Louis Saha and life in the prem.

[billyho96]

I don't know about you, but the Saha story seems wrong. I realize that in theory we could pull a ManUre and buy someone out from under an opponents nose, but I would hope this could be avoided.

Essentially (Kewell did this too) a player finds out a big club wants to buy him, and says F### off to his club (who supported him when he was crap) and says "Sell me or I quit."

To pull that "I'm leaving for free if you don't sell me now" is so cowardly. I frankly don't understand why a club would want a player who quits on his team. Not to mention the fact that pulling this stunt drives your price down and hurts your team more.

Fulham had a chance at Europe next year, and they really looked down today. Its just a moral crusher, when your best player quits and I mean QUITS on you.

I know its just part of the game, but when players essentially threaten to kick the ball into their own net it smack of poor sportsmanship. One thing I always admired about European football was that winning with honor seemed important, I guess I was wrong.

[Boro_lad]

well chris coleman managed tosqueeze 12 million out of a player who last year was a no hoper.....

he has 1 good half season and man u buy him, i think they have bought another crap player imo.

just a flash in the pan

[jwaldman11]

Much as I hate the guy, Bobby Clarke probably dealt with this the best way with Eric Lindros: he basically told him "if you don't wanna play here, you can sit and rot". And that's what he did. Lindros was out over a year before he got traded, and the Flyers probably benefitted more than the Rangers have. Not to get to NHL on this one!

[onefineesq]

Yeah, the Saha thing is a joke. I find it to be despicable what he did. To let down your teammates by giving up, and then announcing to all the world that your poor performance might not be accidental and may continue if you are not sold. That is certainly cowardly, and I wouldn't buy a player who would ever think that is an acceptable way to vent their frustration. But alas, I'm not a general manager. It's worse than what happened to Lindros, because Lindros had a longstanding feud with management because of his perceived treatment by management when he had his injury problems. In this case, Saha got NOTHING BUT LOVE from Fulham, and then wanted to jump ship as soon as almighty ManU showed interest. What I found particularly humorous was when Saha said a week ago that it has been his "dream for the last 3 weeks" to be with ManU. In other words, it became his dream only when the offer hit the table. Laughable, indeed.