John Terry Judged to be Worst Signing of the Transfer Window

‘Terry is no Dave Mackay and Bruce is certainly no Brian Clough’ – 442 Magazine

Worst? Are You Serious?

With the 2017 summer transfer window closed, football magazine FourFourTwo published a ‘10 worst signings of the 2017 summer transfer window‘ article ranking what they considered to be the poorest 10 signings of the whole window.

Surely the focus would be on some of the silly money buys that had peppered the window.

Indeed, ex-Spurs misfit, Brazilian midfielder, Paulinho moving from the Chinese Super League to Barcelona for over £35m made the list at No.2. A strange move, but a good one for Chinese outfit Guangzhou Evergrande who have doubled what they bought the 29-year-old from Spurs for.

Yes, Danny Drinkwater’s £35m move from Leicester to Chelsea is on the list (No.5), as is Neymar’s £198m move from Barca to PSG (No.7), a sickening amount of money that has since inflated a lot of average player’s values.

So, who was number one?

Well, the headline and the main picture of this article gives it away…

Numero Uno

Yes, Mr John Terry was rated by the magazine as the worst signing of this summer’s transfer window.

Their main gripe, of course, his age.

‘When a player achieves certain things in his career, he’s afforded privileges – one of which is the opportunity to carry on well beyond his expiration date,’ states the magazine.

They go on to ask the question – ‘What did Steve Bruce see in Terry?’

Despite acknowledging the Villa captain being ‘a serial winner with the full collection of club medals’, FourFourTwo then points out that after five games Villa are at the bottom end of the Championship having shipped the third-most goals in the division.

The magazine concludes:

‘This kind of move always sounds smart, but rarely do all of those intangibles stack up as they should. Terry is no Dave Mackay and Bruce is certainly no Brian Clough.’

While FourFourTwo may have been more than a little harsh in their verdict, at least they had a distinct opinion on the 36-year-old, unlike these guys…

john terry Birmingham Mail

What Do They Know?

MOMS has already discussed in detail our thoughts on the Terry transfer, but for the purpose of addressing FourFourTwo’s verdict, whether the signing is successful or not, simply depends on whether Villa are promoted with Terry in the team.

Failure to even make the play-off stages and the signing will be seen in hindsight to be complete nonsense short-term vanity signing.

Mitigation

While there was no transfer fee, Terry’s wages are still considerable, as are his projected bonuses if Villa get promoted. But some of this cost can be offset by the increase in Villa shirt sales due to his signing (at one stage it was announced that shirts with his name on made up to 80% of total sales).

Also, Terry being at Villa has lifted the media spotlight on the club (for example, the EFL did their season launch at Villa Park with Terry as their main poster boy) and his presence can arguably be linked to increased Sky TV live game selection for Villa.

So, there’s a bigger picture to judge him on in terms of him being a success, even at this stage.

Considering some of the serious coin some of the other clubs have dropped on signings in that FourFourTwo list, Terry will hardly be the worst signing come the end of the season, whatever happens.

Ultimately though, only the final league table at the end of the season will judge Terry.

UTV

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