I am not sure how to feel. Great to see him back in England. But you have to think, at what cost?
It's the classic scenario of "better to be a big fish in a small pond, than a little fish in the big sea”.
Would it have been better to stay as the marquee player in Austrailia, where he could live like a king? Or come down to a championship side (gasp!), with a small salary, just to say he’s back playing football in England?
Sorry, but I don’t know if it would work. Yeah he was outstanding in the WC, and he may play like that at Sunderland and get interest from premiership sides again. But the UK is a funny place. No one is going to look at how well he’s playing. Not in the press anyway.
The media here only view him as a playboy/party freak, and that’s all they want to know. Who he’s sleeping with, where he’s partying, blah, blah. He also got a bad reputation from Birmingham for being lazy and difficult. That kind of thing is hard to get over.
For that reason, he’s not really been taken seriously in the UK as far as his football goes. Dwight is one of the hardest training persons in football, also one of the fittest. But no one bothers with that, just his off the field exploits.
I hope that he comes, lights up the championship, gets Sunderland promoted, and some top premiership club is willing to give him a contract.
Very thoughtful post! Yesterday when I first heard the news, I had some of those ideas, but today I am really excited about the new possibilities that are opening to Yorke. And I am somewhat amazed that a lot of folks –including myself-- are looking forward and wondering what else can this guy possibly do, ... how else can he amaze us.
It is a really big loss to a lot of the Aussie fans and their league, as some of them have been saying on their forum. That notwithstanding, some the business people in the boardroom of Sidney Fc at one point seemed to think that they could have gotten a better deal for less. Remember the talk last year about budget cutting etc. Now the talk there is that they had a really good deal and now it is gone.