Once again the thousands of travelling fans were let down by a group of spineless, overpaid players with a losing mentality who don’t even have the guts to acknowledge the fans who have travelled over 400 miles return trip to see their team play. After such disappointment, many supporters felt they might as well have booked a stay at one of the family friendly hotels Laguna Beach is known for and enjoyed a peaceful getaway.
A moment of quality by our two most technically gifted players gave us a glimpse of what could be if they were both started for a change and not sat on the bench and introduced for 5-15 minute cameos at the back end of every game.
The club is in turmoil, the players aren’t fit to wear the famous claret and blue and we’re rapidly becoming more of a laughing stock than we have been in recent years under Lambert and McLeish. Not only to rival supporters but to those on Sky Sports Soccer Saturday for example amongst other outlets in the media and this is all down to Randy Lerner’s ownership and Tom Fox’s running of the club.
You have to ask yourself the question, if Tom Fox was that good, why was he allowed to leave Arsenal? The same goes for ‘sporting director’ Hendrik Almstadt. Surely Wenger would have stepped in if he felt that he was losing two important members from behind the scenes at the Emirates?
On the recruitment side of things, Paddy Reilly is another one who seems out of his depth and as Stan Collymore once said about him, the only thing he seems to do is add something on to his title whenever he changes club. Matt Law said on Sunday Supplement this morning that ‘he is just a stats man, who’s been promoted, promoted and promoted’.
Now for the players, whilst others around us strengthened significantly we once again took the route of going for players who aren’t proven in the countries top division, with the exception of Joleon Lescott and Micah Richards.
Both winners of the league in Manchester City’s first league triumph in 2011/2012 but as with the case of Lescott, maybe their ship has sailed, Lescott’s never has been blessed with pace and his ability to read the game was always his saving grace, however that ability seems to be waning. I’m undecided about Micah Richards, he was one of the signings I had high hopes for but his alleged request to only play CB is now costing us dear week in week out, he is a right back, a very good right back in the early days of his career. This is the Micah Richards that kept Pablo Zabaleta out of the team during Manchester City’s title winning season.
No easy feat. As surely he should realise that his performances at centre back are sub-standard, if he doesn’t realise himself all he needs to do is look at his twitter feed every evening after a match to see the discontent coming from the fans and if this wasn’t enough the constructive criticism he is receiving from pundits on Match of The Day for example.
With the exception of Amavi, Adama, Veretout and Jordan Ayew I am yet to see anything but small glimpses from the latest group of uninspiring players to come to B6 to ply their trade. A net spend of £8.25 million is nowhere near enough in today’s day and age.
The ambition of the club is questioned also on the recruitment side of things, we are always linked with well known, talented players from around the globe as well as home soil.
Charlie Austin would have been an ample replacement for Christian Benteke but we end up with the championship striker that is Rudy Gestede. The same Rudy Gestede that mustered a mere 3 games at Cardiff City during their brief tenure in the premier league before being shipped out on loan to Blackburn where admittedly he enjoyed a successful period, in the Championship playing against inferior players.
We were linked with Asmir Begovic, now of Chelsea and we brought in Mark Bunn and our goalkeeper search ended there, leaving us with two goalkeepers who in my opinion are not of premier league quality. We then took Tiago Llori on loan from Liverpool and paid for the pleasure to have him train with the club for half a season and now we are sending him back if the rumours are true.
Although injury has affected his short AVFC career, why did we sign him? He hasn’t featured for Liverpool and surely if he was someone they were optimistic about they wouldn’t be sending him out on loan with a very small fee to purchase him at the end of the loan spell. Other signings such as Crespo just add to more uninspiring arrivals.
Once again, we were linked with Yohan Cabaye and we lost out to Crystal Palace. A club who were only promoted a couple of seasons ago. If this isn’t a measure of how far we have fallen then I don’t know what is.
