Saturday 30 January 2010

48 hours left: Mariga linked, Johnson unlikely

Two stories this afternoon. The first is that we are said to be getting closer to a deal to sign Parma's 22 year old Kenyan midfielder McDonald Mariga. Stories on this have been doing the rounds on the internet for the last few days, without anything too concrete to get stuck into. Danny has more of the details, and two of his commenters give us an informed opinion on Mariga's abilities.

I'm not sure we need another destructive midfielder. It wasn't very obvious to me when we signed Patrick Vieira that he was what we needed. But having signed Vieira the idea of signing a player who is, by all accounts, similar to Vieira strikes me as rather needless. Stephen Ireland isn't having a great season but do we want to freeze him out entirely?

On Adam Johnson, he started for Middlesbrough today and played the entirety of their 0-0 home draw with Bristol City.

And if we're going to sign Marco Motta we ought to get on with it.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

I couldn't agree more. The other day at Scuny he took the role with real pride. Apparently he was screaming down the tunnel, "Is everyone here? We don't go out till everyone's here!" ... I like that.

thomas said...

if you think our midfield is strong enough or mobile enough, then i cant agree. Mariga is a player of power and ability, he can pick the ball up and drive it forward, he can win ball.