What do people make of this Celt? I think he is a good player who has the potential to become a real cass act. For me he has some really good attributes: quick, skillful, fairly strong and can score goals. If I were manager he should start for all the rest of the games between now and the end of the season. I know some members here have reservations about him earlier in the season but his form of late and before when he joined us shows that he is at the very least worth a run in the team.
I agree that he’s worth a shot in the team.
Sidepoint: There is a danger that we think guys on the bench are better than the starting eleven all the time because they haven’t played for long enough to annoy us. I remember the howls of criticism MON was getting in the Seville season for never giving youngsters/backup players a go. Then we beat Liverpool or Stuttgart and for the next game away to ICT in the cup MON made 8 changes or something and we were played off the park. He never made the same mistake again. These guys are backup because they’re not playing better than the guys on the first team. We’ve had people calling for Miller over Magic then the Beat over Miller then Magic back again all the time - always the guy who’s not in the team.
Back to the main point though and I think Riordan deserves a run. He scored lots of goals at Hibs and certainly deserves the chance to have a go at being our striker before McDonald (and hopefully our star striker) arrive during the summer. The difficulty is that it should now be easier for him to break into the side on the wing because Maloney has left. Assuming Tommy G or Hartley won’t play there again we need Riordan as a winger as much as we need him as a striker. And if we want him to be a winger then that’s where he should be playing for us and that’s why Strachan can’t really be blamed for not playing him up front. That’s not where he sees his future.
Any time I have watched him I go away impressed by his touch, movement and finishing. He’s also a clever player who drifts into good areas and has the intelligence to link up with other good technical players like Naka. I don’t think he is blisteringly quick though and he’s definitely not strong, the skinny little rake. I always thought he was a better striker than a wide man and I’d like to see him play the last few games of the season up there.
He’s linked with ManU on the Sky Sports website. :-X
Correction:
It’s Kaiserslautern. They’re also known as the red devils. ::o