The messageboards and fansites have been filled with cries for Help! and various people saying “You Can’t Do That, we’d been promised we weren’t going to sell our best players”, but I think some people need to Let it Be! It’s Not The End! There was similar hysteria when Calum Davenport left a few years ago – a player with similar attributes to Dann - and he’s hardly set the world alight since has he? At least this time we’ve got a lot more money and can actually spend it on the team rather than to fill a gaping hole in the balance sheet!

Are Man U and AC making themselves out to be ‘small, selling clubs’ by selling Ronaldo and Kaka, players who are slightly harder to replace than a relatively unknown centre-half playing for the 37th best club in English football? Or are they looking at who they could bring in for the massive amounts of money they’d be getting and realising they could have a much stronger team by being willing to lose one star name?

The estimated profit of £3 million made in around eighteen months for a player who looks to have potential, but is a long way from realising it yet, can go a long way in this league. The money won’t buy us Wagner Love, but last season we picked up Kieren Westwood and Aron Gunnarsson for about £1m in total, so if we could pull off similar business this season we’d potentially be able to bring in six good players for the loss of one. Not every signing will work, but as long as we have more successes than failures it’ll be a superb bit of business. Ultimately we've got to wait and see how much Coleman is allowed to spend and who's brought in, but if the 'Big Four' becomes the 'Big Five' or 'Big Six' with the money we've got from Dann then I’ll Feel Fine.

I wouldn’t want to lose any of the other three on top of Dann this summer though, mainly because it would mean another massive upheaval and waiting for the team to gel, as well as putting a great deal more pressure on those players brought in as replacements to prove their worth quickly.

We’ve also got to take into account the players wishes. This is Dann’s job, and just like anybody else he wants to do that job at the highest possible level earning as much as he can from doing it. As we’ve seen before, we turn down bids from Premier League clubs and you’ll more than likely end up with an unsettled player, resenting the fact the club have denied him the chance to play at a higher level on higher wages. This has a knock-on effect on the morale of the rest of the team, partially from the attitude of a team-mate who no longer wants to be there and partly because they feel if they get the same chance they’ll be denied it as well, so why bother trying too hard to achieve it?

And let’s be honest, it’s not like we’ve just lost Bobby Moore is it? In fact, our best run of form last year coincided with Dann being out injured, so it would appear he's not irreplaceable, either as a defender or a captain, even with just the current squad, let alone taking into account potential replacements we could bring in with the cash.

Dann also scored a few goals from headers at set-pieces, but in those instances it’s much more about the quality of the delivery than getting on the end of it. If the ball in is right All You Need Is Love to be quite tall, physically strong and have the determination to get to the ball first. Surely we can train at least one of our defenders to do that?

Dann is a good Championship level defender because he’s good at ‘static’ defending – challenging for a ball that’s been lumped forward from the back and heading it clear, but the Premier League is played a completely different way and he’s got a way to go before he’s ready for it.

Dann’s not slow and his positioning is pretty good, but the Premier League is much faster, played much more to feet and the inventiveness of the movement and accuracy of the passing may well catch him out a bit, just as it did when he was put up against Drogba in the cup. The ‘mare he had in that Chelsea match also seemed to shake his confidence a bit and led to a few other gaffes in the following weeks, and if the same happens to him at Birmingham he’ll be punished for them a lot more ruthlessly than he was here.

I reckon he’ll continue to improve and learn the pace of the game though, becoming a solid yet unspectacular mid-to-lower Premier League defender over the next five years given the chance, but next year I can’t see him making enough of a difference to keep Birmingham up, and just like with McSheffery many Brummies will be saying they paid slightly over the odds for him.

So thanks for the past 18 months Scott and good luck on that Long and Winding Road. I hope everything Comes Together for you and you go on to become the player some people have predicted you will.

* Also known as AD and CovSid67!

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