Tottenham’s midfielder Niko Kranjcar must be feeling pretty confused at the moment. His manager Harry Redknapp obviously rates him; he bought him from his old cub Portsmouth. Yet, despite public cries that the Croat is very much part of his long-term plans, Redknapp insists on bringing in others and forcing Kranjcar further down the pecking order. So is it time for Kranjcar to turn his back on Spurs?
We all know it’s a squad game. Tottenham have to plan for a potential fixture pile-up due to a combination of Champions League football, an ambitious pursuit of Premier League glory and rearranged games due to the ‘big freeze’. But Kranjcar’s case is different to any other of the squad players at White Hart Lane, or anywhere else for that matter. How can his manager justify only including him in six fixtures all season, but still insisting the player has a ‘big part to play this season’? No one can doubt his ability at 26, he has plenty to offer. But if getting in ahead of the likes of Gareth Bale, Rafael van der Vaart or Luka Modric wasn’t hard enough, Kranjcar now has to compete with the latest White Hart Lane recruit – Steven Pienaar.
So what is it about him that the rest of us can’t see? He generally does well when called upon, and we never hear about him brawling with team-mates on the training ground or getting into trouble on nights out. I’d be tempted to side with the midfielder and assume he hasn’t exactly been treated brilliantly by his manager. If you plan to sign someone like Pienaar, why deny Kranjcar the chance to go the other way? Everton bid £3 million, if reports are to believed.
And what about the proposed move to Werder Bremen? Redknapp didn’t exactly stand in his way, but talking to the press, he did his utmost to make us all believe he didn’t want to lose such a talented player. My response would be to play him a little more!
True, Kranjcar has been unlucky with injuries. When he first joined Tottenham, he was heavily involved in first-team action. But if this tells us anything, it’s that he is considered good enough by the Spurs management. With this in mind, signing Pienaar is a bit of a mystery to me.
Kranjcar has every right to feel hard done by. Maybe his problem is that he isn’t the modern day prima-donna who will start throwing his incredibly flash and expensive toys and of his brand new pram because he isn’t getting his own way. Is he becoming a victim of professionalism? We can only speculate. But if another player like van der Vaart for example wasn’t getting much playing time, it would be interesting to see how he’d react if his club turned down a bid from another club.
What’s worrying for the Croatian himself, is that his national team manager Slaven Bilic has now come out and said he needs to be playing football. He could quite easily be playing the same standard of football elsewhere but as it stands, Tottenham seem to be stifling his progress.
Niko Kranjcar is too good to be a squad player at a club like Spurs. At 26, time is on his side, yet you get the feeling his next move is a big one. Kranjcar owes nothing to Spurs and if he were to come out and demand a transfer like so many other of the Premier League’s ‘stars’ then I personally wouldn’t blame him in the slightest. Time to go, Niko.
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