One answer to this maybe that he came through the door just after Woy, a coach committed to a useless 4-3-3 formation, requiring three, equally disinterested forwards each game. At the time, Woy praised the recruitment team for getting it all done so quickly, so you can imagine his request was clear, a wide forward and a central midfielder. Hello Mogi. It’s at this point we should have some other options, but on paper it didn’t seem completely mad. I might have missed something, but nothing about his age has been proved, has it? It’s simply an extended joke. If it’s true, that’s terrible. If not, it’s puerile to continue it in this fashion. Fact is, we don’t really know what sort of player he is. He momentarily looked sharp and direct during the rare appearances he made in a poor team. Debatable if PL quality, but everything before suggests he could hack it the Championship. The fact that he appears surplus now indicates it was a poor transfer, but none of it is yet clear and I doubt this one article is going to be enough to provide that clarity.
Any excuse that relates to a manager just makes it even worse, because it highlights the complete lack of joined up thinking between who we sign and who is and who will be managing the team.
No, I don’t get that. He was bought for a coach who was supposed to be there for 18 months. Are you suggesting the club should never buy for a coach because none of them last?
The point I'm making when I say I've made a judgement on one minute of YouTube footage is clearly tongue in cheek!
Also, the idea of 2.7m as a 'punt' for us needs context. I don't think we've spent (wasted) more than 5m on a single player since Sarr.
This article says investigations are taking place regarding his age eligibility for Nigeria U21’s some years ago. Says documents were falsified regarding his age so he could play. https://girondins4ever.com/breves/2...ansfert-de-samuel-kalu-aux-girondins-en-2018/ So no, not proved. But certainly worthy of conversation - maybe it was a puerile joke to begin with but it’s a serious point of interest now I think rather than an ‘extended joke’?
This is beneath your standard with the personal attacks. You're always wrong, but you're usually fair and argue your wrongness with more vigour than ad hominems
Are you? It’s not clear. Try making the point again. You seem to be suggesting we should buy for a coach, but there is nothing to suggest he wasn’t bought for Hodgson. Whether the player proves a success or not is a different matter and in part, also down to that coach.
I really don’t understand the point you’re trying to make. Kalu was signed the day after Ranieri was sacked, what about that makes any sense at all? You seem to be defending the signing with something that makes it even more absurd?
I'm literally not, though. Happy to say it's proven to be a crap signing. But much like other punts, it could have turned out differently, and I struggle to get as outraged as I would at other poor signings we've made. CoG hahaha
Not to get all playground, but he started it. Usually happy to debate with Jumbo, but he was clearly having one of his funny moods last night.
Fair enough about Louza. Bayo I'm just as angry about as Kalu (yes! FUMMIN!) As I think it's a similarly disgraceful signing. Louza, I'm on the record for predicting he will one day win the Ballon D'or, so I have to stick with that, but in any case, 2.7m is a significant chunk of change for a team on our budget over the past 3 seasons. It's first team player money, not 6 months of no use for a 49 year old man money.
Don’t forget Okeye for £6m either, although he’s comfortably paid that back in loan fees I’d imagine.
There's no joke; regardless of any stories about documents you only have to look at him to tell there's no chance he's the age it's claimed.
Literally writing it off as a 'punt gone awry' as you've continually done is trying to justify it. It's a win some lose some. 'You have to buy your 56 year old wingers you clearly don't need at the expense of your first team needs, so that you can strike it lucky with your Dennises and your Lukebakios.' You are trying to mitigate the level of disgrace. The fact is, we didn't need him, we shouldn't have signed him, we haven't used him and we needed the money spent for far higher priorities. In the context of where we were, where we've been, who was the agent involved, the murky player history, what we needed and what we have now, it was an appalling piece of business. Not the only one, mind you, but the one we are discussing here. It doesn't have to bother you, but you cannot imply everyone else is overreacting by playing down the severity of just how disgraceful a signing it seemed at the time and has proven to be.
Make what more bizarre? Because Hodgson only had an initial contract? So the sensible thing would be what, to buy no one? The sensible thing, for sure, would be to buy good players, not duds, but not no one at all. We wouldn’t have Kamara on that basis.
It’s a jumbled up old argument isn’t it, Gino apparently has the right to lose his mind on some deals because he gets the odd deal right. It makes no sense because the bad deals are so obviously bad they’re just completely unnecessary. If there is no malfeasance at play with the likes of the Kalu deals, then you could argue they’re all just pure luck and he doesn’t know what he’s doing with the good deals or the bad, so again, it’s difficult to understand exactly what the people trying to justify these deals are actually trying to argue.
