responding from the Hex post: You "bet" I had no links. You were, of course, 100% wrong. And none of us know what the actual fee was. As I posted at the time I have no idea, but the 500k lbs was reported. You were wrong about reports linking Edu to Stoke and your rating of Diarra was off as well (tho to be fair, it's hard to know as his knees did him in.) I was definitely wrong as to how much of a shot Pulis would give Edu. As to Ranger's players - it's easy enough to check how they fared. Naismith (despite the ACL), Jelavic , Aluko, McGregor and Davis had a couple of very decent to good EPL seasons. Bartley and Whittaker also got EPL games but were much more spotty. Bartley's still only 25 and doing well at Leeds so far. Dunno if he'll get another EPL shot. The EPL quality keeps climbing with the money and he probably needed to make his mark at Swansea when he had the chance. McCabe, Broadfoot, Kerkar had fairly solid Champs careers. (In Kerkar's case only one season, really) Ortiz bounced between La Liga and the Spanish 2nd. Ness clearly couldn't handle EPL. Goian was past his sell-by date. We know where Edu, Bedoya and Boca ended up. McCullough, Wallace, Little chose to stay at Gers. So, 5 Gers regulars transferred easily into EPL starters, 2 had mixed results, but were very strong Championship players. 3 have had decent Champs seasons since then. Edu and Ness did not cut it at Stoke. A couple of players stayed at Gers, who are back in the SPL. My guess would be that those players put together were higher than Champs quality but we will never know.
"Eh, only one really good PL player in that bunch (Steven Davis). Three or four other decent squad players. Sone Aluko, are you having a laugh? And the defense on those last few Rangers sides (Papac, Weir, Boca, Bougherra, Goian)... Dreadful. They could have had Christiano Ronaldo banging in goals in front of them and it wouldn't have been enough to keep them in the PL. They were basically a decent Championship side. Oh, and I loved this bit. "I was definitely wrong as to how much of a shot Pulis would give Edu." No, you were wrong to think that Edu was good enough for the PL. Pulis gave him a shot, but he showed in training that he wasn't good enough (which is what I'd been saying for years)." Naismith, Jelavic, McGregor also had very good EPL seasons in the two to three years after Gers. Even Aluko had 40+ EPL games in the 2 or 3 seasons following. They would never have been world beater, but I would have liked to have seen that team play with the Sunderlands and Newcastles of the world. Would have been interesting. Pulis did not give Edu much of a shot, but clearly he didn't like what he saw in training, no argument there. I still think Edu would have been a decent EPL DM on the right side (for that time, I think the competition has gotten even more difficult since then), but at this point that I'm probably a minority of 1.
STFU and go crawl in a hole. You had to bring that up!! Forster should have smothered that initial shot but he severely missed played that short hop. Rangers went 10 pts. clear at the top of the table, IIRC, meaning my Bhoys chances were done in mid February. I cursed Edu for weeks and weeks and weeks and I felt no shame!
"Eh, Jelavic and Naismith (2 strikers) combined for 16 goals in 108 PL appearances in their first two seasons after Rangers collapse. Steven Whittaker had 41 PL appearances spread over three seasons for a team that was relegated in two of those seasons. Allan McGregor had 53 PL appearances over two seasons in which Hull finished 16th and 18th (relegated). And those are the "success" stories (along with the admittedly excellent Steven Davis). Count me as not terribly impressed..." Well, of course there is no way of knowing how they would combine, but we weren't talking about them over two or three seasons. We were talking about that 11/12 team. (I don't play these Football Manager games - do they have some way to combine the Gers players stats from their first year out of the SPL to match them against Sunderland or Newcastle or someone?) But if you did look at the Gers players production their first year or so out of the SPL (which would most best correlate to their form while they were in the SPL, which is what we were discussing. As mentioned: If you had the Gers side, you could run out this line-up: Jelavic - striker - scored 9 goals in his 1st 1/2 season, in 10 starts/13 apps. (which would closest match his form when he left Gers.) He went on to score 6 in the 1/2 half of the next season, in 19 starts/apps. So 15 goals in 29 starts/32 apps. Naismith - RM - of course, did not play striker at Everton, but was mostly used as an RM. He had 4 goals, 1 assist in 13 starts, 31 apps. Not world beating, but very solid for a team that placed 6th in the EPL. Davis - CM - as mentioned, was very good, played CM for S'hampton, with 22 starts/32 apps and S'hampton came in 14th. McGregor in nets, spent a year in the SuperLiga his first year out of SPL, so it's hard to make to specific a comp, but they came in 3rd with a +14 GD and McGregor got a transfer to Hull in the EPL where he started 27 games and helped keep them up landing at 17th, making the FA cup finals and going one round in UEFA. Aluko was also at Hull in 13-14 after auto-promoting with the team. He actually started out well enough, a goal and 2 assists in his 1st 8 matches (he started Hull's 1st 8.) He did his achilles and that seemed to knock his game off ballance. Actually, that Hull team is good one to look at, as they ended up with Jelavic and Sone, as well as McGregor. If you look at that Hull line-up, it's hard to argue Davis is not an upgrade over either Huddlestone or Livermore. You're going to argue that Edu or McCullouch would a huge drop off the other one. I'm not convinced regarding Edu, but that's me. I would take Naismith over either El-Moham or Quinn. Neither were particularly special. Would Bedoya have been a huge downgrade on the right over El-Mohamadi? Probably not. Defense, undoubtably, is where the trouble would arise. If Boca were still EPL or upper Champs quality in 11-12, he was starting to lose his quickness, but he was still strong enough in 2012 to go 90 in the US win over Italy and up until he tore his hamstring was going strong for the US. Hard to argue he's clearly better than Davies, but Boca's 11/12 form was not way far off his Fulham form. Goian was definitely on his way out. I can't argue that. He needed to be upgraded. McShane, while not special, was better. Whittaker was no worse, and likely better than Rosenoir - at least until he hurt his hip. Papac and Weir were solid vets, but on last legs. EPL would have been hard for them, even in 11/12. Might have scraped out one last solid season. It's funny, but doing this little exercise, I would like to have seen Gers play this Hull team - I would predict that would have been about the level of the 10/12 or 11/12 Gers. A team hanging onto the bottom of the EPL, but not out of its element against the Wigan's QPR's, Sunderland's, Newcastle's and Reading's of the world.