Scotty Parker anyone?
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Yeah I want to swap RvP for Carroll and Wilshere for Henderson while we're at it.You are only jealous that Spurs have him and you are stuck with Song!
What does it really matter which team(s) a player has or has not played for in the past or how many games he's played for them?
All that matters is a player's current form and ability, coupled with how well they fit in with the formation and style of their current team.
There's far too much focus on here on evaluating players by association-with-teams ... as in Player X must be "top 4 quality" by definition because he plays for a top 4 team.
Hence you get muppets like PeterStorey claiming that Spurs have only 3 good players (King, Adebayor and Modric), that Song is the bees knees in comparison to Parker and that, by implication, Arsenal's squad is packed to the gills with top quality players.
Those comparisons are a bit extreme as neither Carroll or Henderson have any sort of form compared to RVP and Wilshere.
Seriously when has Song ever put a run of form together that rivals that of Parker?
Er... what?
You seem to have missed my point. First-hand experience of playing week in, week out, under the the pressure involved at the business end of a title-winning season is invaluable.
If anything, Arsenal's biggest problem in recent seasons has been a lack of this sort of player.
It doesn't and i agree completely with that view.
Yes there is an elite club snobbery tha we see time and agin on here whenever we get linked with a player. Most recently we had it with both Valencia and Young, and yet they both fitted in very well for us.
I agree with that - surely you can't tell whether a player is "top four materiel" unless and until he gets the chance to perform at the top level?
Too many people fancy themselves as scouts making judgments on players. They'll call a player like Parker becasue he's not young or glamourous in the way he plays yet will wax lyrical about some young lad playing halfway across the world.
In my opinion you need to look at a players performances - and few could argue that Parker wasn't one of the better midfielders last season despite playing in a god awful side. He's now stepped up to a better side and has backed it up with good performances again.
Right now is the answer. Song's a vastly superior player and is by far the best defensive midfielder in the league at this point in time.
Right fair enough, im happy to take your word on it, but i must point out i have heard very little about his apparent brilliance, compared to that of Parker.
Song was never the best defensive midfielder in premier league, he is far too inconsistent and has a great tendency to make forward runs which leaves spaces behind. De Jong and Parker are both better than him as defensive midfielders.
Exactly, why people go to such pains to dismiss a player's contributions is beyond me. Yet when we criticise Fletcher or Carrick's performances, we are asked to remember those dozen or so games they played well in last season or the season before, and then use that as justification for keeping them and not signing the other.
A strange and obviously flawed logic in my view.
Good ol' Parker eh. Who needs a Ferrari when you can get a Austin Meastro.
Which echoes my original thoughts on the matter, so it was through Gooner goggles only then i presume.....!
I rate De Jong to do a particular job, but Song has far more passing ability and creativity. Parker's just a bang average Fletcher type who is given excessive credit for being a water-carrier.
If you cannot get a Ferrari then surely it depends on whether your Maestro is more reliable than your Fiat Bravo.........
So in your eyes is Song a better deep lying playmaker than DM?
If so i would find that easier to believe, than Song is a better DM than either
Parker or De Jong.
If you can't get a Ferrari because they're either too expensive or the current models don't suit your needs, you wait until the next models come out or the current models come down in price. Maybe you decide to get a Porsche if there doesn't seem to be any hope in either case, but you don't go out and buy a Ford Mondeo. We have certain standards that Parker doesn't meet - comparisons to Young and Valencia are a bit off because we bought them when they were 25 with the potential to improve themselves and get to that top level, like Chelsea did with Parker.
Actually too many people believe the media rather than watching the games for themselves. The current narrative arc is that Spurs are favs for top 4 and Parker is a pivotal reason for this. Six weeks ago it was Liverpool were favs for top 4 and Dalglish had made a step change in performance. It takes a few results for the underlying truth to be revealed.
What few results have determined Spurs are not favourites for 4th?
and it also takes a few results for your usual arrogance to come back
Depends whether the ford mondeo is a better car than what you already have!
Let me put it it to u this way, if you were getting irregular performances from your car, just because you cannot afford a vastly superior model, do you continue using the car you cannot rely upon, or do you go for a similar model with much more reliability? I think we both know the answer.
What standards are those? Do Fletcher and Carrick regularly meet those standards? I would argue the standards set at Utd are by the likes of Keane, Scholes, Beckham etc, people who became icons all over the world because of their performances for Utd.
So i ask you again is it those kind of standards that Parker should aspire to, or those set by the likes of Carrick, Anderson and Fletcher? In my view those players have never got anywhere near the standards set by those greats before them. Parker imo would have little trouble matching what Carrick and Fletcher generally produce.
...or Youtube.
I'm not only taling about Parker, and who'll finish top four is another argument.
By watching games its apprent that Parker is playing well, as it was last year, thats all I'm saying really.
The nail was hit on the head ages ago on this thread. Fans are (fairly unsurprisingly) too quick to praise their own players, gloss over their flaws and try to find excuses for poor performances, but any other player is criticised fiercely - people state that "he's not top four class" with in many cases little or no evidence to back it up.
Really? I remember him getting a lot of praise. He had a good season after all.
Your bloke, Henderson, was getting slagged off a lot though. How's he getting on anyway?
Not really because the Ford Mondeo still isn't meeting the requirements, it doesn't matter if your current car is worse - when buying your next car you look at whether it can fulfil your needs, not whether it's slightly better than the current car that isn't fulfilling your needs. You're splashing out a few thousand quid here - it's important to buy right when you spend big, it's wasteful to pay big money for small improvements.
Fletcher was promoted from the youth team and holds more value because of that - understanding the club's values, understanding his role in the team and importantly has lots of top level experience. Plus he cost nothing. Parker would cost decent money and has little experience at the top level. Carrick was signed when he was 25 with the potential to step up to the top level - again, like Parker, but he failed. It'd be like us signing Carrick, getting rid of him to Newcastle and then Chelsea signing him four years later - because there's no doubt Carrick would've excelled at a lower level like Parker again, and he would've been attracting similar plaudits from yourself that Parker's now getting. Carrick excelled at Spurs to a level Parker hasn't yet reached and likely never will...yet you're advocating swapping the two. I reckon if it was the other way around, you'd still be doing the same thing. Which is the whole point - Parker's good enough for Spurs like Carrick obviously was, but that doesn't mean he's good enough for us (as you seem to think Carrick isn't, I on the other hand do).
If Anderson turns out to be below the level needed of him, he'll be shipped off and we'll get someone that is at the level needed, not someone who's slightly better but still below that level needed.
Signing a 29 year old Parker goes against the club's transfer policy that's made us so successful - how many players have we signed around his age in Sir Alex's entire time here? Very few I'd imagine, with them either being superbly gifted - like Berbatov - or dirt cheap squad players - like Owen. Parker's neither.
It's a short-termist view and we've very rarely operated in the transfer market with anything other than a long-term view.
Go back and read the thread. You'll no doubt have had your opinion somehwere along the line seeing as you like to stick you oar into pretty much every thread on here.
I think Henderson's struggling a bit for what its worth but I do think it was a good move for him. Getting game time and not under too much pressure.
I think he could develop into a very good player - perhaps even on the right of midfield where he seems to be getting a game. Although, seeing has its almost half a season since he moved teh fact that he's not yet tearing up trees proabably means he's a waste of money in the eyes of many.
Anyway - I'll always champion local lads from the North East. We have after all produced some top players in the past.
ooh, get her!Did a quick search and, amazingly enough, I seem to have had very little to say for myself about Young before we signed him. Bit of a surprise but there you go.
A selection of comments from other caftards (including you!):
I would love Young at United. I'm certain he will do well wherever he goes.
Only situation I would not want him would be if Sanchez or Bale were options. I doubt they will be
You keep on championing lads from the North East, whatever floats your boat. I'd have thought it would make more sense to judge players on their merits as footballers - rather than their postcode - but each to their own.
Maybe now, but previously I don't think Ferguson was at all afraid to make short term signings and there's enough examples to prove that.
I don't think we should allow the post-Glazer transfer policy to colour blanket statements on his policy throughout his tenure, which has sometimes been very different to today. For all we know, Ferguson himself would rather have Parker in his squad this year than face the problems he now faces - he's certainly signed far older players, and far less convincing midfielders for United too.
I don't get the hate in general for Parker though - in an era where everyone moans constantly about rich PL kids not giving a stuff, you'd have thought Parker is some kind of 60's throwback tonic to all that - as Amolbhatia said several pages back, Parker seems to put a helluva shift in game after game after game. Will be interesting to see how long he can keep it up for Spurs and where they finish at the end of the season.
There isn't any 'hate' for Parker who's a decent hardworking midtable player. The 'hate' is for the muppets who insist on overrating him.
Well ... he's a currently a key CM partner for one of the best CMs in the Prem (Modric) and playing for a team that's currently level on points with Chelsea, despite having played one game less and despite having played a tougher fixture list.
Last two Spurs games I've seen that pair lost control of the CM for large portions of the game being outplayed by Faurlin/Mackie and Sidwell/Murphy.
He's fecking weird looking too.
Would those be the games both won by Spurs ... by 2 goal margins?
And what about the 6 games prior to that? All won bar one draw away to Newcastle.
Parker has not yet lost in any game he's played for Spurs.
QPR were completely crap against you in the first half - when they swapped out Taarabt and Derry they controlled the game for most of the second. Fulham were at least your equals in the first half but gave away two stupid goals. They battered you for most of the second half and were very unlucky (31 attempts on goal). Continue to play like that and you'll get found out sooner rather than later.
I would have said you two North London rivals were doing super so far....
Really? Fair enough, I thought I might've been stretching things a bit...only ones I could think of were Sheringham and Blanc who are very much in the Michael Owen mould.
can think of the goalie.
Parker would have been a good fit for us until a few of our lads came through.
Parker would have been a good fit for us until a few of our lads came through.
Because he won the award over Nani.
Everyone had a shit fit and started acting like babies.
Arsenal fans are quickly taking over the Liverpool "best (insert position)" talk.
Tiote has performed better over a period of time than Song ever has. Same with Carrick, Parker, the list goes on.
Did a quick search and, amazingly enough, I seem to have had very little to say for myself about Young before we signed him. Bit of a surprise but there you go.
A selection of comments from other caftards (including you!):
You keep on championing lads from the North East, whatever floats your boat. I'd have thought it would make more sense to judge players on their merits as footballers - rather than their postcode - but each to their own.
How else would I do it? Being from up here I take an interest and probably watched Jordan Henderson a little more closely than others for that reason, as well as the fact that he was strongly linked with United.
Incidentally if he gets the same time to prove himself as other players I expect him to do well. He's a young player and has made a wise move in my opinion.
I seem to recall United paid more money for Anderson that Liverpool paid for Henderson and we're still waiting for a decent return four years later. Despite that plenty of fans still appear convinced he'll eventually make the grade.