@bshredder it may have come up earlier in this thread, but did he ever hold his agent accountable for the screw up in his original move overseas? I mean, his career was basically totally derailed and since accountability seems a prominent topic in the USSF soccer circles, are agents being held to higher expectations by players these days? Like some of the Agudelo moves, where the agent seems to get deals that meet player aspirations but are not realistic. Or do you feel that's more down to players not being practical enough?
I know nothing about Kitchen and Randers, but not sure what was wrong with the Agudelo move. Dude got paid and took over a year off. He didn't have to take that year off and could have paid for anybody who would have him. It isn't like Stoke were going to try and stop him from paying anywhere that might help them recover some of their sunk cost. BS posters almost always fault the agents and not the players. Most of the time the player is not as good as what we thought, that is most of the reason things don't work out..
This is what originally happened : https://www.bigsoccer.com/threads/pe...d-at-randers-fc.2019980/page-38#post-36024755
Agents are not always to blame for how things turn out in the end ... just read my post above ... what seems to be a "done deal" can suddely go down the drain in the last minute, and then you may get stuck with nowhere to go at the very end of a transfer window ...
Randers is possibly the worst move Kitchen could have picked in Denmark ... but they were surely as desperate to get him as he was desperate to leave Scotland ... so I'm pretty sure they were ready to offer him good money and since he originally had aimed for a move to Denmark in the first place, I'm sure Randers would have seemed to be a right choice, both regarding the money and regarding a league which is a step up in Europe in compare with Scotland that frankly has a terrible reputation both regarding developing and exporting talented players. In a larger European perspective, the Danish league is a bit of a "Yo-yo" league that move up and down the rankings, depending on how many talented players it export in a given year, mainly because Denmark in many ways is comparable to the Netherlands regarding developing and selling young talents to the big leagues, but only has a third the population ... if you look at the 5-year league ranking right now Denmark is at a low in 17th place, though with a fairly large gap to the leagues below (including the other Scandinavian leagues and Scotland in 27th place) https://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method5/crank2018.html ... but if you only look at the last 3 years results, the picture suddenly change and the Superliga is now on the way up in 11th place ahead of the Netherlands, this also reflect in U-21 NT results the past few years and the recent WC qualifiers, where the Netherlands have been doing quite poorly in compare with Denmark.... https://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/data/method5/crank2020.html
Yes, he and Viborg seem stuck at the bottom half of the NordicBet League, but they face Nykøbing and Brabrand in their two first games after the winter break, so with a good start this could all change... they are not that far behind the play-off spots that could make them win promotion to the Superliga : https://www.bold.dk/fodbold/danmark/nordicbet-liga/
The worst part is that of the last four games, Fochive has not made the squad in three and only played 24' in the last one. So all things considered Perry is doing a lot better: he's playing 90' in the Superligaen (top level), while George is a rotation guy in the 1st Division (second level). And both are 25 already.
It’s clear that Kitchen wanted to go abroad and his agent found the best deal he could. I’m sure Perry would have liked to go to a better league than Scotland, but what in his club play before or after this move indicates that he’s top five league quality?
My impression is, and has been, that PK turned down a lot of money because he was confident of the Copenhagen deal, which then fell through, and led to his agent scrambling to find any deal (and Scotland). Maybe it's not fair for the agent, but my impression is you either close the "all but done" deal or know that it is not certain and have backup options available. do you feel like Hearts was the best deal out there for Kitchen? Or the best deal that could be put together in two weeks? And let's remember, agents get paid a lot for this service.
Though the question was not for me, but considering the good money he surely must have been offered by FCK in Denmark, then other clubs in Denmark would not have been an option back then ... and neither would any other club in Scandinavia ... there is also the question of the high minimum contract requirement for non-EU players in the Netherlands and since he would hardly be able to get a last-minute offer from a club in one of the top leagues, I suspect that Scotland would be the only place where they offer good money, considering that they otherwise have huge problems attracting foreign players due to the fairly poor reputation of the league ...
The Hearts fans were never on board with the guy. They went the "a Yank can't be good at footballer" route even before Kitchen played for them. I believe there is a sort of synergy thing going on. If the people around you don't believe in you, you have to be very dang brilliant to move forward. Most aren't. Like Perry.
Still, the Scottish league clubs very much struggle developing own talents (as their NT's are also proof of) but are more desperately in need of signing foreign players.. which is why they would be ready to offer him good money .... at the moment Randers suffer a bit of the same problem ...
how much is 475 K in the danish league? Is it a high salary or is it like higher than average? with FCK getting lots of CL or EL appearances, he'd probably have bonuses as well right?
The wage level at FC København is from $475k to around $1 million ... they could obviously go way past that limit, but it's kind of their strategy to have a squad of 19 players of fairly equal NT level all earning from DKK 3 million ($475k) and upto around 1 million Euro ... at most of the other clubs the wage limit is around $350k to $500k, though not counting Rafael van der Vaart at FC midtjylland who is earning around $1.3 million a year, but that also include the part of his wages paid by his former club and a sponsor who is also paying some of it. Midtjylland are only paying him around $600k I believe ... I do not think Brøndby will go much higher than $500k ... the strategy at Nordsjælland is mainly to invest in youth internationals and not go higher than $300k .. AGF Aarhus have a maximum limit saying 5 players of around $500k, the rest probably being in the $150k to $300k range ...
I don't know how much this is true as I don't pay much attention to Hearts, but it seemed to me Kitchen (and hearts) fortunes took a turn for the worse when Cathro came to town. Hearts fans (and perhaps players) seemed never on board with him, that's for sure (and not without reason.) When Kitchen transfered in, he quickly became a lock-starter for the remainder of the 15/16 season, played in 3 of 4 Europ qualiesin 16 (the only one he didn't appear in was Hearts only loss). He appeared in 15 of first 16 games (starting 14) of 16/17 and was made captain before Cathro took over. He also appeared in all 10 of Cathro's first games, starting 9. Oddly enough in the 3 games before he was benched, Hearts beat Gers 4-1, Motherwell 3-0 and tied Inverness 1-1. With him benched, Hearts lost two league games in a row (as well as losing to Hibs in a cup match) before finally getting a win. Later, with Kitchen again a DNP they finished out the season with 4 losses and a tie. Which is not to say fans were behind Kitchen (or not) when he came - I don't know enough Hearts fans to give a good report. But it's pretty clear kitchen's fall from grace came after the managerial change and Cathro was kind of a mess in general. I didn't really watch Kitchen's play closely enough to know if it declined, but Hearts were worse without him on field (results wise) in 16/17.
The fans in the two big Hearts forums didn't like Kitchen as an acquisition, and Robbie Neilson got stick from them for starting Perry. Much worse once Perry got named captain.
What kind of belief are we talking about? Belief as in being made club captain within your first two months in the country? Fan feelings on an internet message board don't matter in that specific context.
From what I remember they loved him when he was made captain. Then Perry had a couple of bad games shortly after being named captain, and fan opinion of him took a dive and never recovered.