A Glimpse of What We're Getting in Anderson and Nani

Spent the last couple of hours scouring youtube.com for clips of Anderson since I'm absolutely clueless on how he plays, what his strengths and weaknesses are and frankly, I've come away none too impressed (will elaborate further later). Nani, on the other hand, is a known entity, and I've spent the last year convincing myself that he's the right guy on the left side for us (what a mouthful). It's going to take time to convince myself that Anderson is worth his weight in gold.

Anyway, I think this video's one of the best on youtube.com. It comprises of combined clips of both Anderson and Nani, and more importantly, it has the least crappy music. The rest all had some very angry hip-hop music. The downside is that it's too bloody long at almost 10 minutes, and the Nani portions only start around the 7th minute. Too bad I don't have the know-how to make my own crappy clips to post on youtube.com.

Anyway, enjoy this rather long montage.



Now that you've seen the video, here's what I think of the two newest signings:

Anderson
He's insanely skilful and super fast. Looks like a clinical finisher as well, but that remains to be seen. Since we haven't seen his ratio of misses yet, we can't really establish what a good finisher he is. I'm sure the clips of Andy Cole will all show he's a fabulous finisher as well, but we all know otherwise.

Also where he plays for us will also determine the number of goals he's going to bang in for us. Seems like he's the likely heir to Scholes midfield throne. The thing here is I've yet to see how well he involves the other players around him, and how well he finds them. If he's indeed going to be Scholesy eventual replacement, he's going to have to show alot more of those playmaking skills, rather than just using speed and skill to get past the defence.

The other thing here that is glaring to me is his stature. Looks like a really small but speedy guy. I hope he can stand up to the defenders in the Premiership. It's going to be a whole different ballpark in the EPL, where the defenders aim to maim. I'm not sure he can handle the punishment dished out week in week out. Already he's been a victim of some horrible tackling in the Portguese league, and had broken his leg in a challenge in Oct.

Nani
Looks like a speedy and skilful player (notice the similarities?). He's touted to be the long term replacement for Giggs and I think he looks the part. From what I've seen this season, he's a more mature version of Ronaldo when he first joined us. He's also a big strong lad, able to take physical punishment like Ronaldo. I'm really high on Nani.

The most glaring weakness so far is that he's still very under-developed as a player. He's unable to involve teammates, but if he's anything like Ronaldo, he's going to improve in that area when given the time. The other thing that utterly gets to me is his goal celebrations. All the summersaults and extravagant unneccessaries have to go. I can envisage him hurting himself big time celebrating one of those goals. I suppose, on the bright side, there would be the Tony Adams comparisons, sad but funny.....and always a good conversation topic.