Deadline dealings
Steed Malbranque’s time at Fulham is now over. He chose a move to Spurs, who paid Fulham a bargain £2.5 million for the player. He’ll be missed but it’s time to move on.
Rumoured to be coming the other way is former Palace prodigy Wayne Routledge. Some time ago Palace Chairman Simon Jordan wrote some amusing columns in the Guardian. Jordan, a youngish man (by Chairman standards), with a Robbie Savage hair cut and an ego that is second to very few, is very sure of himself and shared his his wisdom with Guardian readers each week. At one point Routledge had been unsettled by Spurs over a long period of time, provoking Jordan to write an excellent piece about agents and the damage they might do to young players. I liked this bit:
It makes sense for Spurs in that a percentage of these recruits will succeed, and plenty of sense for agents, but why do players keep falling for it? It irks me intensely that one of Palace’s best young talents is also in the Tottenham massed ranks right now. I really don’t think Wayne Routledge is going to be playing as much for Spurs as he thinks he will. I told him that, people around him told him to stay and develop longer under Iain Dowie, but we didn’t count - as is so often the case, the teenager trusted his agent.
Jordan was irked because a young player that Palace had nurtured for 8 years was on the verge of rejecting a fairly lucrative deal. This is fair enough, players have freedom these days, but Routledge had made his debut at 16 and played over 100 games for the club and the fans felt a little loyalty was in order.
So there we are. Hopefully Routledge will be able to recapture some of the form that made him such a prize in the first place.
In other rumours, the Guardian has Boa Morte on the way to Spurs too, but I haven’t seen that anywhere else. Simon Davies of Everton is getting talked about a lot on the Fulham Independent boards too.
