As the debate continues as to where the A-League is headed and whether the club owners can steer it to success a recent signing showcased another reason why fans are not being engaged.
Call it naivety, call it stupidity, or call it a lack of knowledge, but there needs to be some explanation as to why A-League clubs frequently mess-up player signings and fail to excite the fans.
Of course when you sign a player every club wants to make it sound like they have signed a quality player, so they frequently try to bolster the new player’s resume to make them sound as if they are the ‘real deal.’
Case in point was when Perth Glory signed Dutch striker Guyon Fernandez. The 29 year old who after an unhappy spell at Feyenoord had struggled with injury and finding the back of the net was promoted to the Glory fans as being just what Glory needed. He was pumped up as a striker that was going to set the A-League alight.
“I’m sure he will come in and inject some real quality into our final third – that’s why we’ve signed him,” the then Coach Kenny Lowe said.
The then CEO Peter Filopolous added to this by saying “We want to bring players to the club that will get the fans on their feet and Guyon will certainly do that.”
After a couple of games one wondered if they had been watching the same player in action as was taking the park in Australia. (The Pressure to Score) He was released in January 2016. Since then he has made total of 38 appearances for four other clubs in four years and scored six goals.
Overnight Western Sydney Wanderers announced the signing of 32 year old Irishman Simon Cox. He will be 33 at the end of the season and has signed for 18 months. The Press release put out by the club stated the following:
“A powerful centre-forward, Cox has played for Reading, Bristol City, West Brom, Nottingham Forest and most recently Southend United. A player who provides goals and link-up play, Cox has been the top scorer for Southend United for the past three seasons scoring 45 goals and 26 assists in 172 games for the club.”
This season Cox has scored two goals in 24 appearances for Southend in all competitions, 19 of those games in the League. Possibly why Southend were happy to let him leave. Of those 24 appearances he has been subbed on or off in 9 games, but probably more telling is the fact that this has been the case in five of the last six games.
He was a trainee at Reading and made two league appearances from 2005-2008 and a total of nine appearances from 05-08, usually after returning from clubs having been on loan. At Bristol City he made just four appearances in a loan spell.
Surely when announcing a signing such as this the idea is to highlight his successes? For example after a spell on loan at Swindon Town where he scored nine goals in 19 appearances he was transferred from Reading. He then had the best spell of his career making 67 appearances in all competitions and scoring 38 times. A return better than one goal every two games.
Not surprisingly he was then signed by West Bromich Albion. There in 46 games he scored 18 goals; his last season being in the Premier League. Cox started 7 games and came off the bench 11 times that season, but failed to score. From there he was sold to Nottingham Forest where in 64 appearances he notched 14 goals. He then returned to Reading where he scored nine goals in 41 appearances before again being loaned out and then released. Southend picking him up on a free transfer. He has, as Wanderers stated topped the goalscoring at the club for the past three seasons with 16, 10 and 15 goals.
As Wanderers also correctly state Cox has 30 Irish Caps to his name and four goals. His last appearance came 6 years ago when he was 26 year old.
Cox may well have still have what it takes to score in the A-League, and for the League and Wanderers sake you hope his move is a success. However fans have seen this before. Players past their prime coming into the A-League being “bigged-up” and failing to deliver. Wanderers already made a mistake signing a 37 year old marquee player in Alex Meier, the player that Cox is replacing. So the fans will expect him to make up for what Meier failed to deliver, goals.
Meier came boasting an impressive career in the Bundesliga having played 14 seasons with Eintracht Frankfurt, even winning the Golden boot in the 2014/15 season. Yet in 2017/18 season he made just one appearance due to injury, he then moved to St Pauli in the second tier where he made 16 appearances in 2018/19. In those 16 appearances four were made coming off the bench and five saw him the player being substituted. Clearly he was a player whose career was coming to an end.
If you looked at his injury history from June 2017 to March 2018 he missed 252 days of playing due to an ankle injury. Has he ever regained the same fitness level after such a long lay off?
The A-League has to stop giving Marquee status to players such as this, that are over the hill and or due to the passage of time or injuries simply cannot deliver. The FFA were supposed to monitor the standard of the players given Marquee status, but clearly those tasked with this role, simply look at the resume rather than the performances.
Fans believe in the A-League, but they are sick of the hype surrounding players coming in from overseas who then don’t deliver. In the main they don’t deliver because they underestimate the competition and the playing conditions. Or they come with the view that this is one last payday and it will be a nice trip for the family.
Thirty years ago there were a number of players who embellished their playing resumes. Some even claiming that they played for clubs that they never did. Today it is far too easy to check up on a player and look at their form over a number of seasons, as well as their injury history. If the clubs do not believe that football fans across Australia check up on the signings they make then they are either naive or stupid.
Yes, you have to hype up a signing, every club in every country across the world does that, but accentuate the positives. Don’t just throw in a club name to impress fans if when they check they find out he only played a handful of games, was unhappy there, or injured the whole time. Fans want to hear about where they succeeded, that is what gives them hope and raises their expectations. It is time to realise that the club label does not impress, especially if the player never played or delivered at that club.
(The writer is an unashamed Swindon Town fan, and would like to say Cox was superb during his time at the club, even winning the Player of the Year award, so hopes he delivers for Wanderers).
