Sandro is quality mate. If he's fit and stays fit you have the steal of the century. 2012 form, prior to injury, and he'd be a £20m+ midfielder.
Agree with all that. I'd say 20m may even be modest.
Put it this way - you've just bought our best midfielder (Eriksen aside, possibly). And we had a hell of a lot of midfielders. And you bought him for possibly 6m. So yeah - not thrilled about it.
The ONLY reason I can see for selling him is injury worries. And, for me, one of the most damning indictments of the past two managers was that they tried all these, often negative, things to make us stiff in the middle of the park when there only one thing you need for that - play ****ing Sandro!
When he first came to the club I would wince as he went in for challenges cos he always looked like he was gonna give away a free kick. But he rarely did. He has the knack of winning balls that you don't think he will win and whilst not even giving away free kicks. He really, truly is a beast.
As for the Charlie Adam thing - this comes from last season when Paulinho was playing one of his two good games for us. Full of flicks and invention. Well Adam had been on the bench watching this and probably grunting in his sub-human way. When he came on he went in with a nasty tackle on Paulinho within minutes leaving Paulinho injured for a good few weeks. This is as well as the fact that he had previously crocked Bale twice before then. The guy's a ****ing nasty piece of work and Sandro, not in the team that day, posted something on Twitter saying "The Beast is watching you, Charlie Adam" or something. So yeah - stuff like that does endear him to the fans but don't be deceived - it's his performances on the pitch that got us to love him first - not his Tweeting.
And this is what happens seconds after Harry berates him for wandering too far forward:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GWaMKmEUPU
Also some insight into the man is provided by knowing that before he came to the UK, when he had few months in Brazil with his old club, he spent that time having English lessons and seeing a psychologist so that he would be able to adjust as well and as quickly as possible to the huge change in his life that was coming up. We're talking about a guy in his early 20s here showing huge maturity and sense.
I was gonna question Spurm's use of the word "devastated" as it seemed a bit much but, bearing in mind the fee, bearing in mind what our midfield's like at the moment and the recent exodus of strong characters from the squad I think "devastated" is not too far off.
Oh well - here's hoping Paulinho can some day put his third decent game in for us. Or Lamela his fourth...