Remember when Gerrard got the Sevco job?
Remember the press coverage that said he was coming in with a whopping great transfer budget and that he would never have joined the club without one?
Remember the calibre of player they were linked with at the time? It was amazing to read nonsense about Martin Skrtel and Jermaine Defoe and Fernando Torres and other such ancient luminaries, none of whom were ever, ever going to sign.
We did try telling them that. They didn’t listen.
Instead what? Four loanees, a handful of others.
Not one game-changer. Not one player you could say “wow, they did alright netting him.”
Not one signing to keep you up at night, not one who bridges the gap between what they were last season and what they want to be. With a rookie manager at the helm, does this even count as an improvement?
Of their signings, the two Liverpool loanees are the most curious. Sevco fans have tried to kid themselves on that stories they’ve heard about the club being fined for not playing these guys are simple misunderstandings of the Anfield policy; they claim that Liverpool don’t charge a loan fee for their players but fine clubs who don’t give them games …. Ergo, there’s no real difference between this and an ordinary loan.
Bollocks. Liverpool practically advertises these things as “fines”, so it’s clear that’s exactly what they are. And of the two players, neither set the heather on fire at their last clubs. Neither did the big guy they’ve signed from France.
But it’s the Roma loanee who’s been in the papers today and his signing might prove to be the most hilarious of them all. I saw a headline in The Scotsman that reads as follows; “New Rangers striker Umar Sadiq goes from ‘unbelievably bad’ to ‘world class.”
And I was laughing before I even read it, thinking this would be some kind of piece about how he started out as a player who showed nearly zero promise and has levelled up into some kind of superstar … who’s club is allowing him to go on loan to Sevco.
But it was even better than that, it was the manager who signed him for NAC Breda, talking about what makes him such a frustrating player. He came up with a few absolute gems, but these bits are my absolute favourites;
“There were times with Umar that I would watch him and think ‘this is unbelievably bad’ and then 10 seconds later he would produce a world class moment … If I had one piece of advice for Steven Gerrard then it would be to close his eyes sometimes and hope that he produces a moment of magic.”
The article goes on, with even more hilarious revelations;
“Vreven, who was replaced at NAC Breda with former Motherwell centre-back Mitchell van der Gaag, also raised the player’s laid-back attitude which saw him miss meetings or not approach training with the right mindset …”
You say “laid back”, I say “unprofessional” but it’s really six of one and a half dozen of the other, isn’t it, because it all comes down to the same thing.
Gerrard is the supposed disciplinarian. He is the guy who’s meant to want only the highest qualify footballers, with the correct mentalities, at his club. I wonder if he did even the slightest bit of homework on this guy. Where in the Hell did Gerrard find him? Is this from his own contacts book or that of Mark Allan?
At the end of the day, this guy could dazzle us … but when you read stuff like that you have to think it’s unlikely.
Even Sevco fans realise things are being done on the cheap here and that Gerrard hasn’t had the backing they thought he might ….
…. but this is the true quality they’ve burdened a rookie manager with, in the hope that a glittering playing career translates to success in the dugout. It worked out great for others, didn’t it? I trust I don’t have to mention the name Roy Keane. Or the name John Barnes.
Sevco fans, you should be worried.