A couple of years ago, there were loads of posters on here desperate for us to get hold of Barkley now it seems most would treat it with disappointment. It says two things to me
1) He hasn't fulfilled his potential
2) We are oh so easily seduced by those fancy names from abroad who we see mostly in highlights packages but have never head of. I my self and me for example have not seen much more then maybe 5 games of Bakyayoko. .
I for one am quite excited about this signing, the fact is the potential was there in the first place, but lets face it he's a big fish in a small pound and there isn't room to grow. He needs to be around better players with the pressure to be on his game week in week out.
Lets try this on for a moment. We get in our Tardis (all the contributes to this thread, its bigger on the inside) and we transport the forum back in time to 2001. Everyone get's a memory wipe, you can't see the future. But you have magically and mystically got access to this forum (it's a time lord thing, best not to ask to many questions about it) We have been reading headlines for months linking us with giovanni van bronckhorst - pretty exciting, this is the player that might finally help us break in to that top 4!! The all of a sudden we get a text from out mate:
Chelsea have signed Frank Lamapard from West ham for 11 million pound...
huh? Lampard? Can't be right? do you mean Joe cole? nope, lampard
Surly you mean Carrick...
No lampard...
We race home after work, wind up that 56K modem and listen to the beep bbaaa booopp and then finally that great sound that indicates on this occasion you will get to use the internet. We load skysports new... sit and wait, sit and wait, sit and wait... finally the screen resolves and there it is bright as anything Frank Lamaprd 11 million...
Don't know about you guys but i remember a distinct feeling of disappointment, sure lamps was steady enough but he wasn't anything special, he wasn't going to take us to the next level.
Now be really honest with you're self... you have the forum in front of you, the news has just broken.... what do you post? my guess is its probably at least as bad as many of the posts here, maybe worse.
I would say Barkley actually looks better then Lamps when he arrived. And yes one does not grantee the other, it's much harder now to break in to our team and we are operating on another level. But let's not forget, frank had a huge hand it taking us to that level and he is arguably our greatest ever player... no one would have seen that coming when we all trashed him n the Theshedend forum (that didn't exist) in 2001....