He’s not coming back, nor should he. Any move like that would be more heart than head. If it ended up happening he would do okay, but it’s not a move we should push for. He’d also be on higher wages than he’s worth to the team.
He’s not suddenly a terrible player, or even really that far off where he was with us. We have grown a lot since then though, and he is at the stage in his career where you don’t tend to.
The Turkish, French, and American leagues are all at a decent level, there is no other league on par with the EPL, but they are not “farmers’ leagues” as people like to make them out as.
He’s been turning out regularly and successfully in the first and the third of those. In the second one, he had a limited and not very successful spell. It happens, really Lyon is the only place he hasn’t cracked it, other than Man Utd, which was as we now know a strange environment, and possibly non-footballing reasons played a part if you believe the rumours…
There isn’t anything to be bitter about with him for us, he was one of our greatest players for a huge period of time, he’s still one of our greatest homegrown players, and we are allowed to be thankful and nostalgic without returning for a third spell.
It also seems he has issues, rightly or wrongly, with a few of our current players, which is another reason not to go back. Most strongly with Mateta.
At first it did seem to all stem from Wilf, but I’m not so sure anymore. The sounds coming out of the camp have been that it’s not only Wilf that has a problem with JP but that JP has problems with a few current teammates too.
England
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