..there’s no doubt the lad can play, he’s a footballer brought up through the ranks at Ajax. The problem is he’s not the type of midfielder we needed, he’s similar to others we’d already acquired. Where we needed pace, power and athleticism we brought in another who didn’t offer that.
Amazing that football people oversaw the summer transfer business.
Easy to say that with hindsight Eggs.
At the time he was bought, we were in the EL qualifying rounds, we needed depth and Ajax's captain for under £25m was seen as very decent business.
No-one expected Morgan Schneiderlin to forget how to play football, or that we wouldn't replace Lukaku with some sort of striker.
Sigurdsson is a LM in my opinion- one i'd imagine that is shared by Koeman and Clement last season at Swansea. Yes he drifts inside but a major attribute is his crossing. Can't do that from the middle of the pitch.
Throw in Rooney and really, at the time we signed Klaassen, we had 2 options for playing behind a striker (that, again, never materialised).
Going back to your point: we needed a Klaassen. Of course, we needed him to settle in better than he has. But we needed him, a striker and a right winger. We needed Sig.
In the end we got all of them apart from the most important. And that impacted upon everything.
