You could blame Euro 2008 for this, but calls for some of these players have been coming thick and fast for a while before this. Villa, Silva, Quaresma and Benzema have been targeted by the fans for sometime, but how many of us actually watch the Portugese, French and Spanish leagues?
On top of watching these players in the Champions League, I actually watch the highlights of the foreign leagues every week, and still feel like I don't know the players well enough to make a sound judgement on them. So I'm presuming that everyone watches full games in the foreign leagues.
Lets go back to 2002 and the World Cup. An African country called Senegal took part in that, with a player destined for Liverpool. El-Hadji Diouf. We all thought he looked brilliant over those 5 or so games! He wasn't.
My point is, even if you've seen a player play a handful of full games in a big tournament, that doesn't qualify you to judge how they'll play on a rainy day at hull.
What really annoys me though is that people then discredit other players who they haven't seen, just because their reputation on the continent isn't as big. Robbie Keane and David Villa score similar amounts of goals in their respective leagues, the only difference is that Keane is proven in the Premiership. Yet when we get linked to Keane suddenly there is an outcry of people proclaiming that hes crap! Have these people watched the performances that hes put in for Tottenham over the years? Or how well Downing played for Boro last season? Can they really claim to have consistently watched both Keane and Villa over 90 minutes every week last season? Because Rafa will have watched the videos. He's seen all of their performances, and hes in the best place to judge.
I watch as much foreign, international and premiership football as anyone on here, and I'd welcome players like Keane and Downing at the club with open arms, whereas I still feel like some of the players fans want - Alves and Quaresma, for example - would be huge gambles. Especially for the money they'd cost.
Basically, championship and football manager aren't real life. We do have budget constraints. You can rest assured that whoever Rafa brings into the club, he has done his research on them. If Robbie Keane comes in and David Villa doesn't, then thats because Keane is the best option for the club. Stop writing players off before you've seen them play, and before they've pulled on a red shirt. You'll only be eating humble pie later.
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