Cleverley's a good player, not quite good enough for Man Utd, or England, but the way some folks go on about him you'd think he was worse than Junior Lewis. He's not £15m good either, but he's English and still of a decent age and we all know how much English players go for. Everton is probably his level and I reckon he'll shine there out of the spotlight and not under the heavy pressure he's under in Mancester and England. Good business for everyone that'd be.
It's always the same, in the last decade or so it's 'popular' to pick on certain players. There's a player the media picks up on and then every average armchair fan says "that so and so is ****e aint he?" to make him / her appear to have some kind of level of football udnerstanding. Anyone remember when it was Gareth Bale? Some of you might think I'm joking here or just plain wrong but there was a good 3 months or so when everyone poked fun at Bale because he played something like 20-odd times for Spurs before they ever won. It was a running joke, 'Bale plays and Spurs lose'. Funny how nobody who joined in mentions that now eh? And there was a time it was Owen Hargreaves. There was actually a massive campaign, a la Cleverley, for him not to go to a World Cup (was it Japan / S Korea or Germany? Cant recall) until he actually turned out to be our very best performer there. And then when Yaya signed for Citeh there were masses of media commentators proclaiming him the worst signing ever and "what does he do for 200k a week?" Theyve also gone strangely quiet. This season its Cleverley and Demichelis. It'll move on to someone else next season.
Cleverley is okay, he's just not good enough for Man United or England. Demichelis makes too many howlers to play for a top team, he looks like a world beater half the time and complete liability the other half. Bale's problem at Spurs was he started off as a left back and couldn't defend.
Dimeichellis is fine, he's certainly a lot ****ing better than Lescott ever was who cost about 6 times more! And I agree about Cleverley, which was also Hat's point. He's ok, he's just not Bastian Schweinsteiger and that doesnt make him as ****e as some people seem to be claiming. And Bale played left back for Southampton regularly, I remember him scoring an amazing free kick at the KC in a game when he played left back. Yaya? Hargreaves? I think it's undoubted that it's 'trendy' nowadays to pick on certain players and you get a massive bandwagon following along.
I don't remember the Yaya and Hargreaves ones, I always thought they were highly rated, I was a particular fan of Hargreaves, he was one of my favourite players for England.
They both were, 100%. It was when Hargreaves was at Bayern there was a mass media and public campaign to oust him from the England squad ahead of whichever tournament it was. He then went on to do bloody brilliantly, our best performer by a mile, and Utd snapped him up. Yaya's was a lot briefer, I'd say the first month of his first season, but I clearly remember Jonathan Pearce getting on his high horse asking what he offers for 200k a week. I dont half remember some useless ****e, but ask me what I had for dinner yesterday.......Oh aye - it was a Pot Noodle and a w**k. Hargreaves: When he was 16, he left Canada to join Bayern Munich. He didn't know where Munich was. He couldn't speak a word of German. "I was young and naive," he said. "I thought I knew everything about the world. In fact, I didn't have a clue about anything." No one had graduated from the Bayern youth set-up to the first team for seven years. No one thought Hargreaves was going to break the mould. No one except him. They made jokes about the kid from Canada. He heard the word 'igloo' a lot, kept his head down and his mouth shut and got on with his work. It took him three years of struggling in obscurity to break into the Bayern first team. Twelve months later, he collected a Champions League winner's medal. Then there was England. England fans were sceptical about a bloke with a Canadian accent who played in Germany and was initially used out of position by Sven Goran Eriksson. So Hargreaves was booed. Booed in the 2006 World Cup when he came on against Paraguay. Booed so lustily that other England players were disgusted. Hargreaves' response? A super-human performance against Portugal in the quarter-finals that was one of the most courageous midfield displays ever in an England shirt. No one booed him any more. Those of us who had once criticised him regretted it and realised that this was a man made of stern stuff. A man who refused to hide. http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/football/owen-hargreaves-exclusive-hes-proud-295947
Few shandies perhaps? It was the culmination of a witch-hunt that had gone on for months. One remarkabley similar to Cleverley's in fact. BTW, I'm not suggesting for one minute Tom will go on to be a world-beater, but he might...
