I think it’s easy to read too much into this sort of thing. He’s said this a few times about Tanaka. He probably wouldn’t mention it if he’d been a flop. The Ipswich manager said ‘everyone in football knows about Tanaka’ - when they played Dusseldorf pre-season. Does make you wonder why he sat in the German second division for so long and was available on the cheap. There will be a reason. But we were the ones to take the punt and whatever the reasons for everyone else’s reluctance were, they look very well hidden or unfounded at the moment. There are only so many leagues and so many footballers. Clubs ‘track’ hundreds of players for years irrespective of current managers and current scouting team - obviously new scouting teams and managers bring their own ‘tracking’. They enquire about player availability all the time. Credit on this occasion IMO would go to both Farke and the DOF/scouts for getting it done.
If that’s right then it does make you wonder why it took injuries to both central midfielders for him to get his chance in the team?
Team was playing well, he was new to the country the league and the team, don't think it's such a surprise or big deal. Think Farke said when we brought in Tanaka and Rothwell that it would improve us on the ball and weaken us off it - maybe he had some question marks about him physically and off the ball. They do seem unfounded, although he seems to lose his markers at free kicks and corners. That said it does look like our defence sometimes practices losing markers, so we may have had to coach that in to him.
