Herts Clarets wrote:On the 14th June I predicted the following....
He will not report back for pre season training.
He will miss all our pre season friendlies
He may be able to start training after the season starts, so will miss our first few games
He will eventually make a couple of appearances from the bench late Sep/Oct time
He will start a couple of games, be off the pace and be subbed at half time
He will manage one game where he lasts beyond the hour mark and will then pick up a knock
He will be injured over Xmas and New Year
We may get a couple of cameos from him in Feb March which will lead to another injury.
You could add "again" to the end of all the above and it will fit into a number of his previous seasons with us.
That will be the last we will see of him in a Burnley shirt
Many people on here will describe him as the best player they have ever seen in a Burnley shirt
He will sail off to Belgium and retire having pocketed the best part of £8m in wages during his time with us.
Happy to be proved wrong on this one come May 2020 when he has been an ever present in the Premier League, secured a 5th consecutive season in the to flight and enjoyed his farewell performance in the FA Cup final at Wembley.....
As much as you may well be right with some of this, there is no doubt that a player of that quality would be playing in a top 6 team if he didn’t have injury problems. You could also argue that we may have been that top 6 team without him and Brady being injured at the crucial stage of the season where we finished 7th.
You have to take the odd risk to move to the next level and Defour, when fit, proved he could help us do that. It is laughable on here with the people moaning about safe signings all the time are the ones criticising for the odd risk signing. In life you have to risk to progress and this is pretty much what we did.
I have no doubt that the great man would have shown him the door before now if he was as you imply. He has chosen for him to stick around because he knows how good he can be. Nobody else in our squad is capable of the standard of goals he has scored (albeit not enough) and nobody in our midfield makes the game look as easy as he does, which is the sign of a great player.
It could have worked out better with Defour but I suspect many of us would not have memories of Istanbul, Athens or Aberdeen had he never arrived. It’s also a bit rich criticising the wages aspect when just some of those extra places actually paid for them.
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