KEITH ANDREWS: The shattering of a quiet window
It might have been a quieter than usual transfer window but, as we’ve come to expect, it still all managed to go a bit berserk in the final hours.
One of the most high profile names to move was Mario Balotelli, a player who had more headlines in his time in with Manchester City than most of the rest of the squad put together – albeit most of the coverage was for his off the field antics.
There’s no doubt he divides opinion but I have to say that, given all the baggage that comes with him, he doesn’t produce enough performances of the kind he showed at the European Championships on a regular basis.
On the one hand, it wouldn’t surprise me to see him settle at Milan, become their main talisman and the player a lot of people feel he can be. But, equally, it wouldn’t come as a shock if we were to see him leave the club within a year or two after causing carnage off the pitch. That’s the thing with him – you never know which Balotelli will show up.
At the Euros last summer I wasn’t quite aware of exactly how well he had done in our game against Italy. After I had been sent off in the final few minutes of the match, I remained in the dressing room and made my way onto the team bus bypassing all the media as I wasn’t really in a talkative mood. So it wasn’t until I was on the coach and heard Shay Given on the phone to someone talking about Balotelli’s goal that I realised the match had finished 2-0!
It takes some story to overshadow Mario but easily the most extraordinary thing I saw on deadline day was the sight of Peter Odemwingie — a player I played with last season at West Brom — turning up at QPR’s stadium and giving an interview live on Sky Sports News that implied a deal was close to being done. But then, within half an hour, West Brom released a statement saying no deal had been agreed and Odemwingie didn’t have permission to speak to QPR.
I’ve never seen anything like this happen before in football or in any other sport for that matter.
When we take a step back and look at his situation now, nobody comes out of it well. QPR didn’t end up with the player they were coveting, West Brom now have a player on their hands who will presumably be very unhappy and a possibly disruptive presence in the dressing room and Peter Odemwingie will, rightly or wrongly, feel aggrieved he didn’t get his move to a relegation fight from a comfortable mid-table position.
And so we have another negative headline about a football player seemingly out of touch with reality and showing no loyalty to a club which I think has been very good to him. On a much more upbeat note, in the Championship, we at Bolton will be the first to admit we have underachieved this season thus far but I have to say that, as frustrated as we have been with our own performances, not many teams have outplayed us. Funnily enough, the one team that did was Cardiff and, ironically, we scraped a win against them.
Of course cup competitions give the lower league teams a chance to take go head to head with the game’s superstars and potentially make a name for themselves.
But for this to happen, the players in the lower league teams need to all play out of their skin and basically hope that the Premier League side have a bad day at the office or just not be up for the occasion.
A lot of people bemoan the fact that some of the top teams don’t play their full-strength sides in these matches and I suppose it comes down to where the competition ranks on their list of priorities.
As a Liverpool fan, I felt the FA Cup was a competition they had a chance of winning, but when you saw Steven Gerard sitting on the bench against Oldham you soon realised that the Premier League, and specifically the following fixture with Arsena, was seen as more important at Anfield.
Finally, I’ll be back in Dublin tomorrow night for the FAI annual awards as I’ve been nominated for Player of the Year alongside Kevin Doyle and James McCarthy. It’s an absolute honour to even be nominated in what has been a fairly tough year all round and, regardless of whether I win or not, I am very proud to have played for my country for a good few years now when, at one stage in my career, I really thought that opportunity had well and truly passed me by.
