Why This Man Was A Risk For Rangers But Is A Bargain For Blackburn

Blackburn’s new signing David Goodwillie, is a player with a lot of potential.  After breaking into Dundee United’s first team, he has twice the SPL’s young player of the year; he’s scored 31 goals in the last two seasons to establish himself as Scotland’s best striker outside of the Old Firm.  He’s also been capped by Scotland, making his debut against the Faroe Islands in November 2010.

Blackburn have apparently signed Goodwillie for an initial £2million, with add-ons worth up to £800,000 included in the deal.  By Premier League standards, Goodwillie is a bargain.  As a comparison, Norwich City paid £2.5million for Everton’s James Vaughan earlier in the summer, and Vaughan hasn’t even reached 20 goals for his career yet.

But despite his scoring record and potential, David Goodwillie has had a lot of off-field problems.  He has been accused of assault during nights out several times, but most recently, and most publically, he was accused of rape after an incident at a new year’s party in January.  Although the rape charge has recently been dropped due to insufficient evidence, Goodwillie’s reputation for trouble has harmed his career, with Scotland manager Craig Levein choosing not to select him for international squads during that time.

With this in mind, Dundee Utd manager Peter Houston suggested that Goodwillie would be better off moving to England, rather than to the ‘goldfish bowl’ of Glasgow.  This of course, angered Rangers fans, who believed it was Houston wanting Goodwillie to go anywhere but Rangers, rather than concern for his wellbeing.

But with Scotland being such a small country, high profile footballers who head into city centres for a night out are more likely to attract attention, and will often find themselves in situations where people will look to start fights with them just because of who they are.  And this is a problem that escalates if you happen to live in Glasgow and play for Rangers or Celtic.  With the Old Firm rivalry being so intense, the chances of being in the wrong place at the wrong time increases for Old Firm players, and there are any number of examples of Rangers players or Celtic players getting into trouble off the pitch.

This is why Blackburn signing Goodwillie represents good business, rather than the risk it would have been for Rangers to sign him.  Goodwillie is only 22, and has already proven himself to be a goalscorer in the SPL.  For less than £3million, Blackburn get a young striker on a relatively low wage with the potential to score a lot of goals for them, and even move on to a bigger Premier League club for a large profit.  Blackburn is also a smaller, quieter town than Glasgow, and Blackburn have no city rivals.  Goodwillie will arrive with a certain level of anonymity, and will not have to deal with rival supporters on nights out.

For the sake of the Scotland national team, it has to be hoped that Goodwillie can keep his head down and only makes headlines on the back pages of the newspapers.  At 22, he could be Scotland’s number one striker for the next decade, and if he can prove himself in the Premier League and score a lot of goals for Blackburn, he could find himself moving for big money to the top end of the Premier League and becoming one of the best strikers in Britain.  Ultimately that is down to him, he has to show that he can grow up and can focus all of his energy on doing what he does best, scoring goals.

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