After the revelations which occurred last week that lead to Wayne Rooney signing a new five-year contract, it seems there was only one incentive that Wayne considered when signing that contract; Money.
This seems to be a regular occurrence throughout football, especially within the lower leagues in which the teams rely on their youth academy due to financial difficulties and the players are pressurised into moves due to the huge wage packet and bonuses that are offered to them.
Being a Crystal Palace fan, I have a great experience of this problem when a young lad named John Bostock thought it would be more beneficial for his career to sign for Premier League Tottenham and scrap it out in the u18’s league than play first team football for a Championship side pushing for promotion, bearing in mind he was still 16.
Now I’m not here to criticise and everyone will have their opinion on such debates, but did John really think he was going to break into the Tottenham team at such a young age when they had other young prospects such as Tom Huddlestone?
John has clearly paid to regret the choice he made back in 2008, with only a handful of appearances in the Tottenham first team under his belt; he had an unsuccessful loan period at Brentford last season, which lead to his talents being questioned by Spurs boss Harry Redknapp.
However, John had a good start at Griffin Park and scored a brace on his debut against Millwall, in which one was from a corner.
John is now on-loan at Championship side Hull and again got off to a great start by scoring a 30-yard screamer on his debut against Swansea.
But since that strike, John has found it hard to get games under his belt in the Championship and has only made a few appearances.
So what has gone wrong for a player who was so highly rated?
Being a similar age to John and with us both being Crystal Palace fans, I couldn’t think of anything better then to represent my beloved team on the Selhurst Park turf, so when I heard that John had decided to move to Tottenham it made be very angry and upset.
To make matters worse and rub salt in the wound, rumours were confirmed true that Palace would only receive £700,000 for a player who would have been worth £5,000,000 at a Premier League team.
It wasn’t the first time that this has happened to Palace, with Wayne Routledge making the same mistake and he has only just got his career back on track, after loan spells at various teams including Portsmouth and Fulham.
Although it may seem bitter, it does please me to see that John has failed to make an impact at Tottenham.
After Neil Warnock showed such faith in handing him a debut against Cardiff at the age of sixteen; what a way to repay them.
It would have done John no harm to stay at Selhurst Park for a couple of seasons and make a name for himself by getting regular starts, which he would have done at Palace with him being highly-regarded alongside Victor Moses.
But everyone makes mistakes and characters are judged by the way they bounce back but it seems that John has wasted an important part of his career by making a move that could have been easily prevented.
Who is to blame; the player, Tottenham or his agent?
Somewhere down the line John was given the wrong information and he has paid the price by making such a move, with the player finding it hard to get starts in the Championship.
My point is that money isn’t always the answer, Wayne.
I have nothing against John and wouldn’t complain if George Burley was to sign him on-loan in January, but surely the laws have to change within the game in order to give these youngsters the right support and information necessary to ensure they make the correct career decisions.
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