Monday 4 February 2008

What is Paulo Monteiro for?

The club is celebrating our last gasp signing of Paulo Monteiro. Now it may well be that he is a player with a lot of potential. He is certainly a big lad who could match some of the big sides sent down from the north. He almost certainly hates Millwall. And he will be someone for Jose Semedo to talk Portuguese to. His English is certainly not all that good to judge from the sample on the website: 'The camaraderie among the players is very good, and I'm thankful the gaffer has given me such an opportunity'. (Although it's certainly better than my Portuguese).

But I'm still not quite clear what the signing is for. After all, the reserves seem to be doing well enough. We have much bigger squads than many of the teams that visit us, but that means many of the more peripheral players in the squad don't really get much of a chance to show what they can offer.

Of course, it's always useful to have 'cover'. And I'm sure that Monteiro doesn't cost that much in wages. But do we have too many bit part players who are going to get a cameo at most?

3 comments:

Ken Jennings said...

An excellent question. Perhaps he is a goal-scorer in disguise?

Anonymous said...

Did he actually refer to the manager as "the gaffer?" One who struggles with the English language is not likely to come up with that term? Do you suppose somebody was putting words in his mouth?

StoneMuse said...

A lot of the new overseas players seem to use the word 'gaffer'.
Must be someone at the Valley advising them on how to sound 'English'.