Michael Turner is in the process of discussing a new contract with Hull City.
This is terrific news.
Turner has two and a half years on his current deal outstanding, but the club need to make sure he is rewarded for being utterly superhuman during the calendar year of 2008 and beyond. The vultures are circling, with both Liverpool and Manchester City apparently showing an interest, and so the wages need to be upped to a level where Turner can feel more loved and secure than ever.
We've been fortunate with Turner. He was courted by Championship clubs while playing for Brentford, but we were the ones who got him. Having made his dodgy start, he is now being spoken about for England honours (rightly, given the form of the player and his team, even though we have a negative goal difference and he's only played 17 Premier League games) and still appears to be unaffected, professionally and personally, by the adulation he gets from the Tiger Nation. He is a bashful, modest character and knows he's on to a good thing here.
Turner's success, along with those of Sam Ricketts and Dean Marney, contributes substantially to the lack of out-and-out vilification for Phil Parkinson, whose dreadful managerial spell did at least begin with the acquisition of these three players, all now regular Premier League starters. I suspect Charlton Athletic, languishing at the bottom of the Championship with Parkinson in caretaker charge, wonder how the hell they didn't see Turner's potential when they let him go for a song to Brentford without his making a single appearance for them.
So hopefully the contract will be drawn up and signed before Christmas, and City then have the security of quoting mad fortunes at clubs who dare to assume that Turner is sellable. He isn't. He's priceless, invaluable, irreplaceable. Our greatest central defender ever is set to be so for a long time to come.
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