This very embarrassing Newcastle United transfer thread has to stop
It is nothing new for Newcastle United to be linked with buying a player, whatever day of the year it is.
Obviously it has slightly more credibility when something appears during an actual transfer window, although as this January showed, there is never a guarantee of Mike Ashley buying anybody even when the manager is desperate for players.
Despite no buys in January, it hasn’t prevented business as normal throughout February.
Newspapers claiming Newcastle are set to bid/sign a whole series of players, even though we are in the middle of a relegation fight, plus no certainty as to who will manage or even own Newcastle United once the summer transfer window arrives.
With newspaper sales falling through the floor and increasing reliance put on online clicks, any kind of quality control has long left the building.
Every transfer story is pretty much treated the same, gobbled up and just a case of repeating what the ‘original’ story said, with pretty much no examination of how credible that ‘source’ is.
Neither is there even much of an examination, if any, of whether even the player is any good…
Which brings me to Garry Rodrigues.
Not a day goes by without an ‘update’ and it is doing my head in.
There have been any number of claims (retrospectively) that Newcastle have put bids in for the player, all kinds of amounts mentioned up to £10m.
Then the player himself allegedly claims he wouldn’t be sold for less than £15m (or was that euros…it doesn’t really matter to the newspapers anyway, they’d just repeat either.
Newcastle have sent scouts to watch Garry Rodrigues in this game and that.
Contact has been made with Galatasaray by the Magpies for the player.
His agent has met whoever.
The player wants the move and so on.
So, who exactly is Garry Rodrigues?
Well, I’m guessing you haven’t got a clue what he looks like, what he plays likes, and what exactly he has or hasn’t done in his past career.
Funny that none of this is ever bothered to be mentioned in these newspaper reports/exclusives.
One thing to note as well, pretty much every single one of the exclusives/updates comes from the Turkish media, who make The Sun look like a respected source.
Garry Rodrigues
He is a winger who was born in Holland and turns 28 (his age and the fact you had never heard of him before should already have the warning bells ringing) later this year.
He never made it as a young player and was getting on for 22 when eventually signed from amateur football by ADO Den Haag.
Not selected to start a single game in the Dutch top tier, the winger was loaned out to Dordrecht in the second tier.
Having not made it in Holland, Garry Rodrigues then dropped several levels when going to play domestic football in Bulgaria, moving for £250,000 to Levski Sofia (where Gabriel Obertan now is).
A couple of decent seasons at that level, then saw La Liga minnows Elche take a £500,000 punt on him in January 2014.
After only making 21 La Liga starts and struggling, Elche then gave Rodrigues a free transfer in 2015 and he ended up in Greece with PAOK.
At this very low level, Garry Rodrigues held his own and caught the eye of Galatasaray, who paid £3m for him in January 2017.
The Turkish league is better than the Greek one but still not great, despite that, the winger only made five starts in the second half of last season, scoring one goal.
This season he has done quite well, starting 18 league matches and coming off the bench in another four, scoring five goals.
However, if any of the newspapers running the stories had actually bothered analysing Garry Rodrigues, there is absolutely nothing in his career/profile that would suggest he could in any way be of use in the Premier League. Far less be worth anything like £15m.
Not good enough in Holland or Spain and having an ok few seasons in Bulgarian, Greek and Turkish league football, isn’t a great clue as to somebody who turns 28 this year, going to be heading to Newcastle any time soon.
At international level, Garry Rodrigues ‘chose’ to represent the Cape Verde Islands rather than Holland and even then he struggled to get a game, only becoming a fairly regular starter recently.
That then, is the story of Garry Rodrigues, and I will happily buy you all a pint when Rafa buys him this summer as the key player in his rebuilding programme…
[get_involved]
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