In Defence of: Robinho

By: Rob | September 2nd, 2008

So as you all know very well by now, Brazillian winger Robinho has signed for Manchester City. This is obviously quite a controversial move, and the former Real Madrid man has come in for a heck of alot of critisism from all corners. There are good reason’s for this, but after the jump I’m going to say: Hang, on hold your horses*.

OK, so lets go back to begining. Real Madrid, in thier way (and they way of all big clubs these days) were stalking Cristiano Ronaldo, and offered Man United Robinho as a makewake. Before that, everything seemed fine at the Bernabéu. Robinho, as you would be, was quite upset that he was being chucked off the squadlist for the sake of a player in his position.

So he started kicking up a bit of a fuss, and said he wanted to get the hell out of Madrid. Seems to me that nothing to bad has happened yet really. Anyway, Chelsea wanted him, so he decided – yeah that could be for me, Chelsea, Big Phil there and everything. Suddenly he started saying that he wanted to end up in West London.

Now, nowhere has he ever said that it was a ‘dream move’ or anything else, as I’ve seen suggested. They were the club that was interested in him. Real naturally didn’t want to sell to a club they might play in the Champions League at some point, and thusly dug thier heels in. Some fighting went on between the clubs.

Real said they were upset at Chelsea because they didn’t want sell him. We now know that that was complete bollocks, as they’ve sold him. They just didn’t want to sell to another Champions League club. Anyway, Robinho, in his desperation to get the hell out of a club that didn’t want him, held a press conference announcing that he wanted to join Chelsea.

This seems to be the bit that has made people think he’s joined City for the money. But Chelsea were the only side in for him at that point, and he wanted away from Madrid – what the hell else was he to say? Of course he was going to build up a move to Chelsea.

A few hours later, Manchester City announced that they have been bought out and want to buy Every Footballer on Earth. City stick a bid in for Robinho, Real accept because it isn’t Chelsea, Robinho goes and speaks to City.

City will undoubtedly bowled him over with talk about how they are going to rebuild the squad, build the best team on earth. How complimented would you be if a club that had 120 Billion pounds sat in the bank wanted to make you thier first signing? Yes we know that they were in for everyone under the sun – but Robinho may well not have.

So they probably told him they were going to build an absolutely world class side around him, and offer nearly as much money as Chelsea would (lets be honest – Chelsea could outbid 92k a week, they were paying Sheva more than that).

I don’t see how he’s a traitor to Madrid – they dug thier own grave here – and I don’t think he’s gone just for the money. It all looks a bit odd at first glance, but if you actually think about it – its not that fishy is it?

*Apologies if he does turn out to be a money-hunting twat. I just think people are jumping to conclusions