- Aug 29, 2012
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A big concern I have with NDombele, is that his transfer is badly tinged with what I dub "the GKN factor."
When we signed GKN, though I'd never seen him play, I was extremely confident that he wouldn't make the grade with us. Logic dictated that he was going to be a flop and I was surprised that Levy, a man with a 1st Class honours degree from Cambridge, didn't over rule our scouts and sanctioned the deal.
Other than Brazil, France exports more footballers than any other country in the world. Ligue 1 is by far the most scouted league in Europe. It is therefore a reasonable bet that Marseilles and Lyon (why bother with PSG?) are going to be the most scouted teams in Europe. It's also a very likely, that along with the Dutch, the French U21 team will be the most scouted European international team. I don't have any definitive proof of that, but I think it's fair to say no one would bet against it and that it's very likely to be true and if not, certain to be be very close to true.
So, GKN was a French U21 international, playing for Marseilles and therefore would have been scouted numerous times, by every top level club in Europe. Though not well known to the football viewing public, it's fair to say GKN would have been one of the most watched players in Europe. Yet somehow, he was available to us for £5 million. Surely when our scouts, or player buying committee, approached Levy, alarm bells should have started ringing. Martial, Dembele and Conman wouldn't have been available for such a low fee with seemingly no competition for his signature. Obviously a business owner needs to have faith in his employees and let them do their job. But at the same time Levy would surely have been wondering why Marseilles, having worked with daily, had decided to let him go for such a low fee? Why weren't the scouts of Madrid, Man Utd, Dortmund etc etc telling their clubs to buy and forcing the price up, as we see with French U21 internationals all the time? It's just the way markets work. The market signals, were telling Levy not to buy him. Levy is almost certainly an Austrian School economist and he committed the cardinal sin of ignoring what the market was telling him in favour of human interference (Keynesian madness!) The season before we ended up with N'jie. How often do you get top quality wingers from Lyon on the cheap? GKN had way more red flags than N'jie.
So back to NDombele. We can all see he's got brilliance in him. We've all seem his games against City and various other full match highlights videos, where he just looks top class. Yet somehow, PSG, Barca, Mardid, City etc didn't blow us out of the water when the bidding started. It's not like a Lloris situation, when there are only so many spots for GK's in European football, due to only 1 starts, they rarely come on as subs and they are rarely rotated. A club of our stature will always be able to attract quality in the GK position, as the number 1 spot at big clubs rarely becomes available. But CM is different. Every top club can have 4 or 5 top quality CM's in their ranks. When a seemingly special talent becomes available, having played in a league known for producing elite league talent, whether they are desperate for a CM or not, there should be no shortage of takers.
So basically, this all leads me to believe, that NDembele's troubles adapting haven't come as the slightest shock to the European giants, who you'd have thought we have been hugely attracted to a talent like him. I suspect they all decided to pass due to the fitness and attitude issues that have been discussed in his time with us. When you look at him on YT, it's almost too good to be true that we'd get a pretty much free run at him and tie the deal up reasonably early in the transfer window. It's not like he was playing in Holland or Eastern Europe, when it's common for the big clubs to be more hesitant. How often does a top class, young player, come from one of the biggest French clubs and not go straight to one of the richest clubs? Of course bargains can be picked up in France, as they can Holland, Belgium and Serbia etc etc. But you've got to be a tad suspicious when a player as obviously talented as NDombele, playing in CM for Lyon, gets passed on by the giants of European football.
Obviously we need to take gambles, as otherwise there is no way to compete with the biggest, richest clubs. But I think the lesson here, is to gamble on players from lesser leagues, rather than gamble big money on players from a league and club, we know traditionally produces for Europe's elite.
Of course, I'm not saying NDombele won't turn things around and that our gamble wont pay off, but even so, I think we have to learn a lesson from this, as we aren't a club that can gamble with such huge fees. We've done our best gambling on players from the lower leagues and smaller European competitions. Modric, Bale, Ali, Verts and so on. I feel we are more likely to find good deals looking in those areas. I'm not convinced that shopping at the big French clubs is a good strategy for us.
for every n'jie there's a dele though, so im not fussed on taking punts for 5 million. its the 50m weve spent on a player who seemingly cant be arsed.