Seen Bri has posted this elsewhere, but as he's having technical problems on here. Here you go. Well worth a watch, remember him? ****ing hell, pick that out.
He wasn't match fit He played and looked like a cart horse Although he had talent we couldn't aford to wait for him to get match fit. Lesson learned only buy players Who can hit the ground running. As they say
Vin, You can count on one hand the number of foreigners we've signed in the last 30years that have hit the ground running, and Sam signed three of them last January which would suggest like a lot of other things connected to our club that were not very good at it.
Nice goal but that was from 2012 - about 2 years before he signed for us He did score this one at the weekend though.
I think its alarming the number of highly rated foreign players that have come here and done absolutely nothing. It can't be coincidence. We must be doing something wrong with them.
We rarely give imports a chance, many look lightwieght and not up to the physical demands of the English game, but if they are they bring something special, still think Vergini was good enough tbh. Alvarez was another, but I accept I am in the minority and may even be wrong. Claudio Marrangoni was one of the worst players to pull on a Sunderland shirt according to many, but he was World Class and proved it elsewhere.
We've traditionally got a lot of players from Scotland, but never really persevered with South Americans. Marangoni is a case in point and Arca the exception that proves the rule.
Well, the first part of that begs the question, why do our imports look like they're not up to the English game but other clubs do ok with imports? Are we bringing in the wrong ones. The second thing that I wonder about is why do so many seem keen to get back to South America so quickly?- Scocco and Marcos Angeleri being prime examples. Are they not being helped to settle sufficiently?
I expect each case will be different, but was informed on good authority, at the time, that Marangoni was not welcomed by an influential clique inside the dressing room. Things have changed of course, and the mix is thankfully much more cosmopolitan, but it is still a bit of a mystery why so many South Americans do not settle here as you say. Personally I think it boils down to a few of them not been given time to settle, and for all his failings, I think Steve Bruce was the nearest we have had to a manager who might have succeeded in this department, he certainly gave it a go when he was here .
