It’s a funny old game right enough. Over in Dutch football there’s vastly contrasting situations for two former Scottish Premiership performers.
Over at FC Utrecht the on-loan Celtic goalkeeper Vasilis Barkas continues his recovery as a top quality goalkeeper, which was apparent during his time at AEK Athens but sadly missing during his unhappy stint in Scottish football.
Barkas has been named in the Eredivisie Team of the Week for his performance against Heerenveen on Saturday. Barkas helped FC Utrecht to a 2-1 win, their third league win in a row that takes them up to 7th in the league.
FC Utrecht have an option to buy the goalkeeper and if he keeps his current form going that could result in an unlikely windfall for Celtic at the end of the season, allowing the club to recover some of the £4.5m spent signing the keeper from AEK back in July 2020.
If Barkas is making a name for himself in the Eredivisie for all the right reasons, the same cannot be said for Ajax’s big money summer signing from theRangers Calvin Bassey.
The £19m signing will be back at Ibrox tomorrow to face his old club who need a 5-0 win to keep their slim hopes alive of securing a Europa League spot after losing all five of their Group stage matches to date by some big scorelines (4-0, 3-0, 2-0, 7-1 and 3-0). That put theRangers on course for the record as the worst ever side to participate in the Champions League Group stages, and that will be confirmed if Bassey is on the winning side tomorrow night.
However the former Ajax manager Aad de Mos, is clearly not a fan of Bassey and can’t believe his old club actually spent that kind on money on the player.
“Calvin Bassey has no insight, no speed of thought and he gets turned far too easily. He isn’t good enough to compete at this level,” he stated, as reported by Scottish Sun. “There is no aggression in him. I also can’t believe that Ajax spent that amount of money bringing in a player from the Scottish league.”
So there you have it, Barkas is flavour of the moment as the top performing goalkeeper in Dutch football while big money signing Bassey is getting slaughtered by the folks close to Ajax, including their former manager.
As we were saying, it’s a funny old game.
𝗛𝗲𝘁 𝗧𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗲 𝗪𝗲𝗲𝗸 𝘃𝗮𝗻 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗲𝗹𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗱𝗲 𝟭𝟮!👑
Dit zijn de beste elf van deze Eredivisie-speelronde op basis van statistieken. pic.twitter.com/CHc3UN3jmQ
— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) October 31, 2022
Bassey … spot on comment. It’s hard to say he’s even woth 10% of the reputed fee paid for him.😌😒🤑😕🤮🤡🦥🦤🧚🤷♂️🧬📌📈🍭
Pinned numerous emoji’s but reduce if you wish. was trying to promote fact that he’s useless!! Couldn’t locate donkey emoji which would have solved problem.