Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Green Eyed Loco-Man

When did I become a news site? I'm sure I didn't used to try and write quite so much about what had happened during the day. Maybe it's because I am posting at the end of the day instead of in the morning. Whatever. Here is the news.

Michael Brown has finally completed his move to Wigan, the Official website said this was for an undisclosed fee (we really love those don't we - I wonder if we're laundering money for the Mafia?), but the BBC (amongst others) reported it was for £3million. If that's true it's an even better price than I first thought, though I'm sure there are actually all sorts of clauses in there before we'd get the full wedge. Good luck Browny.

Roy O'Donovan looks to have decided he would rather play for Sunderland. He was quoted today as saying Roy Keane was his idol and he always hoped that one day he would get the chance to play for him. Fair enough, you can't really compete with that can you? Sunderland played Cork last night in a friendly so that must also have helped them jump in and hijack our deal. All things considered it's not the worst deal to have been gazumped on, given the choice I'd rather have signed Chris Baird so I think we've come out ahead so far in comparison to the Black Cat's. I'll be interested to see how O'Donovan does though, definitely one to watch.

Following Sanchez's comments about signing 2-3 more players we've also been linked with a number of new signings. We've allegedly made bids for Charles N'Zogbia of Newcastle and Seol Ki-Hyeon of Reading. N'Zogbia is a nippy left winger who looked pretty tasty in the glimpses I saw of him playing for Newcastle last year. I'd be surprised if Big Sam was prepared to let him go, especially considering his comments about their dearth of players, but it has also been rumoured that Sam wants Diop as part of the deal. Seol ripped us apart when we played Reading away last season, but generally didn't get as many opportunities in the side as he'd hoped. I had read that he'd been played out of position a lot which could explain his subsequent dip in form, so he might not be a bad signing for us especially for £1million. There's was also a suggestion back in June that our new Korean sponsors LG were keen for us to have a Korean player on board so there may be more to the move than just squad strengthening.

Finally I completely forgot about the rumour from yesterday that we were looking at Anthony Le Tallec. He is owned by Liverpool, but spent the whole of last season on loan at Sochaux and the whole of the previous one on loan st Sunderland. Neither club subsequently picked him up, which doesn't bode well, however, he has been described as a tall forward who can hold the ball up well. If true he could well be useful as a back up to Brian McBride. With Kamara looking to feed off a big front man McBride has a big role to play this season and we don't seem to have another striker who can offer the same attributes. Either way its all rumour and hearsay so far so we'll have to wait and see.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't know when £3million became a small amount of money to me, but I find it funny that you think that's a good price. Shows how spoilt I am in my 'big 4' world, and how big the difference is between those clubs and the rest. It's nearing the time when we should swap our thoughts. Get thinking...

Anonymous said...

I think you might just be a bit poo with computers Chopper. It took me 15 seconds to find this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa1-p9f-2BY

I hope you don't have cause to come into contact with PC's and that during the course of your working life..?

Chopper said...

£3million is good money when you only paid £1.7million 18 months ago. Simple maths. Thanks for the YouTube link I shall have a look tomorrow as my PC is currently not playing ball with YT video. As you say good job I'm not involved with computers at work ... *cough!*.