First off, I have to say I actually love the graphic layout of this forum - it looks quite stylish. Anyway...
Newcastle United fan here and I honestly don't know whether to say congratulations or commiserations.
Fact is, you've got a player who, on his day, is absolutely awesome. The key part here is On. His. Day. and unfortunately they are few and far between.
The two major problems are that Sissoko has the heart of a pea and even more concerning, he has an ego the size of Belgium. and true, most players and managers have big ego's - they have to, to believe they are capable of doing that job at the highest level.
Sissoko believes he is a genuinely outstanding player. But while most players of that calibre think, 'Yeah, I'm that good and I'm going to show everyone just how damn good I am', Sissoko thinks, 'Yeah, I'm that good, I know I am so why should I expend that effort to show people. I already know I'm good.'
Now I know some of you will probably think that's sour grapes but its not. Most of us are glad to see the back of him.
And I know that many of you think that he's been crap only because he's had crap managers and to an extent thats true we have had crap managers (
but apparently out of the 90 pro-clubs in England, we're the only one that are deluded to think we're entitled to a manager who doesn't lose most of their games, but that's another story...
) and you do have an excellent one who MAY be able to get Momo to to be the player for you he was in the Euro final, rather than the the player he's been for most of the 3+ years he's been here.
Again, that comes down to ego and managers believing they can be the one to unlock this or that player, and that's fair enough.
But the concerning issue is his attitude, which is lazy and stinks and is governed by his ego. Sissoko only tends to play the way we know he can when he thinks he could get something out of it, such as a possible move to a bigger club and those are the games when he can show what he can do to the biggest audience. Euro's for example and televised games against the top 6 - but only the home games, he doesn't travel well.
Contrast him with Cabaye when he played for us. (opening day strike aside) the difference between the two is Cabaye knuckled down for half that season to produce the sort of performances that got him a move to PSG.
Yeah, we'd have liked to have kept him but he wanted to go, but at least he put an absolute shift in to get himself the move so fair play to him.
And thats the difference. Cabaye wanted a move to a CL club and so felt he had to put the work in to earn it. Sissoko's wanted a move to a CL club on account of him being Sissoko, he thinks he deserves it!
Unlike Cabaye, he rarely put the work in to earn one.
For the first few months with you, as with us,he's likely to be the player you believe he can be, and you'll be thinking "Yay! we've got a cracking player on our hands - watch us storm the league. Stupid Geordies."
But the first setbacks such as crashing out of the CL, a poor team run or being dropped for a time and the bottom lip comes out and first of the intervierws in France start to happen. Tame at first and getting more and more blatant as time goes by. It really won't be long before he's expressing to the French media, his desire to play at the next level.
Again, it's not sour grapes. It can be frustrating when you know what a player is capable of, but...well you've had players yourself you could probably name to me who were like that, and feel free to.
Well Sissoko's that - writ large.
There's an old saying about the ego writing cheques the body can't cash and thats Sissoko to a tee.
Remember what I said about his attitude that he doesn't need to show he's so good, he knows it.
This is basically a bloke who came out and gave Real Madrid permission to buy him this Summer. Very gracious of him!
Another thing to consider, he's been available in all six transfer windows and only moved in this last one. And he has been available to buy for all of them.
Pre-Rafa ALL players were on the transfer list the day we signed them. If the offer was good enough, they'd go regardless - as has been shown in previous windows (last season aside). That's because our policy was to buy for future profit, never to improve the team.
Take the last Winter transfer window for example. We urgently needed forwards and defenders, so what did we do? We went out and bought 3 more midfielders to go with the (almost full team of) midfielders we could already field. Why? Because midfielders can be cheaper to buy and with the possible bigger profit.
Money is Ashley's God, we all know that. Hell, he actually tried to sell Jack Colback on to West Ham just hours after we had signed him!
Which leads me onto the last point. I've noticed on this thread that a few seem to be under the impression that the £30M is payable in 6 installments paid only each payment date that he stays for his contracts duration.
Now the man may be a detestable little shit, but Ashley knows how to get full value on sales.
He would never sign off on such a deal and if Penfold even tried to present such a deal he'd probably end up out of a job.
And where Townsend and Yedlin are concerned, unless there's been a sea-change in policy, those fees would have been paid upfront. That's the way Ashley has preferred to do things since he bought the club.
Anyway, good luck for the rest of the season, You've probably got tired of people saying if Leicester hadn't have had the season they did, they'd have been rooting for you to win the Premier League last season.
ps- I've noticed you've got a feature called the Sin Bin. can you tell me who the Admin of the site is so I can contact them about it? Such a feature might be a useful addition to a forum I'm a Mod of.
