Crouch set for Portsmouth

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/philmcnulty/2008/07/crouch_confirms_portsmouths_ri.html

I can tell today’s going to turn into a very good day – though my watching of Top Gear has been impeded a little by iPlayer’s remembering it isn’t supposed to like me and therefore packing up half-way through the latest episode. Crouch signing for Portsmouth is possibly the best football news I’ve heard since we won the FA Cup back in May, and is something I’ve been wishing would happen for about two years. I’ve always been a fan of the robot-emulating 6′7″ beanpole, and to be honest I didn’t really care that he didn’t score for something like the first 24 hours he spent playing in a Liverpool shirt – it just made it all the more likely that he would leave before long. The best bit about him (apart from the sheer incongruity of his surname and his amazing dance-moves) is that no opposition has any idea how to handle him. As my school SCR joked every time we saw him on Match of the Day, it takes two defenders to mark him, one for each end – and he still manages to score some of the best bikeys in the game.

But joking aside, as Phil McNulty helpfully pointed out, buying Crouch is something of a statement of intent by Harry Redknapp. Portsmouth (along with Aston Villa and Sunderland) are one of the up-and-coming clubs of the Premier League, while the likes of Bolton and arguably Blackburn, Newcastle and Man City are in decline – and it’s therefore only fitting that Redknapp tries to reflect the club’s waxing success with ever more daring forays into the transfer market. The days of buying a complete nonentity from a second-division Ugandan team, then turning him into the star newcomer of whatever league he happened to be in are starting to become history – the people we’re aiming for now are the underrated and underused big names of other clubs. While we’re still several seasons away from attracting a Sneijder or an Arshavin, it’s the David Jameses, Sol Campbells and Jermain Defoes of the world, maligned by their fans, sidelined by their coaches, who are slowly filling the spaces up for grabs in our first XI. And as we all know, a player bought by Redknapp for Portsmouth immediately turns into a rejuvenated version of his former self. Yes, even Kanu. Maybe even Nugent and Baros given time. I’m just looking forward to a dream partnership of Crouch and Defoe – a shot at the England squad perhaps, Signor Capello?

~ by Marius Ostrowski on July 7, 2008.