Boro are interested in MK Dons young left back Sorinolo. Neil Maddison made the trip down to their stadium to watch him play against Peterborough last night. He has been getting rave reviews for his performances and is one to watch .
OFB
Sorinola, a 19-year-old left-back, has been impressing for the League One side this season, with 16 appearances in total and he was voted the Dons' Player of the Month for September.
There seems a strong desire to sign Bolasie on loan. Don’t know why , he’s not done anything of note in the last 2-3 seasons and more importantly hasn’t played a competitive game for the best part of 12 months and so it would take a few weeks to get him up to speed etc.
It seems to me he’s one of those players quite happy to enjoy a lucrative premiership salary whereas he could have secured a new club on loan and played for his money. If he really wanted to play for the Boro he would have made sure the loan deal went through last time.
Compare him to Watmore who couldn’t wait to resume playing and get his career back on track.
Philip of Huddersfield
@philip-of-huddersfield I don’t think NW would look to sign a dud. He maybe knows more about Bolasie than we do as fans.
jarkko
Do you know anything about this striker Boro are supposed to be looking at ?
OFB
@original-fat-bob I'm not overly impressed with Kasper Junker. he looks to be a one season wonder, "He only scored 10 goals in seven seasons in the Danish Superliga". Sounds like his agent is doing a good job in touting him around.
@redcarred. I agree his record, one season apart, is lack lustre to say the least.
Reminds me of Marvin Emnes who had one good season with us under Tony Mowbray but didn't do much the other seasons he was with us.
Whilst I appreciate NW's eye for a player, he doesn't always get is right. Take PR as an example, he wanted him back this season and now there is talk of the loan deal being rescinded and PR going back to city.
The talk of Bolasie underwhelms me given his lack of game time in recent seasons; that being said I think NW gets more right than wrong so its a case of watch this space. 😎
@stircrazy. Scottish Premiership, oooooh no the nightmares start again.
Barry Robson apart, the rest couldn't hack it in the Championship.
It's a big no no for me based on previous experience. There again, with NW in charge you never know what he might get out of them given what he has achieved with Bola, Dijksteel et al. 😎
jarkko
Do you know anything about this striker Boro are supposed to be looking at ?
OFB
No, I don't. I wonder why he is playing in Norway as the Danish league is better. There is money in Norway, but for example there were a few Finnish players in Danmark recently, and Finland qualified to a major tournament in European Championships for the first time ever.
Also Pukki played on Danmark before joining Norwich. But then I would not have expected him to shine at Norwich as did. Pukki was about same age before joining Norwich as this Danish chap is now. So you never know.
Up the Boro!
@redcarred. I agree his record, one season apart, is lack lustre to say the least.
Reminds me of Marvin Emnes who had one good season with us under Tony Mowbray but didn't do much the other seasons he was with us.
Whilst I appreciate NW's eye for a player, he doesn't always get is right. Take PR as an example, he wanted him back this season and now there is talk of the loan deal being rescinded and PR going back to city.
The talk of Bolasie underwhelms me given his lack of game time in recent seasons; that being said I think NW gets more right than wrong so its a case of watch this space. 😎
I suspect that the Roberts deal was pre agreed during Woodgate's era and sanctioned once Man City finalised their Squad for the season.
Not having had much time with the lad I guess that NW went along with the deal especially as his squad for this season was/is bereft of numbers. Clearly having had more time to spend with him on the training ground as he has with others like Bola and Dijksteel and even Fry, McNair and Saville he just can't get a tune out of him.
I see that NW has made an appearance in David Squire’s column this week.
The Teesside Live is reporting that Ex-Middlesbrough man Ravel Morrison is a free agent again, lasting just four months at latest club. The once-promising career of Ravel Morrison has hit yet another brick wall as his contract with Eredivisie side ADO Den Haag was terminated after just four months.
I am not suggesting he should re-join Boro, but wWarnock could be best treatment for Ravel.
But we have already Roberts who is not functioning properly under Warnock. So Ravel won't be a short term project.
The Dutch side were his 11th club since leaving Manchester United, with Morrison still only 27.
Up the Boro!
@jarkko. Your last paragraph says it all. We have tried and failed so no going back thank you. 😎
I was watching Spurs v Fulham and noticed that Mitrovic wasn’t even on the bench. Does anyone know what his situation is. He killed it in the Championship but maybe can’t make it it at the higher level. Would he work for us?
utb
I think he'd be ideal for Warnock but his fee and wages would be out of the question for us I would imagine.
Speculation on the web but a quick google suggests he's on something like £60k/week whilst I can't imagine Fulham letting him go out on loan or accepting anything less than £15-20m for him.
Might be worth taking a look at the Derby squad during this window. Apparently they are struggling to pay the wages this month and the proposed takeover is taking its time.
It's beginning to look like Mel has maybe nothing left to flog except the playing staff. I would also guess that the incoming Sheik's know that things are not in great shape at DCFC so the longer they drag it out the better the terms will be for themselves as the current owner sweats.
After many disapointments with Scottish players, and none who could be described as great buys, I would rather avoid that market. We have in the past gone up there and bulk bought a whole group of players. The word disaster springs to mind.
I think the main problem with the Scottish influx was mostly the balance of the team and the effect it had on the players already with us rather than the quality of the individuals.
Robson, McManus, McDonald etc weren’t bad players at all (we’ll never know about Thompson) but the Strachan’s team of “men” were so one-paced as a group and lacking in dynamism. You need 2/3/4 of that type through the spine but many more than that and the team becomes stodgy and immobile. Boyd was a classic example: had he been surrounded with pace and energy to make up for his own deficiencies in that area I dare say he could have got a few goals for us but McDonald, Bailey, Robson etc didn’t have that to balance the team.
Coupled with the hugely negative effect the number of signings in a short period made, as well as the damning show of no confidence it gave to the existing squad, it made for a truly awful balance and dreadful team.
There’s probably some truth in the view that the Scottish players weren’t used to the consistent level of opposition they found in the Championship but as I say, one or two of them could handle it - certainly Barry Robson (when he wasn’t losing his cool).
McDonald draws reasonable parallels with Britt: both got a few goals for us but the value for money made them poor signings overall.
The lesson from all of this was that you should never buy a player based solely on his ability as an individual - the most important thing is how he fits into the squad and complements his teammates - and also too many signings at once rarely works.
We then pretty much did the same thing again with Garry Monk.
@andy-r I pretty much agree with all that. For me Robson was a success, just a shame he wasn't a few years younger at the time. McDonald was a strange one. I think he was better than what we saw while he was here but he wasn't played to his strengths. Throw in that after Strachan had left he and Mogga hadn't seen eye to eye previously supposedly up in Glasgow and it didn't help. At Boro, Mogga was playing his split striker thing with McDonald playing out wide and he was ineffective out there. It may be that he was disillusioned more than ineffective but whatever the reason it all ended messily for the Club and the Player.
Yes, well said. Strachan and Monk made too many changes during one tranfer window. As did AK when we were promoted. Was it 14 new players that summer? Or twelve - anyway three times more than clever.
Do we never learn? Up the Boro!
@andy-r I’m still in Contact with Scott McDonald and he’s promised to tell us his side of the story.
He is enjoying himself back in Australia and looks happy with his family.
Sometimes we often forget football after all is only a game!
Bit I wouldn’t have argued with Bill Shankly about that !
OFB
The stories I heard at the time was there was two distinctive camps within the club. The Scots (Australian also) and the rest. Both camps kept separately socially and training wise in the gym and five a side matches.
it didn’t help with team building and it showed on the pitch
OFB
Whenever a manager recruits players from a limited geographic area it sends red lights flashing for me.
Of course it can be truthfully said that this is an area that the manager may know particularly well and in which he has specific experience and expertise.
Indeed that is always the explanation of the official press releases faithfully reproduced by the media.
What it may more accurately reflect is what is always hidden from the public: the close (and mutually beneficial) relationship which can exist between a manager and a particular agent.
We know how close Karanka and his own agent,Jorge Mendes, were. Indeed I flagged this up as an area of particular concern on Untypical Boro before Karanka was appointed.
But has anyone ever looked closely at the role of agents in the Scottish deals? Were the deals done through a single or multiple agents? It would help transparency if such details were in the public domain.
We all know the history of corruption, bungs, back-handers, cash in brown envelopes, dodgy deals at motorway service stations etc etc which have been such a feature of the game in the past.
Given the hundreds of millions of pounds sloshing around in the game today, is there anyone who thinks that such mutual back-scratching is a thing of the past?
What alerted me to these trends and tendencies was a curious case which occurred in the 1980s.
I was living in Nottingham at the time and supporting Forest as my second team, because Cloughie had been my boyhood hero.
Out of the blue Forest signed a couple of players from Iceland, of all places.
Surreal rumours started to circulate around town, spread by some of the Forest players themselves, and eventually getting into the national press, that Ronnie Fenton, Clough's deputy, had gone over to Hull to pick up a huge bundle of cash from an Icelandic trawler.
The links between Clough and an Icelandic agent were subsequently revealed by Tom Bower in his book about football corruption.
What can be said is that recruiting multiple players from a single source rarely works out well. As in the case of both Strachan and Karanka it can all too easily descend into disunity, disharmony and cliques, as Bob suggests.
Th Tom Bower Book is Broken Dreams published in 2003.
Not one of our targets but very reminiscent of Bamford's time with Chelsea. I seem to recall that the previous long serving record holder was a Goalkeeper of theirs who hadn't played or had just made a handful of cup appearances in over a decade.
It highlights everything that is wrong with the current game. Not dissimilar to the effect these Monster Trawlers are having in devouring stocks in the North Sea.