None of them have really had good records though have they? We sign players from the French second division who don't even stand out at that level.
Well that says more about the bloke choosing the signings than it does about the players themselves. There's an expectation when a manager signs a player that the player will generally be good enough to play at the level of his new club. If the player doesn't look very good playing at a lower league we shouldn't be signing him.
I think Bruce looks abroad as a last option hence why some of his buys have been dubious as they are gambles. Against Reading out of the seventeen only four were foreign league purchases. Add Maloney to it if you must but take away Elmo who was bought from Sunderland who Bruce already knew and that still leaves four.
Really? Leicester signed Kramaric for 9 million. ****ing disaster. Vardy from non league for a million. Hughton signed Wolfswinkel for 8 million for Norwich, ****ing useless. Jerome a 1.5 million. I know where i'd be shopping next season.
Whereas Norwich signed Tettey for peanuts, Palace got Jedinak, Everton signed Besic for next to nothing...I could go on. Actually, I will. Swansea got Sigurdsson on a season long loan for a minimal loan fee (first time around), while Michu cost them nothing. Watford got Vydra for next to nowt (granted it was from their owner's other club, but they still obviously scouted him to see if he was good enough), Boro got Nsue for free from Mallorca, Brighton got top scorer Tomer Hemed for £1m from Almeria, Anthony Knockaert for £2.2m (who to be fair had played a fair bit at Leicester already) and right back Bruno on a free from Valencia. We've signed British players that have not been great for one reason or another; Jimmy Bullard springs to mind, it means nothing because every player is different. Akpom hasn't cost us anything this season and he's British, it's not exactly indicative of quality is it? If you look at the teams near the top of our league, they're mostly made up of players from the UK, like ours is. But they manage to sign foreign players that make a difference with no problem and for relative peanuts. Just because a few players don't make the cut doesn't mean they are all a write off; it's a cliche but they're always a gamble. It just seems our gambles over the last few years haven't paid off, I'm guessing in part to a poor foreign scouting network. We managed to get a highly rated Uruguayan international in Hernandez, who was being watched by the likes of Arsenal and Inter Milan and turned him into absolute dross by playing him in a way that didn't suit him. Either sign players that suit the system or put in the extra time to mould them, but you can't buy them on reputation and just expect them to automatically come good. He is now starting to adjust, but it would have been a lot quicker had we actually made an effort to play in a system that suited him.
