At Hull? He was 19 at the time playing for a terrible team. He's improved leaps and bounds at AZ. He's only 23 now, don't think he'd be too expensive but he's had a great scoring record since he joined AZ two seasons ago.
And so did: Luis Suarez, Snejder, Van der Vaart, Van Nistelrooy, Huntelaar, Bergkamp, Johan Cruijff etc. Just saying that a couple gems can be found in that league.
Probably not, I'd have a difficult second season and fade away due to injuries, and everybody would eventually say "what happened to Van Bidley" or something. You're not wrong, but lots of players score for fun in the Eredivisie who don't have as much success over here. Our own Bryan is a good example, as is Dirk Kuyt and Afonso Alves - remember him?
Altidore was quality for us when he previously joined us in 2009/10 Season. Worked his socks off but couldn't find the goal unfortunately. He seems to improved leaps and bounds since though and I think he should be a Premier League player in this coming Season (hopefully back with us). This was his only Hull City goal in the victory over Manchester City at the KC: please log in to view this image
At first I thought we needed 3 more; a central midfield, a forward and a left back. However, looking again at the released players, we're very thin at right back with no obvious cover for Sascha Reither. The only candidates are Aaron Hughes (and we all know how that worked out previously) and Jack Grimmer. I reckon Jack could do the job but it leaves us potentially very vulnerable.
I disagree, Cottager. If the kids are going to come through, we can't go signing lots of players who would be ahead of them for their positions. If Jol thinks that Grimmer can do the job, let him be the understudy. And if Grimmer is going to be the back up, it's hard to see another established pro wanting to come here to be third in line behind an established first teamer AND a promising youngster. If we want to see our youth players making it in the first team, we have to make room for them in the squad and trust them. The risk would be to have all youngsters with hardly any experience around them, but looking at our squad - Hangeland, Boateng, Berbatov, Duff, Stekelenburg, Riise, etc - there's no danger of that happening any time soon. I think the bigger risk would be to block the progress of the ones who the club thinks can make it.
Agree with Captain. Also Jol has a good idea of Riether's fitness levels, how many games did he miss for us last season? We'd be more than alright with Grimmer as back up because he's more than likely not going to get a lot of game time, our last two right backs have sought moves due to Riether being available for every game (Baird, Kelly)
Quite so. Would also like to see that lad Tankovic starting a few times next season. His reports from the youngsters thread last season seemed to be very promising and he does well at International Level. Rooney (an exceptional talent, I admit) was in the Everton squad at 17 so there is no reason not to give Tankovic a squad number and some much deserved first team experience.
There are some strong rumours doing the rounds that you are after signing our Left Back Aaron Cresswell and Left Midfielder JET for a combined fee of £5 Million! Double it and we might just consider it!
Just a quick question - how come everyone else has green blocks and various degrees of nice comments yet yours is red and you are notorious around these parts, Rosc? Upset a moderator or something?
