The thing with having a manager who has a good eye is that you retain confidence in his signings even when you don’t get the guy at the top of the list. This was the case when an Australian international, who knew the boss well, called Riley McGree didn’t sign for us in the January window last season. The club did not mourn that decision.
Instead, the club moved on to the next name on the list; MK Dons midfielder Matt O’Riley. I don’t know what sort of signing McGree would have been, or what he would have brought to us, but I do know that the guy we got instead of him is a superstar.
McGree had a good World Cup. We all watched him. But O’Riley has been a sensation in the Hoops and he is proof that Ange’s judgement is right on. There is no doubt in my mind that even if we don’t get our first choices in this transfer window, or in subsequent ones, that the club has done its homework sufficiently well for it not to matter much.
Mohamed ‘Afsha’ Magdy is one of the names to be linked with us right now, and his club and his agent are putting it out there that Turkish teams are also interested. Fair enough, but if this turns into a bidding war that’s where we should bow out.
We’ll have secondary options, and we’ll have an idea what valuation to place on this guy. Getting into some sort of pissing contest with other clubs only pushes up a price to a point where we might not be able or will ing to compete … and all it does in the end is wastes our time, time which the manager realises could be better spent.
This is the thing with having faith in the boss; you don’t get rattled when these things happen anymore. You simply wait for the next name to emerge, knowing it’ll be a good one.
I agree about us having faith in our managers transfer decisions, Ange has earned the trust that we have in him on the strength of his previous acquisitions. However James, you are getting carried away just a bit in describing Matt O’ Riley as a superstar for he isn’t, not yet anyway for he still has a lot to learn. I would like him for instance to recapture the knack for scoring goals, because that particular talent seems to have deserted him for the time being, let’s hope it is just a temporary blip.
Before you call anyone else a Superstar James, think…. Henrik Larsson = Superstar, and we have had no one since who can lace his boots.
Absolutely. Matt O’Riley provides beyond reasonable doubt that Ange knows what he is after and has back up options. McGree is a great player and I am sure would have been great for us. But he would have cost a lot more than O’Riley because of interest from elsewhere so we rightly ditched it and moved on.