Wigan acquires ManU’s Cleverley on loan
While Charles N’Zogbia may be on his way out of town, Wigan may have found a midfielder to replace him. Tom Cleverley has apparently been loaned to Wigan, with manager Roberto Martinez beating out several other EPL sides for the opportunity.
Cleverley is considered an up-and-coming talent, although not quite ready to earn heavy minutes for Manchester United who still owns his rights.
Among the highlights of Cleverley’s recent form was a goal against the MLS All-Stars during ManU’s match at Houston’s Reliant Stadium.
Cleverley spent last season at Watford, a Championship team, and scored 11 goals in 33 matches.
As an aside, I’d like to add that as someone who’s still rather new to the EPL this is an odd development. Basically, there is such a gap between ManU and Wigan that there’s little concern with loaning out a quality player to another team in the same league. Unless I’m missing something, Wigan will play ManU at least twice and Cleverley will likely play significant minutes in those matches. I’m trying to think of an American equivalent to this, but I really can’t fathom what that would be.
As far as I know, there’s nothing like a loan in American sports. Moving players is entirely different, and usually involves what in soccer would be called player swaps, and not transfers as practiced in the soccer world.
As for loans, it’s not so much about the gap in quality, it’s about your plans for a player. If you need that player to get more playing time to develop, then you farm him out to a team where he’ll be a first stringer, and for a top of the table team that means a bottom of the table team or a team in a lower division. If you want to basically transfer bait a team to take a player you’re never going to use off your hands, so you can get some cash for him, then you might loan him out to a team right in your same tier. That’s that Inter did with Nicholas Burdisso and Roma. Burdisso wasn’t going to be feature in Mourinho’s lineups ever, and he might be useful at Roma. So he went there on loan last season and now, according to plan, Roma wants to make the transfer permanent. Inter has all the leverage because we can either just take the player back and maybe do another loan to someone else, or get Roma to pay our price. Now Roma were nipping at our heels the whole year and were actually taking the championship from us on the last day before Milito scored to put us out of their reach. Burdisso helped them do that, so it was a calculated risk.
CarlosT
August 5, 2010 at 3:05 am
Oh, also, I forgot to mention that loans can also have conditions on them, as in the player never faces the loaning team. These can scuttle deals, so they’re not all that common, but it’s seen from time to time.
CarlosT
August 5, 2010 at 3:11 am