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The 'Players Who've Caught My Eye' Thread
- Thread starter AberYid
- Start date
Coutinho is only a few days older than Carroll.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_Coutinho
I really hope Tom can have a Townsend type experience at QPR but I doubt it.
milo
Jack L. Jones
How so?
Mumorn
Vic Buckingham
Chelsea could just buy him for "potential" - and look how many midfielders they have.
Emirates Marketing Project could also just buy him for the fact he has a "bright future" - I dont think hed start much.
In fact I think the best place for him would be a place like victims.
El Guepardo
Rafael Van Der Vaart
I think that he would thrive at Everton, Fulham could be good for him too or Southampton. I'd select one of those three for him.
Gutter Boy
Tim Sherwood
Mind you, about 5 years ago I was almost as obsessed with Giles Barnes as I am with Hughes now. To be fair though it was injuries that ruined his career - he was a decent talent.
El Guepardo
Rafael Van Der Vaart
I'd forgotten about Giles Barnes but yup, he promised a lot that was sadly never fulfilled.
Yermiyahu
Scott Parker
He is still playing in the MLS for Houston.
Simon_B
Matthew Etherington
Haven't seen much of him yet this season but he has been very good tonight. Just looked up his transfer fee 425K, another incredible bargain made by Laudrup.
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
I have an excellent record over player predictions. I can usually tell after just a few games what level a player can attain after I've seen them play top flight football. I've lost count of the amount of debates I've had with fans over the years about players, usually with me being accused of being negative or cynical because I dare to say something like Simon Davies will never be anymore than a Premiership journeyman just after he wins Spurs player of the year award or that I thought Vinny Samways was nothing more than average within 10 games of seeing him. Don't even get me started on John Chiedozie.....
Anyway, Nick Powell admittedly is currently in the Championship, but I really like the look of him. Typically Utd have got in there first. It'll be interesting to see what he can do at Premiership level but I think this kid could turn out to be a top four quality deep lying forward. Can't wait to see him in the Premiership next season because I like his style of play too. I am certain he'll get a Premiership loan if he hasn't broken into the Utd first team squad yet.
Anyway, Nick Powell admittedly is currently in the Championship, but I really like the look of him. Typically Utd have got in there first. It'll be interesting to see what he can do at Premiership level but I think this kid could turn out to be a top four quality deep lying forward. Can't wait to see him in the Premiership next season because I like his style of play too. I am certain he'll get a Premiership loan if he hasn't broken into the Utd first team squad yet.
markysimmo
Johnny nice-tits
Modest too
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
Just honest. I knew I was going to be comparatively **** at football within my few matches of playing :lol:
Who have you tipped to be stars before they were stars?
The Moonlit Knight
Banned
Depends on your definition of a star. Spotting obvious talent is easy, and in most cases people get it wrong when a player doesn't live up to the hype rather than an unknown all of a sudden becoming a major star. My strength is seeing a player in top flight English football, over a few games, and usually accurately predicting what level they'll achieve within the top flight of English football over the long term.
I don't know how old you are, so apologies if I am going over obvious ground to you, but the saturation of football on TV only truly began in the early 90's. Prior to that I was good at judging Spurs players, but it was hard to judge non-Spurs players based on the fact you may only see them three or four times a season. In the 1980's league football did start to appear on TV more often, but nowhere near the level it is now. Funnily enough, and probably due to our reputation of being the league's entertainers, Spurs featured in both the BBC's and ITV's debut live league fixture in the 80's. FA Cup games were shown more commonly, but even that not that many.
Some people say you can't judge a player from the TV, and to an extent they're right. You can't see how a player fits in with the overall system or tactic from the TV because you can't see whether they are being unselfish. But on the other hand, you can get a much greater sense of close ball control, first touch, passing, technique of individual players watching them on TV (especially now!) due to the multitude of camera angles and close ups.
Going back to your original point, it does depend on your opinion of a star. For me superlatives about players are thrown around far too easily in the modern game. There aren't many star players, so the ones that are stars are easy to spot. For a modern example I knew Gareth Bale was going to be a great player the first time I saw him in a Spurs shirt and definitely when he went on that little goal scoring run in his few games for us. He instantly slotted in. At that time I also knew Gareth Bale was going to be at least a winger. After his debut I remember turning to my friend and saying to him I wished this kid was around when Hoddle was in charge with his wing back system. My first thoughts were that he reminded me a lot of Darren Anderton & Tony Galvin. Did I think he'd end up being the world star he is today? I thought he had the potential, but a fair few people do, and I knew when I saw him he'd end up moving to a Man Utd sooner rather than later. But I will admit I never expected him to be a world record transfer or a galactico. When he got injured and came back, he wasn't the same player and even I began to think that maybe the injury did for him. But it's not uncommon for a young player to burst onto the scene in a blaze of glory and then seemingly regress for a couple of years before bouncing back and I was pretty confident he'd prove himself when he finally did get his chance.
The Utd "kids" were pretty obviously going to class. Giggs was the first and whilst I knew instantly he wasn't in the same class as George Best (who he kept being compared to) he was another player that you just knew after three or four matches was going to be an amazing talent. People forget looking back but he was another one who blazed on to the scene but then actually had a couple of very average seasons early on before coming good again. Beckham got all the plaudits for his Wimbledon goal (and for a kid to even try that, demonstrates amazing arrogance which is usually a sign of a great player) but when I first started watching Paul Scholes I was well and truly wowed.
The West Ham kids were also pretty obvious. I'll admit I don't remember much of Bobby Moore so in the English game Alan Hansen is the best centre half I have seen. But Rio Ferdinand was an amazing talent. But it was obvious, hence why he sold for so much money so young. Frank Lampard was someone I desperately wanted us to sign before he went to Chelsea and I was delighted when we signed Michael Carrick. Out of all of them Joe Cole was the one I didn't get the fuss about. My overall prediction on him proved true in the end as his career has been fizzling out when he should have been in his prime, but I was certainly wrong about the amount of success he would have because he did very well at Chelsea. Fair play to him.
One player I was seriously ****ed off we didn't purchase was Dan Petrescu. In some ways I enjoyed the 1994 world cup more than usual because there was no pressure of worrying about England. I ended up watching more neutral games than usual and I loved that Romania team. I remember having a conversation with a mate about who we signed the wrong Romanians! When Petrescu went to Sheffield Wednesday I was very ****ed off. Especially as we had Dean Austin or David Kerslake as our right back. Another foreign player I had seen a few times that I wanted us to get was one Gus Poyet, although I had seen him mainly as a forward then. Was very disappointed when he signed for Chelsea, especially as Nayim was meant to be his best friend in football. Based purely on Euro96 I wanted Ziege at Spurs VERY badly. Got my wish a few years later but he was a player who didn't quite attain the world class status I thought he was going to.
The one Spurs player, who went on to be a star for us at least, that I tipped years before was Sheringham. At Millwall people talked more about Cascarino, but for me it was all Sheringham. When Millwall got relegated I really wanted us to sign him. I was never a fan of Paul Stewart or Paul Walsh up front and I felt Sheringham would compliment Lineker perfectly. I actually thought he was one of the best players in the league in 88. I was very surprised when he stayed at Millwall when they went down, and was then very disappointed when Forest got his signature. The funny thing is when we did sign him I wanted Shearer as the signing instead!
There are players that I have got wrong though, and mainly players who I thought were going to be bigger than they actually became. For Spurs especially was Micky Hazard. I really thought he was going to go on to become an England international and would be Hoddle's successor. Darren Anderton was another one who I felt was going to go on and do more than he did. I thought he had the potential to be a big big star but it didn't quite happen. Outside of Spurs I got the career of Lee Sharpe completely wrong. I thought he was going to be better than Giggs! I also thought Rob Jones was going to be a leading world right back :-"
Players that went on to do a lot better than I predicted? David Platt had a great career, but couldn't see the fuss at the beginning. Steve McManaman was a player I didn't rate that highly, but he won the Champion's League with Real Madrid. I thought Andy Cole was nothing more than a speed merchant (I even remember calling him a poor man's Garth Crooks :lol: )and whilst I never believed for a moment he was top drawer he certainly ended up being a far better player than I ever thought he'd be. Same with Dwight Yorke to an extent, but that was more down to his earlier days he was being played as a winger.
And finally a Spurs player that went on to prove me wrong was Ricky Villa. Ossie was obviously brilliant from the get go. It took me a while to warm to Villa and I thought he was too lightweight. But he ended up being a really good player for us and I wonder what our history would have been like if the Falklands War hadn't happened. Paul Stewart was another I didn't rate, but when he dropped into central midfield he looked a far better player and attained performances levels I never thought he could achieve.
As for players I was right about, as its most of them it's pointless mentioning them. I should stress that it's not necessarily that these players didn't have good careers or go on to be very good players, but more the fact that I predicted their level. Nicky Barmby for example I knew when I saw him was going to be a very good player, but not for one minute did I buy into him being a potential world class talent and I certainly wasn't devastated like a lot of Spurs fans were when he moved on.
Another one was Robbie Keane. When he burst on to the scene has a teenager I didn't get the fuss and I remember having an argument with a Spurs fan about whether we should sign him when he came back from Inter. I said not for the money they want and I predicated that Robbie Keane would never be able to hack it at a top competitive club. You looked at him and then looked at Michael Owen (a true world class talent) and there was simply no comparison. I also always felt his contribution in a Spurs shirt was vastly over valued by a lot of Spurs fans but he was a good player for us in the 00's (and I was all for him signing when we did sign him because his value had dropped to a more realistic level for a more experienced player), but I always felt that if we made the step up that he'd be left behind (I felt/feel the same way about Defoe too) as not quite being good enough. When we sold him to victims I couldn't believe how much money we'd got for him, and I knew he'd flop there. But I never anticipated how drastically he would flop there, or that we'd buy him back (Harry's biggest mistake in the transfer market as our Manager by far) or that his career would nose dive so badly that during what should have been his peak years he was playing in a mickey mouse league on the other side of the world.