[caption id="attachment_70792" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Vincent Kompany is Manchester City’s most reliable player. "]
It was somehow fitting in the same week James McClean was linked with a move to Manchester United (with other high-profile suitors surely to follow) that we came across a story about Liam Miller. Remember him? United fans might. Celtic fans certainly will. Leeds United’s dwindling support definitely do. He once stood where McClean stands now, nurturing a reputation as one of the brightest talents around and being talked about as somebody with the potential to be truly great. That was then.
Injury permitting, the 31-year-old from Cork will line out for Perth Glory against the Wellington Phoenix in an Australian A-League soccer play-off game tomorrow. As physically and metaphorically far from the bright lights of Old Trafford as it is possible to get. Hardly where anybody expected him to be approaching the eighth anniversary of the summer he fetched up in Manchester trailing all sorts of plaudits and no little controversy about the circumstances of his move.
That Celtic didn’t get any compensation for the Irish international after playing a key part in his development was only part of the problem. There was also the matter of how little experience he had before making the rather substantial jump from Scotland to the Premier League. For all the unfortunate, lazy and just plain unfair christening of him as “the new Roy Keane,” Miller had made just 13 first team starts for Celtic by that point. He was a largely unproven quantity who had caught Alex Ferguson’s eye in rather peculiar circumstances.
So the story goes, the United manager had traveled to Glasgow to watch Celtic take on Anderlecht and to run the rule over a hot Belgian teenage prospect by the name of Vincent Kompany. This was the very night the Corkman happened to have the performance of his life, lighting up his team’s 3-1 win and hobbling off injured as 56,000 fans rose to acclaim his goalscoring performance. Ferguson went home with Miller having moved to the top of his shopping list, and Kompany spent three more years honing his talent at Anderlecht before moving to Hamburg and finally ending up as the most dependable player at Manchester City.
That Miller’s rise was more meteoric and less enduring than Kompany’s is telling. Miller went too high too soon. He wasn’t ready for Old Trafford and his career never recovered the momentum lost. Kompany’s trajectory was slower and ensured he was better-prepared for a longer run at the top. We wonder whether McClean’s advisers, presuming he has some sort of representation by now, are smart enough to realize their man needs to be handled with care. No point rushing him to the top and risking him not being able to stay there.
At the time of writing, McClean has started 13 Premier League and six FA Cup games for Sunderland. Although a very small sample, he has excelled and demonstrated plenty of promise. On April 22, he turns 23. This makes him rather old for a rookie but also speaks to the valuable experience he gained playing in the League of Ireland with Derry City. He is a more mature neophyte than most, especially when it comes to physical challenges. Does that mean he’s ready to move to Manchester United? After just half a season as a starter in the top flight.
In Sunderland’s 2-0 defeat to Blackburn Rovers recently, McClean met a team that had planned specifically for how to curb his threat down the left flank. That Steve Keane made the Irish international part of his defensive game plan speaks volumes for how far he’s come so quickly. It also shows he’s going to have to rely on more than just instinct to get past defenders as opponents start to specifically prepare to limit what he can do. Can he make that jump?
The problem here is everything happens too fast these days. It’s often forgotten that Roy Keane had three full seasons at Nottingham Forest, playing nearly every game before he made the big move. And he still had a rough first couple of months at Old Trafford when he got there. Robbie Keane too was allowed a couple of crucial, lower-key years at Wolves, when they sometimes kept him on the bench to help his maturation process, before he started to rise up the ladder. Even then, he made a brief stop at Coventry City, a Premier League club then but hardly the most pressurised environment in the British game.
There is a time when it is right for a player to move and a time when it is premature and costly. Of course, there are exceptions to every rule but the percentages would not be in McClean’s favour if he was indeed to become a serious United target this summer. Damien Duff was the last Irish left winger to inspire anything like this type of excitement with his ability to go past people and put in crosses. Duff started over 200 games for Blackburn before being signed by Chelsea. A lot of miles on the clock. A lot of good experience.
The only thing we can say for certain is that Sunderland would definitely sell him if they got the chance. How could they refuse to turn a few hundred grand into a profit of £10 million? That is the going price apparently. Indeed, McClean’s recent three-year contract extension could be read as proof of their intentions, their way of upping the ante when the richer clubs come sniffing around in the next few months.
And they will come sniffing. McClean’s impact has been so impressive the wealthier managers were bound to notice. Once Alan Shearer (still the world’s least insightful pundit) highlighted his play on Match of the Day a couple of weeks back, it became only a matter of time until the tabloid speculation about the Derryman’s future began in earnest. Whether or not Giovanni Trapattoni puts him on the plane in June, this guy is still going to have a very interesting summer.
