Sandro Interview

[nicdic]

Redknapp got lucky here, as I doubt he would have featured if it were not for the horrendous injury list that lead to his inclusion for Milan.

I worry that Redknapp and all his yes men watched Sandro in training for nearly 6 months before having to be default playing him in Milan. What hope is there for any other promising youngsters when your manager is more than happy to sign Phil Neville ahead of giving you the opportunity.

I'm sorry, but are you seriously claiming that you thought he should playing in the starting 11 after his first few appearances in the league? He struggled to settle in, and sure he came in because of injury but that was because we had players ahead of him playing better.

Also Neville has been playing right back this season, and I can't see that we would have bought him in to play in any other position than there.

Sandro came via our link up with Santos and was on our radar before Redknapp took the reins. I think there's good evidence that Harry only likes to sign players he's watched with his own eyes, we also know he's a gut instinct kind of guy.

For that reason Harry will always be after Premier League players or European players who he can catch a quick flight to go and see.

Harry also likes the veterans, he's made a career out of recycling big team's cast-offs in the latter stages of their careers. In fact he takes great pride in that aspect of his talent spotting.

On the plus side he's pretty good at it.

On the negative side, we won't be going for players that play in the far off leagues, we won't go for players that come from outside Harry's chain of command. He won't play players that come from outside the chain unless forced to. We will go for a lot of 30 somethings, we will pay over the odds (Keane, Defoe, Palacios) and we will have to wait for injuries in order for Harry to give some of our squad a go.

Sandro came in because Ian Broomfield recommended him, and our partnership with Internacional, not Santos, most definitely helped. We would not have bought him if Harry didn't think he was good enough.

Secondly, whilst Harry has bought older and experienced players, he has also been known throughout his career for giving youth a chance. At West Ham he gave loads of young players a chance, and he has done the same every where else. He's not just going to chuck in young players that aren't ready. If there is a better more experienced player he'd be a fool not to play him.

It's very easy in hindsight to say he should have played Sandro all season, or Bale should have had more games before Assou-Ekotto got injured last season, but really, none of us would have picked either of them, because they hadn't deserved it.

 

[sloth]

I'm sorry, but are you seriously claiming that you thought he should playing in the starting 11 after his first few appearances in the league? He struggled to settle in, and sure he came in because of injury but that was because we had players ahead of him playing better.

He made a mistake in the Bolton game, apart from that he was decent. Dawson made several mistakes as bad on his return to the team, Palacios also regularly did the same. Players like Sandro need to be introduced slowly, but Redknapp did not give him a chance after his Bolton error and would not have played him at all, but that he was forced to.

Sandro came in because Ian Broomfield recommended him, and our partnership with Internacional, not Santos, most definitely helped. We would not have bought him if Harry didn't think he was good enough.

Harry had the veto for sure, but why waste political capital vetoing a player the Chairman wants, there are more subtle ways of showing the chairman who's boss. Methods Harry's employed through his career.

Secondly, whilst Harry has bought older and experienced players, he has also been known throughout his career for giving youth a chance. At West Ham he gave loads of young players a chance, and he has done the same every where else. He's not just going to chuck in young players that aren't ready. If there is a better more experienced player he'd be a fool not to play him.

Harry plays his favourites, nothing wrong with that, it's what he's employed to do. Every manager should play his favourite players, just so long as they're favourites because they're the best and not because by playing them they make you look good and others bad.

It's very easy in hindsight to say he should have played Sandro all season, or Bale should have had more games before Assou-Ekotto got injured last season, but really, none of us would have picked either of them, because they hadn't deserved it.

Nobody's saying that he should have just walked into the first team, I perceive a lack of even-handedness in the tolerance Redknapp shows some players compared to others. Some he'll give every opportunity to others he's much harsher with. I'd like him to treat the all the same, based on ability and not because Harry's making a point to the Chairman or whoever.

 

[TheVoiceofReason]

 

[Krafty]

Either by luck or good judgement, we have handled Sandro perfectly well, save for one thing (which I will explain later).

Sandro put in a lot of work before he moved to be in the right shape. He worked hard to learn the language and saw a psychiatrist to help deal with the change in culture and move away from friends and family. Our interest began under Harry's reign, after the South American U20 championship where he was captained. Broomfield went on several visits to check on him, we made our original bid in summer 2009, then made the tie in with Inter, then finally agreed terms.

He's played football constantly for about 18 months before he joined us, including two U20 championships (one SA one World), and the libertadores run with Inter, nevermind the ridiculously congest Brazilian football calendar.

We didnt chuck him in the deep end, let him get settled, blend with his teammates and the style of football. The only blip was that Bolton game, which I think he shouldnt have been selected for (we had sunderland at home on the tuesday, and I'd rather we had played him and players like Kranjcar at home rather than in a difficult away game).

Since then he has slowly been eased in, allowed time to go back to Brazil, and now the team is getting used to the 4-5-1 system he is coming into his own.

He looks a top player.

 

[stemark44]

MOTM for me again today.
What an engine and determination this lad has,never gives up and gives everything on the field.

 

[stemark44]

If Ronaldo doesn't play we should get Sandro to man mark Ozil on Tuesday night,he is the biggest threat to our chances.

 

[Kendall]

Who actually scouted Sandro before/after our link-up with Internacional? I can't really remember but was it anything to do with Comolli?

I'm inclined to agree with the above posts - Redknapp is a good squad manager and great at getting the best out of players other people think are past it, but he's certainly not out there looking at the next generation of talent.

I hope we have a good scouting network to make up for this deficiency - Harry won't be around for long, and we need to maintain that impressive squad strength we have at the moment, by streamlining the number of first-team professionals slightly (we can afford to lose one each of defender, midfield and forwards) and introducing some younger talent to begin to compete.

Caulker is the obvious choice for 5th/6th CB, I'm not sure when it comes to midfield - we'll need to see more of our loanees, and we could do with buying a young striker if we can find a decent one.

Sandro has done brilliantly but being as Redknapp clearly knew next to nothing about him, we need other people at the club whose job it is to worry about this stuff.

Redknapp hopes the club's chief scout, Ian Broomfield, has done the right thing by bringing Sandro in but his anxiety was calmed when former Brazil coach Dunga spoke highly of the player.

"We'll find out a lot about him from this game - and whether my chief scout has still got a job on Wednesday morning!" Redknapp quipped.

"I couldn't get to see him as it was during the season. I couldn't get to Brazil with us being in the situation last year where we were trying to finish in the top four.

"So [my chief scout] Ian went over and spent three or four weeks over there.

"When we watched some video before Ian went. We had loads of videos of Sandro and we thought he was worth Ian going out there because he had been recommended to us.

"We spoke to people in Brazil, we spoke to Dunga and they all came back to us saying: 'You've got a real good one there'. So we sent Ian over there and the first we saw of him was when he came over.

"I think Ian had three or four weeks out there and he saw him four times and he had no doubts. He raved about him."

 

[bryanabutler]

Harry should send Ian Bromfield back to Brazil to watch ,Sandro ex team mate Leandro Damiao in a few games