace him..
Clearly Viduka is worth his weight in gold. Currently the yellow stuff is trading at $670 an ounce and the heavyweight man weighs in at 14st 4lb which by my crude calculations is $2,401,280 or £1,213,588... I'd give him that as a signing on fee. In bullion if that's how he wanted it.
His statistics are incredible. Despite a seven week spell out injured he has scored 19 goals this term - a third against Fulham would have made him the first Boro striker since Ravanelli to break the 20 goal barrier to put that in perspective - and the number crunchers say his 14 Premiership goals came from 26 shots which represents a healthy ratio. His total tally for Boro is 42 goals in 101 starts and 21 appearances of the bench, which for a player so often derided as a 'fat lazy eyes-too-close-together Aussie get' is not a bad return.
But there are things that stats don't measure which make Viduka even more important to Boro than the naked numbers show. With his back to goal on the edge of the box he is the best player in the league. His strength, his knack of holding off even the strongest defenders, his close control and his ability to shift his weight and throw a deceptive body shape to send his marker the wrong way to create a yard of space is invaluable.
He wins free-kicks in dangerous areas not because he goes down with cardboard am-dram transparency around the box but because his shielding and control invites inevitable fouls from frustrated defenders who can't reach the ball.
And not only can he find room for himself but he can rip open holes for others to exploit and perhaps more importantly he scares the hell out of the opposition back line, holding the ball up with a combination of physical presence and guile and forcing them to double mark, drags defenders out of position and brings his team-mates into play in dangerous areas. He engineers opportunities for the team and you can't quantify that.
But somehow Steve Gibson, Keith Lamb and Gareth Southgate have to do just that. They must get out the calculators and come to a figure that Viduka is worth to the club. As a starting point it is probably fair to assume he is currently being paid in the region of £40,000 a week. Football wages are shrouded in mystery and guesswork but we know that from Leeds public financial exposure and Boro picked up his contract in all its complexity.
That equates to £2m a season without a pay rise so you can see why Boro may be keen to argue the toss between two years and four years. Let's say three years as a compromise and a £10,000 a week rise and you are talking about an investment of £7.5m in wages, a signing on fee (usually 10pc of any transfer fee but in this case say £500,000) plus bonuses, perks and parmo vouchers: at the top end of that range th clubs won't get much change from £9m.
But what do you get for £9m these days? Some people have suggested names like Ashton or Nugent but for all the hype they are unproven and would cost in the region of £8m - and then their wages, even if you could get them at the cheaper end of the scale would be maybe £1.5m for three years, plus a £800,000 signing on fee... so that's £13.3m over the course of the deal. There may well be a resale value but, as with Viduka, that doesn't carry a guarantee. Think about that logic in teh context of the investment in Maccarone for instance.
Boro have made what they insist is a generous offer but must obviously operate a prudent wage ceiling. They have insisted all along they wanted to keep him but were canny in January and did not makea formal offer for fear that his agent would use that as a benchmark in his approaches to other clubs. With safety assured the club have made a generous full and final offer and made it clear they wouldn't get into a bidding war, a high-risk but laudable strategy that proved successful in a similar situation with George Boateng last summer.
It is a mathematical formula and the club are operating in a range of figures this side of a point they think makes the move unviable. Their job is to persuade Viduka and his agent to accept a figure as low as possible between their limit and the notional figure that the Aussie camp will have set as the point that makes the hassle of uprooting his family and moving to another club the best option. Those two figures may not be that far apart but they may well be fixed so to find the balance between them will take patience and persistence.
Now Boro can only sit and wait. For Viduka's part it is his last big move and you can't blame him for weighing up all possibilities. He will no doubt receive other offers and with the more-money-than-sense ethic that prevails in football some of them will probably mean more dosh that Boro have offered so we must hope that other factors weigh heavier: Viduka seems happy at Boro and in Harrogate and crucially has been galvanised by the style of football Gareth Southgate's side is starting to play play and has pledged for the future while the fans have made it clear that he enjoys hero status at the Riverside.
We must hope that Viduka signs, and swiftly. If he doesn't Boro will have to dig deep and spend big if they are to have any hope of bringing in a striker that has enough in his armoury - abilities that benefit the whole of the team as well as goals - to be considered an adequate replacement.
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