by Dr_Hfuhruhurr »
27 Apr 2015 22:26
West Stand Man You have clearly not read it though. It is pretty clear that a signing who has never played has to be a worse signing than one who has contributed week in week out. On your logic if we signed Messi and he never actually played for us that would be a good signing. That is obviously nonsense. Sorry.
Its not.
i think Pogrebnyak's global impact is also quite obvious.
Ever since we've put him on his big contract we've been uncontrollably in debt - we havent made any decent decisions in the transfer market for three years, simply because we cant afford to. The utter irony of this thread is that pretty much all of these bad transfers that are listed are partly because Pogrebnyak is at the club. It was his wage that first bust the club and since then we've been making speculative punts on crocks because they are free. Or on lower league players because they're cheap. You could even argue that we made the Ferdinand deal because we were broke. And as its Pogrebnyak making us broke - its at least partly his responsibility - and the rest of them on this list.
One tick in Royston's favour is that when push came to shove, he left. Pogrebnyak has been going to the press saying that he wants to go back to Russia for over a year now. There isnt a hint that he wants to play for another contract. He is quite happy sitting it out; despite the fact that the club has been grumbling about cash for years. You cannot, in any world, say that is something to admire.
We are going to be in transition next year as well - because Pogrebnyak is at the club - that isnt an accusation you can make to Ferdinand.
With Ferdinand out - at least it gave us an opportunity to give Hector a good half a season. With Pogrebnyak up front, we cant play anybody with him - because he's so useless and we cant replace him because we cant afford any strikers. Arsenal summed it up for me. We played Pogrebnyal up front because we had to - who in their right mind would want to play a 4-5-1 with Pog on his own - nobody. We had to draft Mackie in to help him. Whatsmore he gets a chance put on a plate for him and, well, I dont even want to talk about his 2 on 1 effort - it was so Pogrebnyak. Pathetic, in other words. We sold Le Fondre to help pay his wages, and, laughably, we had to pay for the loan of another forward to help him out because his strike rate is so pitiful - so for the first half of this season, Pogrebnyak was costing us his wage, plus Murray's - you just cant make it up.
Ferdinand may offer us absolutely nothing - but Pogrebnyak offers us less than that. As soon as he is off the books, we might start operating like a proper club again. We've been falling from grace for quite some time now - and he is a key reason for it.