Wednesday night at Eastlands was not the most exciting night of my footballing life, it was cold, wet, windy and the football on the pitch didn’t exactly create excitement and hysteria in the watching fans.
The League Cup is suffering somewhat of a crisis, and in recent years it has morphed into the title that ‘does a job’ the one that ‘you’ll accept’, it isn’t really high up on anyones list of priorities until the select clubs get towards the business end of the competition. Even defending holders Birmingham had little to no interest in the tournament, they have far bigger fish to fry and the distraction of the League Cup is an unwanted one.
City on the other hand have a squad capable of challenging for all major honours and I am sure that as the rounds progress stronger squads will be put out each time, amongst the mixture of quality, kids and the downright average was a defender who was signed for £10million not so long ago but now finds himself not just out of the picture but out of the whole art gallery!
Wayne Bridge though is making no effort to get his career back on track, one of many awful signings made by Mark Hughes, Bridge arrived in January 2009 and signed a 4 and a half year deal on a reported £90,000 a week. It was clearly a great offer and at that time City were throwing money around like confetti. He never sparkled however and struggled to hold down a place after the 2009-2010 season and barely featured last season, ultimately being loaned out to West Ham for the second half of the term.
All Summer there has been numerous options for the player to move on, and yet the 30 year old has remained. There was speculation about a move to Newcastle as a replacement for the outgoing Jose Enrique, there was the possibility of moves to QPR and Stoke but none of these rumours seemed to be anything more than heresay.
To be quite honest I don’t even know if he is good enough for the Premier League any more, his game has deteriorated hugely over the last 3 or 4 years and he did nothing against Birmingham on Wednesday night to demonstrate otherwise, he was pretty much entirely ineffective for the majority of the game.
He could have a future in football though if he wanted one, clearly he would still be more than adequate for a strong Championship team aiming for promotion, he could have made his move to West Ham permanent but again this didn’t come off. The inference coming from Eastlands is that the player has lost his motivation for the game pretty much entirely.