serving your time.

While we mostly agree that the Henderson deal was good for us, what happened to serving your time first.

Vast money comes with high expectations, a gamble that works for some, but the pressure to performe straight away will be huge...

I'm sure it'll work for Jordan, and i really hope it does, but when is the right time...


A life in the limelight – but an afterlife in the shadows is always just one serious injury away.


So who can blame the current crop of young stars who are being bought and sold for enormous sums for reaching out to grab fortune and fame at the earliest opportunity?

Phil Jones, 19, is the latest to be lined up. A £20 million move from Blackburn Rovers to Manchester United should be finalised, after a hiccup, this week.

Yet he has been a first-team player for little more than a year.

He made his debut against Chelsea in March 2010 and has started just seven Premier League games for Rovers. Now he is set to be one of the most expensive teenage players in the country.

He follows Jordan Henderson, 20, another £20m buy, who made the switch from Sunderland to Liverpool last week.

Henderson broke into the Sunderland side in 2009-10 with only a handful of appearances and a loan spell at Coventry behind him. So after barely two full seasons as a Sunderland first-teamer, he is in the £20m club too.

Perhaps even more remarkably, Andy Carroll moved from Newcastle to Liverpool in January for £35m after less than half a season as a Premier League regular.

Connor Wickham, Ipswich’s precocious 18-year-old forward, is just about old enough to vote, but could soon be signing £10m transfer forms. Sunderland have apparently made an offer for him. Liverpool are hovering.

Whatever happened to the old-fashioned notion of bright, young players serving their time – let’s call it an apprenticeship – before being valued so highly

Even Wayne Rooney hit 15 Premier League goals and served two full seasons for Everton before his move to Old Trafford in 2004.

Go back a generation or so and Paul Gascoigne served Newcastle for five full seasons before his first major transfer to Tottenham in 1990.

If the young Gazza were playing today, he would have been away before his best mate Jimmy had grown the second of his five bellies.

At Sunderland, from where Henderson has just decamped, they had the brightest young defender in Britain in the early Seventies.

But Colin Todd served – and duly captained – Sunderland for five years before moving for big money to win club honours and England caps with Brian Clough at Derby. Jones might reflect on that as he ponders life at United.

Sunderland manager Steve Bruce has clearly been obliged to sell Henderson.

But only a few short weeks ago, he said: “The great thing with Jordan is that his father and Jordan himself are level-headed enough to realise that the worst thing that could happen is he goes for big – huge – money then doesn’t play for 18 months and sits on the bench. There will be a time when he goes, unfortunately. But in the meantime, no.”

That meantime turned out to be no time at all.

So why the rush? Well UEFA president Michel Platini’s demand for more home-grown talent in the Premier League has more than a little to do with it.

So when Jones spoke with Sir Alex Ferguson over his proposed transfer, the small talk about his experience and memories was probably just that – very small.

No doubt Ferguson will have reassured him that everything is waiting for him in a long career at United.

We shall see.

There is a good chance that such gambles – even on kids rated racing certainties – will lead to cries of, ‘You’re fired’, for those bosses who act in haste

 

Been married 31 years and still serving my time at the sex part,
Can't seem to get the hang of making it last more than 2 mins lol still if she enjoys it thats a bonus

 

2 minutes eh!

Bighead.

 

Is he not including the cigarette and a pint?


As to the OP, football behind the scenes has changed so much now.
Clubs used to keep young kids hanging on for little or no money by dangling the carrot of a contract in front of them.
Players back then were just cattle as far as the owners were concerned.
Bosman and agents have now swung the balance of power the other way. (Maybe too far?)

A crash is inevitable mind, as we the buying public will only be pushed so far by how much they charge us.
Either paying for watching live TV or actual entrance fees. Our pockets are not full of infinite amounts of spare cash.
The silly money paid to players has to reach the point where the whole system will implode.