Seems we are raiding the French league to get young players on decent wages as opposed to has beens seeking to bolster pensions ( Sicknote/Smith/Butt)............... My worry is this..............is the EPL easy to adapt to.? Look at our Spanish signings..............Xisco / Hugo Viana ( the new Figo!!!!!) What's the sp on recent French imports in the EPL?
1. Owen wasn't a pension booster, was 25 when we signed him. 2. And our Spanish signings have never had proper chances to settle.
Sorry, but Owen knew the Toon was his last big pay day...........he was always getting injured and to be fair a pay as you play is a disgrace ( even at ManU) for anyone his age. He was only able to take it after £30million from us!! I don't buy players settling in..........your either a versatile football player or your not.
Difference being that these French (and Ivorian) players are Internationals, wherein those players you mention coming out of La Liga had never reached that level, nor even really proven themselves in Spain yet (Xisco especially)
He played in 36 out of 38 Real Madrid league games. And 45 games in all competitions before joining us. In fact: His total games played each season before he joined us throughout his career. 96-97 - 2 97-98 - 44 98-99 - 40 99-00 - 30 00-01 - 46 01-02 - 43 02-03 - 54 03-04 - 38 04-05 - 45 Only really 1 season where he barely played. Edit: And by barely played i mean missed a few, in 99-00 and he still played 30 times.
Thanks for the factiod. My main point was to look at what we're doing now compared to "let them eat cake" signings of the past. Shepherd was out of his mind signing Owen without ANY class support..............Martins was the original greedy headless chicken!
Viana is Portugese, and in fairness wasn't given the time to adapt. He was played out of position and could've been quality. Then Souness did a Daggerlish and got shut of all our creative and exciting players and we went downhill. For every bad Englishman there's a bad foreigner. Let's wait and see.
Not sure what you're saying. We had Shearer when we signed Owen, Martins signed after Owen. The year we signed Owen we had a pretty good side.
My only concern with being linked with Frenchmen is that their league isn't exactly one of the best ones in Europe although the long list of great French players that have played in the Premiership is encouraging. It's a risky gamble because these players are gonna need time to settle and the team may suffer while they are gelling but fingers crossed it'll pay off
Cabayes in the french national team, Gervinho is in the Ivory Coast team. As AP listed, there are plenty of players from the french league that have made the cut here in the EPL. I'm confident they could both be successful here if they were to join.
The French League seems to have had abit of a resurgence in the last few years, they produce alot of good young talent & with the national team being in the state it's in there is a big oppurtunity for these players to push through
