da blaze casino： This article is part of Football FanCast’s Pundit View series, which provides opinion and analysis on recent quotes from journalists, pundits, players and managers…
da betsul： At least Blues fans are finally starting to see a return on their investment.
Ivan Sunjic didn’t get off to the best of starts when he arrived in the summer.
Having had a lot of expectations placed on him by members of the press, it’s taken a while before we started seeing some tangible results from the Croatian, like his goal against Derby County the other week.
What’s he said?
Speaking to the club website, Blues boss Pep Clotet spoke about how he has been keeping a track of the Croatian for a long time, and how impressed he has been with his ability to adapt to life in England:
“In the summer the club’s scouting department was working on options for different midfielders. Ivan was flagged as one option. I knew the club from many years ago. When I was at Espanyol under-17s we went to play a tournament at Zagreb. I was impressed, very impressed. That was in 2007 and I have always followed the work they do and their players, and I have tracked Ivan’s progress.”
“He has established himself very well in that position. And I think he is a player who understands this league and has managed to perform from his first day. That is not easy. He is a player who puts the team before himself and that is something very difficult to find in young players. And I think you will see a better player as the season goes on.”
Let’s keep it that way
However, it is now up to Clotet to try and coax as much out of him as he can.
Whilst it’s acceptable to allow a little bit of a ‘bedding in period’, that mantra can’t go on forever.
As we covered in our ‘chalkboard’ series recently, Sunjic is someone that Birmingham need to be building a team around, and not just because you have to justify the hefty price tag that brought him to St Andrew’s.
Given the Financial Fair Play burden that Birmingham City find themselves in after their punishment last year, it was a pretty big risk for the club to fork out in the region of £7m for the midfielder.
Therefore, the Blues need to make sure that this money doesn’t end up going straight down the drain by letting him rot as a result of bad management.
It bodes well that he’s already been able to establish himself but while Clotet may be a big fan of the midfielder, he needs to make sure that the levels of production from the Croat don’t drop, or he could find himself not managing him at all.