It's the birthday of both Peter Crouch and Dimitar Berbatov today. I don't suppose either of them fancies a contract to the end of the season, do they?
Think he’s had a few injuries on top of losing his place lately. Shouldn’t be hard for him to find another club though, he’s a tidy midfielder who many in the Championship/ League One could make use of.
He was a real talent on the verge of breaking into the first team, at one point. Hopefully he'll manage to get things back on track and work his way back into the Premier League.
This is going to be an incredibly unpopular opinion, but I think that we could do with someone like him in our scouting network. He shouldn't be in charge of anything, but he does seem to spot some decent talent. His variation of Moneyball has some merit as a base, as long as it's not the whole process.
Can't help but feel he's made a terrible mistake joining them. I'm happy he's got a chance to hopefully play some first team football because he's a big talent that probably wasn't going to get a chance here but Stoke just really isn't the place to go for a silky player like him. Feel he may have done better waiting it out and hoping someone like Brentford or QPR showed interest, they're teams with managers who'd be able to get a lot out of him. Hopefully I'm wrong though and it works out for him. Joe Allen isn't a bad player to play alongside and learn under so that could do him some good.
The thing with Comolli is that, as a scout, he's not actually that good as instead of identifying players who are under the radar - which Moneyball is supposed to do - he always identifies known quantities who will cost more, and on top of that some of the players he identifies are a poor fit Frank Arnesen was a far greater DoF for us than Comolli was as he knew his remit and operated within it, while Comolli and Baldini decided to play Football Manager on Levy's dime
