A Green Claret
Burnley have made their first signing of the January transfer window today with the capture of George Green, a young player looking to make his way back into the game after a difficult time.
I’m sure many expected the first signing of this month to come from a club in West London who we beat just a week ago, but it’s Green who celebrated his 20th birthday earlier this month.
He’s signed until the end of the season and will go into the development squad for whom he hit a hat trick last week in a behind closed doors game at Loughborough University.
He’s an England under-18 international who started his career with his home town club Bradford City but moved to Everton for a big fee when he was aged just 15, but that’s when things went wrong.
His big signing on fee and wages went to his head and he blew thousands very quickly and, in an article in the Guardian last month, he said: “It went straight to my head. You’re earning thousands of pounds a week and you get more leeway than other players. You don’t want to take liberties but I took more than one.
“I wasn’t going into training because I thought I was better than anyone else. Being an idiot. Being an absolute idiot, if I’m honest. I wasn’t turning up sometimes because I wasn’t enjoying it and I thought I could do what I wanted. When I did go in, I was training absolute shite. When you’re playing at that standard you can’t do that. It’s a better game than that.”
He started to suffer badly with depression and he was released by Everton after a loan at Tranmere, at the end of last season. He admitted they did all they could for him but he threw it back in their faces.
He moved to Oldham but had more problems and gave up a £1,000 a week contract to return home and started playing for Ossett Albion where he has impressed enough for Burnley to show interest.
The deal is a short one until the end of the season and he said today that it was a great platform to start from which he hopes will secure a long term future with the Clarets.
He’ll link up with the development squad where he will get the support he needs. It might be considered a risk signing but I don’t see that given the length of the contract. It might just be the case that we’ve got ourselves a very good signing.
Good luck to George with the hope that this is the start to a good career for him.
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