omegaman
Well-Known Member
was voted one of the top central midfielders in the world at the euros
Bought by Walter and stuck out on the wing
Very poorly utilised
The slightly bizarre thing about our signing and deployment of Miko was that he was effectively bought with the money we received from Marseille for Trevor Steven.
We took in a record £5.2m from that for a guy who had been operating as a classic midfield playmaker for us (he had been a right winger at Everton, but Souness preferred him as a central schemer and he was sensational in that role for us).
Fans were up in arms at Steven’s sale to Marseille, insisting that if we harboured serious designs of winning the European Cup - which at the time we did - we shouldn’t be offloading our best assets.
As a result, Murray sanctioned the Mikhailichenko coup from Sampdoria, a guy who’d won his spurs as a central midfield playmaker (and captain) at Dynamo Kiev and the former USSR.
We spent £2.5m on him, a Scottish record at the time, and it seemed logical he would be a direct replacement for the Englishman only for us to use him as a left winger where he never really looked comfortable.
Smith proceeded to win a double and a treble in his first two seasons at the helm and took us within 90 minutes of the inaugural CL final so we should bow to his better judgment on this, but I always felt we never got the best out of the big guy in utilising him the way we did.
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