I watched SL on the highlights,last Saturday WBA v Man U,and thought he had a reasonable game,did not seem overawed by the occasion. Could Roy have unearthed another little gem. Over the next 20 premiership game played,who will be the more prolific scorer SL or our AJ my prediction SL to double AJs output. Scoring 2 ?
Weren't you warning us off wasting money on the unproven Shane Long the other week Valjing? You've changed your tune pretty quickly!
I'll look back on our era with Roy Hodgson with gratitude, but talent scouting wasn't his greatest gift. Yes, he brought us Bobby Zamora, but also the Johnson brothers. He brought us Schwartzer and Hangeland, but also Bjorn H Riise, Dikgacio, Greening and Elm. He benched Dempsey for two months in favor of Gera (outraged at the time, I change my name to Dempsey's Revenge). Of all the players he brought to Liverpool, Konchesky? Hodgson's ability to spot talent (IMO) was average at best.
I know Roy signed Stockdale, and - I think - also Smalling. But he did have a tendency to trust in established pros rather than youngsters.
Roy went for players whose careers had gone down the pan, then made these players work together to form a great team. Players like Duff, Zamora and Davies were looking all washed up until Roy rejuvenated them. I'm pretty sure Roy signed Hangeland too.
Captain, you are right. Thought of Smalling and Stockdale after I posted my comment. Too lazy to go back and change it... Thanks for putting things right anyway.
Captain,"I have changed my tune",is there anywhare in my brief, above article where i said we should have bought SL, I was soliciting ideas from other 606rs,regarding an unproven PL player
True, Valjing, you don't say we should have bought him, but the phrase 'unearthed another little gem' certainly implies that you're now regarding Long as a good signing. I guess I just wanted to further make the point you and I seem to regularly disagree on. If we wait until lower division stars - little gems or not - have proved themselves in the Premier League, it's too late for us to get them. The teams that they prove themselves with are the same sub-Champions league teams that we are competing with. If Long goes on to shine with West Brom, it will be too late for us to get him. We need to carefully pick the right little gems to unearth, and then have the courage to move for them before anyone else does. The trick, of course, is to spend on the right lower division players rather than overspending on, for example, Diomansy Kamara. There's always an element of gamble, but it's the way forward for a club of our size and stature.
I agree with the general theme here - as a small club we gamble on buying promising younger/unknown players. Sometimes it pays off (Smalling, Stockdale etc) and sometimes it doesn't (numerous examples). Its great watching the successful youngsters coming through (Frei) and disappointing when it doesn't work out. But this is so much more fun and interesting than spending £30m plus on an established player, having proportionately high expectations of him and being unsurprised when he is successful (Aguero) or frustrated when he isn't (Torres).
If we had paid £30m for Aguero and I was unsurprised at him doing so well for us, it wouldn't dampen my enthusiasm for him in the slightest!
It would be nice to find a 3-million-pound player who's just as productive as one costing 30 million. They say the best indicator of a wine's quality is its price, and I think the same is true of footballers. That's not to say that gems aren't found every so often that somehow slipped under the noses of wine dealers or football managers, but it's all too rare these days. Last week I read that Barcelona had beaten Real Madrid for the signature of a 7-year-old. Ajax youth system starts scouting players aged 4 - 5. Point is, there are few secrets out there. With wine, the only time you get quality wines at bargain prices is when some new region or country opens up, like Chile or Argentina five years ago (try a Carmenère from Chile - yum!). The soccer equivolent would be the USA, Japan and Korea in recent years. Dempsey was a bargain at 2 million pounds and he's regularly out-performed players (like Lampard) worth five times as much. But that only happened because Fulham was willing to take the risk.
And because we were also willing to give him time to develop - as great as he's been for us in recent years, during his first seasons at the club he wasn't out-performing the likes of Lampard, or even the likes of Simon Davies. We have to speculate and we have to give our investments time to blossom. It all comes down to getting the right people making the decisions on which players to go for, and then trusting their judgement. I'm still hoping that with some time on loan Dalla Valle and some of our other youngsters will become Premier League players worth talking about.
I agree with what you're both saying however these gems are very few and far between. We will always be a selling club and if a youth product does well and a United etc comes knocking offering 10 x the price we will accept all day long. Truth is its the same with all clubs outside the top 4/5. In order for Fulham to bridge the gap we need to spend 30m in 1 season and we all know this is not going to happen. The odd star youth is what age for but in reality it will not push us on.
Bit of a typo there I think CC, you mean £30m on one player and about £150m in one summer, correct?
OK we are now not in the big spending league, but when MO first arrived,other clubs envied the financial clout we had at the time. There was some serious money spent,VDS, Marlet, and several more millions. A Chelsea,& QPR friend said at the time,how we wish we had a chairman like yours. "Alas," time and money has now moved on, but several good buys,blended together with good coaching,and who knows, Buy unknown by all means,but serious cash must also be spent,on proven quality, to both maintain and improve our premier status.
We mustn't forget that Mo is a billionaire and could quite conceivably invest £150 million on players and not be too worried about it but that isn't the way he works. He is trying to make Fulham a club that is financially stable (good for him) but that precludes him laying out mega millions on one or two players. He also won't pay silly money on wages (again, good for him) but that again stops someone like Aguero from ever pitching up at the Cottage. A shame, but, in the long run, it's the right way to run the club. We would all hate us to do a Leeds or a Portsmouth.
I think as well that when we first arrived hin the Premier league Al Fayed was intending on turning us into 'the Manchester United of the South' and becoming a top four side. The big signings were part of that. Another part of that plan was to find us a new bigger ground so that we could grow our income substantially and compete. When supporters said they didn't want to leave the Cottage he scaled down his ambitions, rightly recognising that we couldn't eat our cake and have it. For what it's worth, I think he made the right call. Given the choice of competing with the very biggest boys at some new stadium or remaining mid-table regulars (or worse, slipping back into relegations battlers and, one day, going back down) but staying at the Cottage. I'd choose the Cottage every time. I'd love to see Fulham winning trophies (hell, one would be nice), but not at the cost of our history and our identity. I took a friend of mine to the game on Saturday, a Villa fan. He was really struck by the atmosphere and character of the old ground. He's a bit of a casual football fan and doesn't live near Villa. One of the many positive comments he made as we talked about it afterwards was that if he lived in London and was looking for somewhere to watch some football, he could easily see himself going to see someone like Fulham more often, because of the whole package that we've got at the Cottage. We've got something very special there, and it's right at the core of who we are as a club. If the price of keeping that is recognising that we're probably at more-or-less the top of our realistic ambition, then I can live with that.