David Carney’s signing was a strange one, the deal taking place so close to McCabe selling up to Australian company Valad made me think that perhaps this was a deal done with PLC, rather than football club, issues in mind. A career history taking in the likes of Oldham, Halifax and Hamilton Academicals along with a link to Sheffield Wednesday hardly filled us with confidence.
Carney’s early season form did little to quell the fears that I had. He looked slow, lightweight and unwilling to get involved in the more physical side of the game, a bit like the kid at school who tries to avoid heading the ball! I gave him low scores when ever I rated the performances and expressed my huge surprise when he was linked with a move to Bayern Munich.
Only fair then that I give him some credit now he’s doing well. A break from the side over Christmas seems to have worked wonders for him. (Does that mean Robson should get some credit?). Carney scored the only goal v Bolton Wanderers in the cup and followed this up with a good performance against QPR. In the Sheffield derby he was withdrawn at half-time which many found surprising. Wednesday fans texted me at the time asking why we’d taken our best player off. Carney was left out of the side against Manchester City but then came off the bench to score the equaliser v Watford. He scored again at Colchester with a decent finish and again was withdrawn to the surprise of some.
Interestingly Carney was featured in the ‘Ask the players’ section of the programme for the Watford game. He was asked by an Aussie what he made of criticism that he was lightweight and slow (no going easy on a fellow countryman there), in his reply he stated that sprint tests showed him to be the 3rd quickest player at the club. That really does surprise me, he looks quite quick when running with the ball but I wouldn’t have had him in our quickest few players.
What do you think? Is Carney getting better as he settles into the English game? Or, as someone put it at the weekend, have things got really bad if Carney is one of our better players? Post your thoughts
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