Albert Luque (now retired)

[Alberto2005]

Fucking hell man, it's late.

 

You said "who wants to bet that once he's had 3 or 4 consectutive games at Ajax he won't start to look like the player he was before he came here?" about Luque and then said that you're not an expert on him pre-NUFC either, much like myself.

 

My point is this: how can we compare him to the "player he was" when barely any of us had seen much/any of him before 2005?

 

Was he ever that great for Deportivo? He certainly wasn't an invaluable player for them, as his appearance record shows, if anything he was possibly their less-effective version of Laurent Robert who scored a few raspers for them and an important goal or two, but was quite probably as infuriating as fuck the rest of the time and offered little/nowt from open play.

 

From what I remember he has a goal ratio 1 in 4 or something throughout his career, which would be mocked for most other strikers/forwards.

 

Don't believe the hype, basically.

He played left wing a lot of the time, especially in the latter end of his Deportivo career, and he was infact a very important player for Deportivo along with players such as Tristan,Victor, Fran,Valeron etc with Makaay been the exception as he was the best out of the lot.

[Teasy]

Janitor

 

Dear me it must be late for you mate, you're obviously incredibly irritable if you get so worked up over a joke about janitors being lazy.. how bizarre, unless you really are a janitor and I've offended your profession or something?   Anyway as I said its not important exactly how good he was, as I already said I just meant he will probably be a good player again IMO.  It amazes me how people can make so much from so little sometimes..

 

This was my comment by the way for everyone to see "About what?, be more specific.  I don't know, janitors are such lazy bastards ".  Hardly anything to get worked up about is it?  BTW I only changed it because I re-read the posts and thought it was a pretty safe bet what you meant so there was actually little point asking..

[Teasy]

No doubt he'll start for Ajax the same way he's played for us on the occasional and fleeting apearances he gotten in our team.  But who wants to bet that once he's had 3 or 4 consectutive games at Ajax he won't start to look like the player he was before he came here?

 

I'd be surprised if more than 1% of this forum knew what Luque was like before he came here.

 

Personally, he never caught my eye and I never heard anyone raving on about him. Ever. I'd bet a lot of people will say the same as well.

 

Yeah I'm sure most people here saw little Spanish Football and didn't know much if anything about Luque before he came here.  I'm no expert either, when I said "start to look like the player he was before he came here" I simply meant he'll look like a good player again.

Whatever you obviously don't watch must Champions League either then.

 

You're getting a bit confused there mate, I didn't say anything about not seeing or noticing Luque...  As I said I'm certainly no expert on his carear but I had heard of him before his arrival.

[Rich]

Hey, Mr. Defensive, I'm not worked-up at all so don't worry about that

 

I am a professional janitor in a local hospital and very proud of it! It's a wonderful lie.

 

I was just pointing out that you completely changed your original post after I'd gone to the bother of responding to it for you, as you asked me to, which sort of defeated the point and could have saved me a few minutes of my life, you know? I'm not sure if "Not cool." is a major slight in your neck of the woods, but apologies if this is the case.

 

I'm amazed you don't understand my point about Luque more than anything and that you thought I've been wound-up by someone calling janitors lazy . Ish mental, no? THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX!

 

Have you eaten some bad cheese which has re-produced the effects of some recreational drug and turned you into a paranoid lunatic, or sumfink?

 

(Right I'm finished editing the post now as it's DEAD LATE and I feel I'm flogging a dead walrus.)

[Wullie]

Rich is too lazy to be a janitor.

 

 

 

 

[Rich]

Rich is too lazy to be a janitor.

 

 

 

 

 

WTF YOU TALKING ABOUT MAN!?!?!

 

FKN HIPPOCRIT!

 

*Explodes*

 

(Now that's being worked-up. Rar.)

[Rich]

Rich is too lazy to be a janitor.

 

 

 

 

 

I go to bed safe and sound in the knowledge that I am less lazy than Albert Luque, at least.

 

(Topic returned, can opened, worms en route. Adieu.)

[Teasy]

You must be at least a little bit worked up considering the post above has gone through about 10 edits getting slightly nicer each time

 

Seriously though I think what threw me off was that your earlier reply (651) seemed to completely ignore the post it was apparently disagreeing with..  I was expecting a short reply about why you disagreed with my opinion that Luque would turn into a good player for Ajax.  Instead i got a post disagreeing with something in the post before the post you'd said you disagreed with   So yes I understand the point, I always did, which is why I clarified what I meant a page ago.

[alpal78]

Can't wait until he scores for Ajax, "OMG WTF HE IZ THE BESTEST PLAYER IN DA WORLD!!! AJAX WON AND EVERY1 NOES WHENEVER LUQUE PLAYS THE TEAM WINZ!!!1111ONEONE!!!"

 

Jon, surely that's an exaggeration. If Luque does perform for Ajax (and by that I don't mean just scoring in his first game), then those who defended him and said that he could have done well for us had he been given the chance surely has the right to point out the club's mistake in selling him especially if players like Duff continue to frustrate, and yes it works the other way around as well. 

 

Are you unable to see the major flaw in this argument?

 

Who is to say Luque would have ever been a success here in this league?

 

It's a bit different doing the business for Ajax in the Eredivisie than it is doing the business for us in the Premiership, why can't some people just accept the fact that certain players don't work out at certain clubs?

 

Fair enough he should have had more of a chance, but if his sale gets labeled a "mistake" because he does well for Ajax then the people who do so need an e-slap. It's fairly obvious that the bloke wants to leave now, as well.

 

Surely it's sensible to wish him luck and hope he does well, realising that he was never really destined to "make it" over here for whatever reason.

 

On the contrary, I think your analysis is overly simplistic. I accept that the Dutch League is inferior to the EPL and in a way nobody could tell for sure how he would have performed if he had been given a run of games, or at least shown that the management has confidence in him (remember Roeder playing an immobile crocked Ameobi ahead of him). But given that it is an unknown variable, it's fair to say a player who performed reasnably well for Deportivo and if he does well for Ajax on a consistent basis could have done well in the EPL had he been given the chance. Economist called this trend analysis (after making adjustment to differentiating factors off course). 

 

To be sure there are some differences between the three leagues but not enough to conclude that a player who performs in the other two leagues, bought for 10M and sold on a free (?) was not a mistake. Selling an asset worth 10M for free after 2-3 years would be considered criminal negligent in any other non footballing corporation and take the whacky world of football and transfer markets as mitigation factors, I don't see why this should not be seen as a mistake....to say the least.

 

saying that we should "accept the fact that certain players don't work out at certain clubs" is just a convenient way of masking the mistake and making us all feel hunky dorry inside.

 

 

It's not simply about the quality of the league, though, that wasn't all I was getting at.

 

You need to take things like his injury into account and his subsequent loss of confidence, the culture shock of moving from La Coruna to Newcastle, the fact he didn't learn English until he'd been here for more than a year, the fact that we paid a grossly inflated fee for the lad and paid him huge wages due to an incompetent manager/chairman combination... there's absolutely loads that goes into how well a certain player does at a certain club, I completely understand that and I'm sure you already appreciate it too.

 

As it stands Albert Luque is, rightly or wrongly, a 6th choice striker if we're playing 4-4-2 and is equally down the pecking order for a position up-front down the middle/on the left of the 4-3-3/4-5-1, meaning he's costing us a lot of money in wages and we won't see any return from him at all on the football pitch. He also seems like he wants to leave the club and try his hand elsewhere. His value has depreciated massively from that over-inflated fee we paid back in 2005 and it's easy to see why when you look at his time here.

 

As you've said, it's completely unknowable whether Luque would have ever done really well here for us, which was my exact point in saying IF he does well for Ajax then I will find it extremely frustrating if people label it a MISTAKE for us to have sold him, because he could have done the same for us here. It's not a mistake, it's a necessary move for NUFC and for Luque after his time here has been a complete write-off, due to a number of factors. I don't blame Luque entirely for how things have gone and I was quite happy to see him given a chance under Allardyce, but it seems both the manager and the player realise it's probably best if he heads off somewhere else to chance his arm.

 

Fair play to him, I say, and good luck. But I won't be calling it a "mistake" if he does well for Ajax, I'll just be happy that he's doing well for himself.

 

It was a mistake how Roeder handled him, perhaps paying that £11.4M/£9.5M for him was a mistake initially, it was probably a mistake that Souness threw him in at the deep end, it was a mistake for him not to bother learning English until 2006, there have been a lot of mistakes from a lot of different parties that have led us to this unavoidable point in time.

 

I, for one, will not be crying over spilt milk though.

 

Then we'll just have to agree to disagree. Whilst I accept that whether or Luque would have performed for us is an unknown variable, I also said that if he perfomed well for Ajax, then selling him on a free, when we bougt him for 10M just 2 years ago (even if that was inflated due to Souness' incompetency) would still go down as a mistake. 

[Razor]

So has the transfer gone through or not? 

[junkhead]

transfermarkt.de says we received 8.000.000 euros from Ajax.. could this be true?

[alpal78]

transfermarkt.de says we received 8.000.000 euros from Ajax.. could this be true?

 

Do you mean 8,000,000.00 or 8.000000 Euros? Not being pedantic like but the placement of the comas and decimals makes a huge difference.

[Guest teepee]

transfermarkt.de says we received 8.000.000 euros from Ajax.. could this be true?

 

Do you mean 8,000,000.00 or 8.000000 Euros? Not being pedantic like but the placement of the comas and decimals makes a huge difference.

 

outside of the mighty british empire 8.000.000 is 8 million

 

if they paid that i'd be very amazed - honestly i don't think we got anything at all

[Tsunami]

transfermarkt.de says we received 8.000.000 euros from Ajax.. could this be true?

 

Do you mean 8,000,000.00 or 8.000000 Euros? Not being pedantic like but the placement of the comas and decimals makes a huge difference.

 

outside of the mighty british empire 8.000.000 is 8 million

 

if they paid that i'd be very amazed - honestly i don't think we got anything at all

 

I'd find it more credible if they'd said we'd paid Ajax that much to get rid of him. I wouldn't be surprised if we are still paying around half of his wages for a period of time.

[NSG]

The Journal saying the deal is official now.

 

NEWCASTLE officials have confirmed Albert Luque’s move to Ajax. The Journal revealed last week that the Spaniard had agreed a three-year contract with the Dutch club.

 

[Guest Ebolarama]

Aye, his name is gone from the squad list on .co.uk now.

[Greg]

The Journal saying the deal is official now.

 

NEWCASTLE officials have confirmed Albert Luque’s move to Ajax. The Journal revealed last week that the Spaniard had agreed a three-year contract with the Dutch club.

 

 

It is a bit more than official, he played for them yesterday!

 

http://english.ajax.nl/upload/915688_657_1188746514864-Ajax_-_Gron_Luque_.jpg

[Razor]

The Journal saying the deal is official now.

 

NEWCASTLE officials have confirmed Albert Luque’s move to Ajax. The Journal revealed last week that the Spaniard had agreed a three-year contract with the Dutch club.

 

 

It is a bit more than official, he played for them yesterday!

 

http://english.ajax.nl/upload/915688_657_1188746514864-Ajax_-_Gron_Luque_.jpg

 

[Peder75]

He played from start for Ajax this weekend, but was substituted in the second half.

 

Albert Luque looked back with mixed feelings on his debut. ,,I enjoyed the stadion and the atmosphere, but I am not pleased with my performance. I have to get in better shape."

 

Edit: doh, I'm late 

[Guest Ebolarama]

Well, obviously he has signed for them, what with the whole playing thing. I think most of us were just curious about why it hadn't been officially announced by NUFC yet, or what the particulars of the fee were, ya sarcastic git! 

[Guest teepee]

 

Albert Luque looked back with mixed feelings on his debut. ,,I enjoyed the stadion and the atmosphere, but I am not pleased with my performance. I have to get in better shape."

 

 

 

NO - Really

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

So did we sell him or is he out on loan?

[stozo]

So did we sell him or is he out on loan?

Sold him.

[Guest jamesmartinsmith]

So did we sell him or is he out on loan?

Sold him.

Do we know how much for?

[Kitman]

So did we sell him or is he out on loan?

Sold him.

Do we know how much for?

 

A handful of magic beans I expect