We Are The Reds

Verbeek said in his presser today that we are using our last spot on a Chinese player.

FMD. I’d be very surprised if we make the 6 as there aren’t many decent Australian players available.

There's still a few.

I'm surprised Verbeek isn't livid with this, he seems to want players who play his style and if he's had the last foreign spot taken up out of his control I can't imagine him being happy.

Loved his almost dismissive nature of the questions at times though.

I wonder where the Aussie player fits ?? Jedinak, Juric..... who else ??

Loved his almost dismissive nature of the questions at times though.

I wonder where the Aussie player fits ?? Jedinak, Juric..... who else ??

Meredith is the only other half decent option. Roar and Victory are supposedly in for him.

Verbeek said in his presser today that we are using our last spot on a Chinese player.

FMD. I’d be very surprised if we make the 6 as there aren’t many decent Australian players available.

There's still a few.

I'm surprised Verbeek isn't livid with this, he seems to want players who play his style and if he's had the last foreign spot taken up out of his control I can't imagine him being happy.

He could well be but isn't showing it.

I would begrudgingly accept this if we had a visa spot to spare but we don't. This is piss poor for a club that wants to finish top 3 every season.

If this season goes poorly, then I can see the fans turning on the owners pretty quickly.

Your imports should be best 11..... will this Chinese guy be one ?? I doubt it.

They've done a lot right in this off season but this is potentially a step backward.

Based on the business model of the owners (and football is a business) I don't have too many issues with this. If we get a Chinese player who really fires for us then it's absolutely win-win. We end up with a good sell-on price, the local ethnic Chinese population may get a hero and we benefit from having them around until they get sold on. I very much doubt we'll be signing anyone on a whim. Surely they know that they have to be signing a decent prospect. China (for all it's other huge issues) is football mad and putting a lot of effort into building its player stocks. No-one wants this to fail. But...if it does...it simply opens a spot for one of our youth players to step up. Hopefully they'll structure the contracts wisely and allow for the option of a 'this is not working' departure in there somewhere.

If the signing is of equal standard to someone we'd sign otherwise, then great.
Prioritising marketing potential over football ability would be a poor move IMO (but, obviously, nothing new in the A-League).

The standard of Chinese football has improved greatly, so there is no reason to think this player will be a dud.

The owners are here to make a profit selling players (when thats SA youth we are all for it), so it should be a player with potential.

A 19 y.o Shengqing Qu woukd be nice.

Yes it would.

How bout a 19 year old Al Hassan Toure?

The standard of Chinese football has improved greatly, so there is no reason to think this player will be a dud.

The owners are here to make a profit selling players (when thats SA youth we are all for it), so it should be a player with potential.

A 19 y.o Shengqing Qu woukd be nice.

The kid would be coming from our sister club in the Chinese third division.

There's no way he'd be remotely close to being HAL level. Some of the Chinese players I've seen in the ACL were awful, imagine how bad a third division player would be.

How bout a 19 year old Al Hassan Toure?

Thrilled to see him signed.

Playing Devil's advocate, it is possible that we have already agreed to terms with a Chinese player that the Coach likes and has approved, but they have an agreement not to announce until the Chinese season finishes.
Listening to his response, it was reasonably vague, so this could be a potential outcome - not said with any authority or confidence, but I guess we will see.

Agree the signing of Toure is a massive positive, and for the most part since last season, I've seen more positives than negatives - I hope that continues.

I'll wait and see who we sign from China and how the club use him before passing any judgement.

Toure deserves his deal, and he'll get another start tomorrow night.