Fun With Headlines: Buddle On The Move?

As much as I like Edson Buddle and as much as I’d like for him to be a Premier League quality striker, I can’t ignore two little things called “reason” and “common sense”. In 31 league matches in the 2. Bundesliga he’s scored 9 times for FC Ingoldschlagerstadatatataatatat 04. Sure, his strike rate in the MLS isn’t too shabby (90 goals in 223 games) but those goals, after all, took place in the MLS. Not the English Premier League. Also, he’s never been the most consistent striker. Only in 4 of his 10 MLS seasons did he manage to eclipse the 10 goal mark. That brings up another point that makes this a peculiar development:he’s played a decade of MLS campaigns. That’s an entire career for some lads, and at 30 years old, Buddle is not spring chicken. He’s more of an autumn chicken and if it wasn’t for global warming he would probably be a winter chicken.

So why would David Moyes give this cat a trial? There’s two reasons:

1) Low Cost – Buddle’s value is about £500,000.

2) Drugs – Some crazy LSD is making its way across Merseyside.

OK, David Moyes doesn’t do drugs, so scratch No.2. (He’s more of a heavy drinker.) What’s more important in this situation is that The Toffees don’t have a ton of money. With UEFA’s mysterious Financial Fair Play statutes supposedly in effect, this may be a sign of things to come for clubs with smaller cash reserves. Instead of Moyes being able to splash a bit of cash on low-cost (less than £10m) strikers linked with a move (Andy Johnson, Roman Pavlyuchenko, Kris Boyd, Roque Santa Cruz, etc.) he’s turned to an under utilized source: lower league players under the radar. To be completely fair, Moyes has always been one of the more shrewd managers in Europe when it comes to getting the most out of what he is given. Could this be the start of a new era of January transfer norms? It would be hard to bet against it given the financial state of European football. Low-cost, low-risk, high-reward transfers will be the new mid-season fix for squads across Europe.

If Buddle flops, no big deal. He was never supposed to light up the score sheet. If he manages to grab a half dozen or so goals in the second half of the season, Moyes looks like a genius.

It many not be a sexy approach to the transfer market but it’s certainly a smart one. Even if we are talking about Edson Buddle.