Should we let Beattie go at any price?

James Beattie may have fallen foul of his boss, Tony Pulis but that doesn’t seem to mean he’ll be leaving on the cheap.

Both Blackburn Rovers and West Brom appear keen to take on the Stoke striker, who seems to have finally used up all of his lives at the Brit after his infamous shower room bust-up with the boss just before Christmas.

In truth, even though he’s spent most of this year languishing on the bench (at best). Last season, he never lived up to those match-winning performances after he joined from Sheffield United in January 2009. It’s a scenario that seems to match his time at Everton where he scored 10 goals in his first full season and then rapidly fell away.

Stoke are said to be to keen to try and recoup the £2m or so that he cost us and with a year left on his contact, you’d have thought that was a bargain for a ‘Premier League striker’. Unfortunately, ‘Championship striker’ is probably something nearer to the mark and that tied to his public fallings out will have made any prospective clubs very cautious and caused his price to plummett.

He very nearly went to Fulham in the January sales after we’d agreed a fee, but his personal demands apparently exceeded what he was on at Stoke and the deal collapsed. His best chance of any Premier League football seems to be in a move to his home town of Blackburn – the fans would love to see him play at Ewood, but I’d have thought Sam Allardyce would be a good deal more cautious.