Stephen Ireland Permanent Transfer Progress
I’ve never been a big fan of Mark Hughes as a manager. In interviews, he always wore a serious face and tried to perhaps sound more intelligent and astute than he actually was. He also used the word ‘quality’ far too often. It seemed he was on an eternal quest to “bring in quality”, or “add quality’ to the teams he managed.
Well, we’d now like to give Hughesy a big thumbs up for permanently taking £55,000-a-week odd off the Villa books, although we can’t confirm if the player is ‘quality’.
With Hughes agreeing with Villa what is effectively a permanent free transfer of Stephen Ireland, who was currently on loan at Stoke, he could potentially turn out to be fool’s gold, if Ireland’s time at Villa is anything to go on.
The main quality Ireland showed Villa, was when he played against them for Manchester City. In a Villa shirt, considering his wages (overall he cost Villa around 10 million mark), he was one of the biggest disappointments as a Villa player in recent times. God knows, how he won ‘Supporters’ Player of the Year’ in Alex McLeish’s season in charge?
So, now the maths are simple. With another one of the bigger player wages freed up, it’s time to reinvest at least 75% of it on an attacking midfielder that actually does what it says on the tin, namely, keep possession, create chances and score goals.
With the Wes Hoolahan deal looking dubious at the moment, Lambert may look to a surprise midfielder name that hasn’t appeared in the rumour mill yet. It’s obvious that somebody has to come in to help put an end to the anti-football being witnessed at Villa Park.
Lambert, Faulkner and Lerner, over to you. UTV
It’s unclear if Stoke were paying all his wages on loan, now at least this is beyond doubt. You could attribute the saving on his wages to anything – paying for a cleaner to clean the Holte End toilets, a new Randy Lerner private jet, covering Benteke’s improved contract etc, etc. What we’re saying is we had an attacking midfielder on £55,000-a-week+, so lets get another one in, as he was meant to be the main tried-and-tested one in the squad. Tonev & Bacuna aren’t like-for-like transfers.
I am assuming we wasnt paying his wages previously this season? therefore hasnt his wages already been spent on the likes of tonev & bacuna etc?
Agreed