Blackburn defender Lucas Neill is a whole lot better than you think.
Liverpool, Tottenham and for some reason Barcelona have all expressed varying levels of interest in the versatile Australian and he is also really good on FM.
Neill has been long appreciated as a solid Premiership player and is available on a free transfer at the end of the season. But that’s hardly enough to justify such interest in his services.
A better reason is probably Neill’s outstanding performance at the World Cup during his country’s run into the latter stages. Dr. Istvan Gorgenyi was hired by Sport Australia to analyse the Socceroos performance and applied his “Hunting Theory” of team structure and space generation to determine that Lucas Neill may be worthy of such attention,
“Lucas Neill last year (at the Confederations Cup) was a left-sided defender playing almost for himself and he was put in the middle…and he became one of the best defenders of the World Cup,” said Gorgenyi, an expert in group dynamics.
“He (Neill) had a big effect on the whole team as a role model and also as a player who was always around to help,” added the coach of the gold medal winning Australian women’s water polo team at the Sydney Olympics.
If you need any more evidence that Dr. Istvan knows what he’s on about, he described Ronaldo’s World Cup performance as ‘an injured whale blocking a whole channel’ in Brazil’s attack.