An ardent Lucas Piazon fan and an admirer of Technical Director Michael Emenalo’s excellent work at Chelsea, I was elated to hear that the Brazilian attacking midfielder alongside fellow Chelsea loanee Michael Hector joined forces with their Reading teammates to relive the magic of the FA Cup by knocking out West Bromwich Albion Saturday afternoon.
Yep, you read that right; Tony Pulis’ West Brom….
The FA Cup Fifth Round tie, played at Reading’s Madejski stadium revealed one fact that was particularly interesting for me: our future as a footballing institution is bright and safe in Emenalo’s capable hands.
A right hand man, hands, eyes and ears of Roman Abramovich’s, so to speak, the former Nigerian international has come under some sort of fan-driven media scrutiny since the sacking of Jose Mourinho last December following the latter’s disastrous attempt at a title defence. However, his work of recruiting on the cheap for the future and turning around our hitherto moribund academy into one of, if not the best in the world continues to inspire and ensure that his legacy will certainly outlive him and probably Abramovich’s ownership of the English champions.
For those like me who didn’t watch, it would be wrong to put Reading’s KO of the Baggies down to a weakened Premier League team taking their eye off the FA Cup. The West Midlands outfit were at near enough full-strength but soundly beaten by Reading, a well-organised, committed side one victory away from reaching Wembley for the second season in succession.
Behind to Darren Fletcher’s excellent opening goal, they rallied and won the match with something to spare by the end. Goals from Paul McShane, a finalist with Hull in 2014, and Hector, edged Brian McDermott’s boys in front and in added time substitute Piazon confirmed the result with a well-taken finish following good work by Ola John.
I don’t know but as I type this, the words “Hector couldn’t do a Djilobodji no matter how hard he tried” keeps ringing in my head.
Maybe in future the English centre back could turn out as ‘bad’ as the unfortunate Senegalese, who for the purpose of argument represents Emenalo’s rare misjudgment of talent, but in this moment, it is increasingly looking like our estimable Technical Director scored another bulls’ eye to add to his burgeoning glitterati of quality talents wisely scouted and bought on the cheap, not excluding Thibaut Courtois, Cesar Azpilicueta, Kurt Zouma, Willian, Baba Rahman, most of the loan contingent(excluding Mo Salah and Juan Cuadrado who were both Mourinho’s vanity purchases), and the ones sold by, ahem, Mourinho including Juan Mata, David Luiz, Andre Shurrle, Kevin De Bruyne, Romelu Lukaku to name but a few.
Talk about selling “Grade A eggs” and buying dross instead! Hmm….
Anyway, as the Lucas Piazons, the Nathan Akes and the Charlie Musondas – some of the lucky ones who survived a petulant manager’s irresponsible selling spree – continue to pull up trees all over the continent, not to mention the likes of Ruben Loftus-Cheek, Kenedy, Bertrand Traore and Matt Miazga who are already with the first team, there’s little or no gainsaying that our future is as bright as it can be, and safe too in the hands of the man who clearly is the master of his game.
Thank you Emenalo. Thank you Abramovich. We, well, most of us couldn’t thank you enough. We are all following your lead; with our new multi-million pound stadium proposals underway, we appreciate exactly how your foresighted shrewdness in the transfer market is securing our long term future.
CTID. Carefree & KTBFFH!
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