Bournemouth break transfer record to sign £8m Tyrone Mings from Ipswich
• Exclusive: Aston Villa, Newcastle and West Brom also wanted player
• Winger Ryan Fraser will be loaned to Ipswich as part of the deal
Tyrone Mings, centre, playing for Ipswich against his new club, Bournemouth, in the Championship last season.
Bournemouth have broken their transfer record to sign Tyrone Mings from Ipswich Town in a deal believed to be worth £8m. Mings has agreed personal terms with the Premier League club after Bournemouth beat off competition from Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle United and the left-back will sign a four-year contract at the Goldsands Stadium, subject to him passing a medical.
It is understood that Ryan Fraser, the former Aberdeen winger, is moving to Portman Road on loan as part of the deal. While there has been no shortage of interest in Mings, who cost Ipswich only £10,000 when they signed him from non-league Chippenham Town in December 2012, Bournemouth’s willingness to meet the Championship club’s valuation of the player propelled them to the front of queue.
Mings was given permission to talk to Bournemouth and travelled to the south coast on Wednesday night to hold talks with Eddie Howe on Thursday morning. He was hugely impressed with Howe and believes that the Bournemouth manager will help to develop his talent as part of the next step in a career that has gone from strength to strength ever since he gave up work as a mortgage adviser two and a half years ago.
Rejected by Southampton at the age of 16, Mings was turning out for Chippenham Town and driving a Citroën Saxo that cost him £100 when Ipswich offered him a trial in December 2012. Mick McCarthy, the Ipswich manager, liked what he saw and the five-figure sum the Championship club paid Chippenham for Mings must rank as one of their best investments.
Mings, who is 6ft 5in, blessed with a good left foot and is a fine athlete, blossomed under McCarthy’s watch and attracted attention from leading Premier League clubs, including Arsenal and Chelsea, where his father, Adie, works as a scout. Crystal Palace had a £3m bid for Mings rejected last September and the player’s value continued to climb during a season in which Ipswich reached the play-off semi-finals before losing to Norwich.
Howe has watched Mings’s progress closely and the Bournemouth board backed his judgment to make a move for a player who was coveted by a number of their top-flight rivals only for them to be discouraged by the price put on his head.
As well as catching the eye with his performances on the pitch at Portman Road, Mings has picked up a reputation for being something of a good Samaritan in the world of football, with various gestures of goodwill, including one act of kindness that made him national news before he had made his debut for Ipswich.
In March 2013 Mings exchanged tweets with an Ipswich supporter who could not afford to go their home match against Bolton because he was “skint”. Mings replied on Twitter and said that he would leave his complimentary tickets at Portman Road for the fan to collect. The exchange between the two went viral.
In an interview with the Guardian in December, Mings talked about how much enjoyment he got from spending Christmas Day in 2013 feeding the homeless in Ipswich. The following summer he paid for some replacement replica shirts for supporters who were frustrated when his squad number changed from No15 to No3 and in April this year it emerged that he had cleared his mother’s debts.
Guardian
