Quote Originally Posted by Niall_Quinn View Post
It's a very, very low bar at the moment. How many players can you name in the PL who are above bog ordinary by yesteryear's standards? Mane, Salah, and who else? Probably a couple of gypos like De Brown and Silva. Hazard's gone. Auba's looking a world-beater in this league, but nobody else wanted him when we snagged him. So if Pepe wasn't statistically superior in this league I'd be severely worried. At 72mill he should at least be as good as the horrifically overrated Sterling. He'll have to do a lot more to make me think there's a worthwhile player in there. Right now I can see he'll give us something every now and again, but that just makes him another passenger and we have more than enough of those. Maybe he'll need the whole season to get himself sorted, maybe he'll emerge next season. But I lost count of the number of seasons I used to say the same for Theo Walcott. Too many similarities. So far. I'm eager to be wrong.
The guy's main attribute is being able to dribble.....Theo's was running into space... so I don't think he is especially comparable to Theo. Also for all Theo's frustrations, his numbers were good when fit. Much better than players we've had in the past with more ability.

As you've suggested, Pepe is on course so there's way too much gnashing of teeth over him.

Sterling has gone off the boil a little recently but questioning whether he was worth 55 million at the time was one of the biggest miscalculations I've ever made about a player. The guy is world class.