Agrewd we were very silly not to bring M'Vila in permanently, it was also a great pity the Kirchhoff was made of balsa wood (for him and us).
He played as a holding midfielder. How many goals did Veira, Kante, Makelele, Petit etc score... did that make them poor players??? He read the game as good as any I have seen. He was strong, had enough pace, could tackle, pass and run and wanted to ****ing play for Sunderland. He was also a good influence on the youth teams and would watch their games. I’d say that losing a player and character of those attributes is very poor from SAFC.
I remember watching M'Vila early on and marveling at how good he was. Watching him in contrast to Catts was night and day IMO. M'Vila just knew how to read and play the game, even in tight and desperate situations, he got the ball at his feet and looked for an out, calm as you like. As opposed to lumping it straight back to the opposition or smashing it towards one of his team mates and expecting them to perform a miracle! Utter stupidity to let him go for the sake of half the cost of his replacement!
M’Vila is one of the finest midfield players I have ever seen in a Red and White shirt. He was like having a finely tuned Rolls Royce driving our midfield. Really?
I think over and above the names mentioned the one player I would put above the rest (as a rolls royce player) is Claudio Reynar, a lot of people forget about him....I remember been at Bolton when he got a terrible injury which more or less finished him for us.....he was a lass act no doubt
Reynar was excellent too. Shame injury and our relegation limited him to a small number of appearances.
Which Sunderland central midfielders would you rate higher than M’Vila? We’ve had some good players in my lifetime but I don’t think many would better him in my opinion.
He was the best player America have ever produced imo, I was buzzing when we signed him, such a shame about the injury for us, I was gutted to see him get carried off down Bolton
Aye it was sickening. He was brilliant in the 2002 World Cup for the USA. Was gutted that we had to get rid when we went down.
Ha ha my age I was picturing Claudio Maragoni and remembering that bullet he unleashed against Fulham I think.
