I think Russ is referring to Djed Spence
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I thought Djed tore his ACL?
Chicago: Following in bits and pieces.
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Great contract. It's professional football. Not football professional.
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Yes, but at 22 you would hope to sign something like 3 or 4 major contracts at the top of your powers. The first one he is doing well on, but current career projection is not trending well for the second. Had he signed for us he'd still be making a lot of coin, probably not quite as much as he is at Spurs but he would stand a much stronger chance of being a starting player in the Premier League.
I can't blame him for taking the best deal on offer today versus what he might get tomorrow, but with the benefit of hindsight it was demonstrably a poor choice.
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Was Warnock, in fact, right about Djed? Bags of talent but couldn’t tell where he would end up based on his attitude…
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No. It was the best contract on offer, so it was the best choice.
One twist wrong in training ,and it's all over. The club dumps you as soon as, and nobody gives a second thought about you. You are left to pick up the pieces at the bottom of a bottle, and a bet365 account takes what's left.
Your status as a professional footballer is all about how you are paid. You take the best contract on offer, then you take it from there.
You can make a 'better' choice, and the manager who fancied you gets sacked, you get frozen out, and it's all over. You can't fuck with the numbers though. Ask Harry Arter.
Nope. Djed has proven that he can deliver, if handled by the right coach.
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You need to understand how money works.
If you owe the bank 10,000 quid, you are a debtor, and they will pursue you relentlessly for that money. If you owe the bank 100 million quid, you are a partner with the bank, and they will work with you to realise as much of the debt as they can. Unless you have 100 million in assets, then they will just take the easy wipe their face. But if you don't, they will work with you to maximise what they can get back.
If you are on a nothing contract with a club, and there's a bump in the road, they will pick the next one off the rank. If they have a significant investment in you, they will work with you to improve your asset base, or work with you to find another good contract and minimise their loss on you.
When the opportunity comes to step up a level, you take that chance to be a partner. For every one that gets that chance, a thousand more equally meritorious don't get that chance. If you don't take it, it might not come around again. There are too many variables that can get in the way.
Imagine Died didn't take that chance. He goes back to his parent club. The manager doesn't fancy him. You never hear of him again. The end. He's poor forever.
You are just not thinking logically. You are thinking football first. That's not how it works.
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Even by your high standards that was impressively patronising.
Were it a choice between getting three grand a week at League One Forest or thirty grand a week at Premier League Spurs then sure, but I don't imagine we'd have offered him that much less - obviously Spurs have massively deeper pockets than us, but an unproven squad player with no experience at the level that the manager doesn't really want probably doesn't make a lot more than being a key starter at Forest where his talent is well known.
Obviously we were none of us privy to the conversations that happened, but my recollection is that we didn't even bother trying to sign him because he'd already been told that Spurs were interested and he really wanted to go back to London. So it's not really a case of him taking the biggest contract that was on offer when he'd already decided where he wanted to sign without actually comparing contracts.
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The best contract is not necessarily the one with the biggest numbers, and it’s quite the thing to have someone be so patronising and emphatic about things when they are so obviously wrong on that very basic point.
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Were we in a position, or likely, to offer a contract to him equivalent to what spurs did?
It's like the lunatic 'wanting to go back to France'. At six grand a week of course he did. At sixty grand a week, not so much.
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As I said.... probably. All the indications at the time were that he'd already made it clear he wanted to go home to London, and that it wasn't a financial debate.
Ironically he's now stuck in Yorkshire.
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That wasn’t the point I was making. It was more about his attitude to career development/contracts etc.
I thinks it’s reasonable to compare and contrast with Brennan who had been the subject of premier league offers for some time but held his nerve and played for us for a season and has ended up in a great situation. Level-headed and advised well. Djed had one brilliant season with us, already had a reputation for needing to be “handled properly”, and went to work for Conte who is definitely not the right coach for someone like that and, in fact, only played him for about five minutes. He's now back in a position where he needs to prove himself rather than with a setup where he could flourish I’d argue that he wasn’t well advised and had his head turned.
(Caveat: it’s difficult to speculate on how he would have been in a struggling side which was leaking goals but at least he would have been playing).
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Having not seen the Leeds game last night, it would be interesting to understand how Djed performed. Was it the case that he was being played out of his best position or did he just look off the pace generally?
Aware he's coming back after quite a lengthy injury lay-off, too.
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I notice he was playing left-back strangely.
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They've got a young lad from their Academy playing RB who has apparently been a revelation, although I think he's a midfielder by trade. I'm not sure if Djed was playing LB because they were trying to find a way to get him out there, or if they didn't have anyone else available, but he didn't look great. None of the marauding runs we're used to, although that could be a function of him just returning from a long injury lay off, or of Farke's preferred style of play.
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Member of the Gray dynasty, no less.
