Not The New Lee Hendrie!

Oh God know, we don’t need a new Lee Hendrie do we??!!

Martin O’Neill has compared the trickery of new signing Shaun Maloney with that of a ‘young Lee Hendrie’. I must have missed that game! :o)

O’Neill said of the former Celtic player: ‘He hasn’t played much in recent weeks and he’s not the tallest in the world, but he’ll be fine. Obviously because he’s so small, he has to have good control, and I think he’s got that. I think he’s got a bit of trickery and he’ll be an interesting signing.’



‘You know the way Lee Hendrie used to play here, coming in off the left hand side? He’s like a young Hendrie. He’s that type of player, but it will be interesting to see what other people think in a couple of weeks’ time.’

Lets hope Maloney is so so so much more than the wasted potential of Lee Hendrie? Lil Lee in spasms showed what a good player he was then he’d just disappear for a month or so. He never built on his England career and rarely built on his Villa one. He’ll always remain one of the ‘what ifs’ in my mind because IF he had produced what he could produce consistently, he’d have been a Villa great. But he didn’t and he isn’t!

As for Maloney, the signs are good. Reading the comments on the Vital Celtic site, not to mention a few on our message board, it looks like we’ve signed a cracker.

As Hoops fan pictishjohn said on our message board: ‘You got a great deal there!!!! Fast, creative attacking player who loves to run at defenders, scores and creates goals and is a TEAM player. As a Hoops fan, it is sad to see the wee man go but fair play to him – hopefully he will quickly make his mark at Villa and help pull Petrov back up to the true player he is.’

Another told Beefy: ‘Along with Larsson, Maloney was the best Celtic player I’ve seen since Dalglish and I’d even say the best Scottish player since Dalglish. It’s a shame that O’Neill left as he bought out the best in him and knew what made him perform. A class, class act’

Sounds good to me!