Watching him live in the Europa League quarter finals at home against Porto. He is looking to play to his potential, very good player imo. Out of contract in the summer, he will be a very rich man I believe as there wont lack suitors for his signature. Oh to think of what could have been.
I really don't want to know how good players become once they leave us. It's bad enough knowing they are good before they join, then watching them turn to **** before our eyes.
They are cruising, 3-0 up after 30 minutes played and Mbia is their 'conductor' in the middle of the park. Superb performance so far.
Was he? Apart from his ridicoulus rolling around when fouled (or not) I think he was one of our best players last season.
Also watching Parjeo play very well for Valencia. Presume the same Parjeo who played for us? Yet more evidence of how badly our club mismanaged players over the years.
Pajero was a teenager when he came to us from Real Madrid. Mbia was an established international in his twenties. Pajero was a quality player when we had him - the problem he had apart from his age, and possibly our expectations as he had come from Real Madrid, was the fact that the football in Spain is slower than the franetic pace of championship football. I also wonder whether the fact that Sousa who signed him was trying to get the team to play slightly differently....and once he went you could see certain players leaving. Hope he has a good career
Mbia was bloody awful for us. Absolute carthorse. If he's doing well now it says a lot about him, Hughes and Redknapp.
Its the Rangers way mate. We buy good players for lots of money, turn them to sh*t, then let them go for free. Its all about Universal equilibrium. Someone has to balance out the likes of Burnely who do it the opposite way around. YIN and YANG bro
So I guess us buying sh*t players that turn out to be sh*t (Johnson/SWP etc) is balanced out somewhere in the universe by some lucky football team that buys good players that turn out to be good. Curses...
I honestly couldn't care less how 'good' he may have looked in a Sevilla team with far better players than him in it He was awful for us, end of story. All this cr*p about 'Bring him back' etc. is absolutely farcical He'll always be clueless
Would I have him back? No way! I prefer a mix of young hungry players with a point to prove and older (not old) more proven players who are the 'right sort'. There also needs to be a backbone of British/Irish players who generally provide more honest endeavour.......................and throw Adel into the mix of course.
All this makes me wonder more about the "malaise" or the mayonaise. It confirms that yet another player, M'bia is a better player than he was with us ( mind you I thought like others he was Ok with us too). Ok we can say it was down to Hughes and Arry which is easy, and conveniently shifts the blame, which no doubt it was to an extent. But when there seem so many players like this when with us, I got to wonder if it is not partly because supporters are too quick to get on their backs when they don't all perform / act like wound up David Mackie's, whooping up the crowd, and running all the time. We need some players to think and create more than that, but we tend to rubbish them for their failings rather than encourage them to try again. Adel was applauded greatly when he scored fanatastic goals, but got plenty of abuse when he had a bad day.
So we the fans are to blame all along. More like we are a small club that can only attract players because of the inflated wages we are prepared to offer. Players end up here that really wouldn't want to be here otherwise and are under-motivated as a result.
Could be - it's probably a nasty concoction of everything. We need to get a new Manager in soonest, who wants to be here and brings in mainly younger players who want to be here.