by Richi Royal »
20 Jun 2008 18:42
Good luck to Glen, i can only repeat what has been said on here about him been one of, if not the, best players i have seen in a Reading shirt. The ability to beat players with pure skill and trickery was a delight to watch and a fresh of breath of fresh air in the modern day when pace seems to be the be all and end all of wingers.
The move i would guess is financially motivated, but who can blame him as he is now in the last few years of his career. I cant really see him getting into the Pompey midfield they play with pace and power and i am not sure they will allow him to get away with not running back at 100mph etc as it does not seem portsmouth style. Their midfield contain Kranjcar, Muntari, Diarra, Diop, Utaka, Davis and Mendes at this moment in time, and Redknapp has gone on record to say he could sign up to ten players so i cannot see where Glen fits in apart from in the carling/ fa cups (possible early rounds of uefa?)
However this now gives Coppell NO excuses for not buying a quality right midfielder, i was anticipating a right midfielder in some sort of capacity to come in and play second fiddle to Glen (possible similar to Oster) but now it has gone from our strongest position at the start of the season (Seol, Oster and Little) to been completely empty. If we are serious about going for promotion, and i have my doubts, then we cannot take a risk on either Kebe or Henry been good enough to be first choice and them then to flop so we have no option of bringing anyone in. Instead we need to be proactive and stop all the excuses we have heard over the last few windows ("no one wants to join us" "doesn really start for 4 more weeks" "looking for a specific sort of play" "I am happy with the squad" "right players aren't available" etc) make bids for players and be ambitios...why not make bids for players such as Kightly and Ledley, we will never know unless we bid and talk to them. And although it is harsh, becuase i hate it when it is done to us, but we should start to use our current status are a respected club with premiership ambitions to bully smaller clubs in to selling their star players becuase they want to move to a better club. Like Bodde and Derby, like West ham and Shorey, like Laferty and Wolves/rangers, like Ebanks Blake and wolves, like Real Madrid and Ronaldo... Bentley.... Barry...the list goes on. Start getting bullying the smaller clubs into selling us their players because the player want to play at a higher level and hand in a transfer request etc.
