I have bought over 300 items from Ebay and have a 100% rating, granted throughout those 300 items I have been disappointed with one or two items. Buying things from photo’s and a short description, can leave you exposed to the odd dodgy item but read the description and many times you read in them what you want to read, only when you log back in and read it all over again you can often find something you missed.
I have always bought, but I have just entered an item for sale, a set of alloy wheels, and the amount of questions i have been asked has surprised me.I know we send scouts out to watch certain players, and yes a player may look good on the field. But what about his personality his sexual persuasion or even his record, sickness discipline or even a police record, surely for the amount of money paid out you would expect a 4 page dossier, but we have still signed injured players.
Now I read that we have added 8 year old kids to our academy, even Beckham’s boy has come and played a bit and i have to ask myself what’s the point. Young kids who don’t even know what its all about, being propositioned by scouts agents or even parents, lets face it they are kids who still have a lot of growing up to do before you start nurturing, a talent that may never come to anything.
Now when have we ever found a talent in the lower divisions, there are plenty who play, and when we play some of them in the cups we see guys who look as good as some of our multi million players, but no we spend millions on a 17 year old kid who plays in a foreign league who most of us have never heard of.
Now with all of the holding midfielders and central defenders in the lower leagues who are all used to English football surely some of them are good enough to play in the premier, but how often do we even look. If we search the world for 8 year old maybe’s, and hope they grow to six feet 2 or 3 and will be strong enough to play top flight football who are we trying to kid.
A few seasons back when we were struggling we could have bought Cahill or Samba and we never, we buy Squilachy instead I don’t think the right questions were asked then, do you. I feel we have to buy players who have a bit of a track record, a player who is six feet 2 or 3 already players who have shown they are resistant to playing in rain sleet and snow, players who have a bit of fight in their bellies, and leave the Chamakhs and Eduardos Gervinhos to other teams.
We have in our fold Wilshere Walcott Ramsey Diaby Gibbs who seem to spend most time injured, fairly good players who have shown when fit are decent talented footballers, but when these players are injured the team seems to struggle, so what do we do.
Maybe like Ebay we should ask more questions, ask them early in the window so when an answer comes back that casts a doubt we can scroll through the others on the list. Research, and lots of questions before we part with our Wonga.
written by Steve Palmer