The door is open for Aberdeen to make Kevin Nisbet’s move from Millwall permanent.
The on-loan striker has hit form at Pittodrie and his 10-goal return for the Dons this season has led to Aberdeen boss Jimmy Thelin not ruling out the prospect of Nisbet’s move to the club becoming permanent.
That Millwall Podcast contributor Omer Ronayne would not be surprised to see Nisbet, whose form has earned him a place in Steve Clarke’s Scotland squad for this week’s UEFA Nations League Play-off double header against Greece, move on from the English Championship club this summer.
Ronayne said: “He’s got another year left on his contract so we’re hoping the club get some money back off him.
“The rumoured figure we paid was £1.5million. If we can a third of that we’d be happy. When he left I think even a tenth of that would have seemed a good deal for us.
“He was really unlucky with injuries and just never really got going, really.
“It was unfortunate. But the feeling amongst fans is if we can get a fee for him, we’ll probably accept that.
“I’m sure the club have someone keeping tabs on him and of course nobody is going to miss the fact he is scoring goals in Scotland.
“But I think the perception, amongst fans anyway, is that we’ll drive him up there if it becomes permanent.”
What went wrong at Millwall?
Nisbet’s rehabilitation at the Dons has been a gradual process but the forward claimed last week to be feeling the fittest he has in his entire career.
The striker’s return of five goals from the last seven matches certainly paints the picture of a player who is enjoying his football at Pittodrie.
It’s a significant change in fortune for the player who struggled to make an impression at The Den following his arrival from Hibernian in the summer of 2023.
Ronayne said: “We were linked with him the January before he arrived so when Gary Rowett signed him in the summer window and we saw the highlight reels and the goals from his time in Scotland, we were hoping for the best.
“Obviously he was doing it in the Scottish Premiership but in England there is always the whole debate of how the league up there compares to the Championship.
“He got off the mark early too but it just didn’t really happen for him at Millwall.
“He got no service, really, I’d say. You look at the type of goals he scored at Hibs and he just wasn’t getting those opportunities really in our side.”
‘A lot of things were questioned about him’
Ronayne believes Rowett’s departure from the Lions, and the subsequent arrival of Neil Harris as his successor, led to Nisbet’s stock diminishing further.
Questions about his fitness and attitude were raised during a difficult campaign last season which culminated in the striker being left out of the squad for disciplinary reasons.
Ronayne said: “A lot of things were questioned about him by Neil Harris including his attitude before the final game of last season.
“He was banished from the squad for the last game of last season against Swansea along with Michael Obafemi, who we had on loan from Burnley.
“Harris did a team talk at the end, which the club put on social media because it was the last game of the season, saying ‘I won’t have that at my club, and I’ve set the standards here.’
“So when everyone came back for pre-season training last summer he was still in the squad but everyone felt as if he was just waiting for a move.”
Fan believes fresh start elsewhere would suit both parties
It was Harris who approved Nisbet’s loan move to Pittodrie in August. The Lions boss left The Den in December.
His replacement is former Hamilton Accies boss Alex Neil.
However, Ronayne says the arrival of the Scot who knows all about Nisbet’s qualities, does not appear to have moved the needle at Millwall.
The podcaster said: “Alex Neil has said nothing publicly about him at all.
“Maybe the club will reassess it in the summer as he seems to be scoring goals and he’s obviously found a happy place at Aberdeen.
“Neil is only a couple of months in the job, but he has gone big on our Serbian striker that we signed last summer, Mihailo Ivanovic.
“If you look through our options, we’ve got Josh Coburn on loan from Middlesbrough.
“It seems like we’re probably going to convert that to a permanent deal, and we’re only playing one up top for most games.
“If you think we’ve got two strikers there that we’ve put money into and value into, the likelihood is, if the option came to move Nisbet on to Aberdeen we’d probably look to do that.”
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