Roque Santa Cruz has just completed a very successful debut season in the Premiership, finishing the 4th highest scorer with an impressive 19 goals. The Paraguayan striker looks to be the complete package, with his height (6′ 3″) and age (turns 27 this summer) also on his side, so it no surprise we are being linked with the player.
“The interest from Manchester United is real,” the player claimed last week. “But I’m busy now so my representatives will handle anything if there is a concrete offer.”
23 goals and 7 assists in a total of 42 games this season makes impressive reading, however, if we delve deeper in to his past, it appears as though we might have another Saha on our hands.
Before joining Blackburn Rovers, Santa Cruz spent the previous eight years of his career at Bayern Munich. In this time, he averaged just 19 league games a season, and never scored more than 8 goals in all competitions in a season. In the league, he never scored more than 5 goals in a domestic campaign. He has 27 Champions League appearances to his name and just 5 goals.The player has seen his career thus far ravaged by injuries. Whilst last season he only missed two league games for Rovers, he proved to be a liability due to injuries in Germany. That is not to say his season was injury free for the small town in Burnley, with him suffering from groin strain, a sprained ankle and a knee injury in 2007-2008.
It seems almost certain that Louis Saha will be leaving us this summer, most likely back to France, after another disappointing season for United. When fit, Saha can do a job for us, but unfortunately, that is not something we can rely upon, and it’s time to cut our losses. it has today been confirmed that there has been no news on his future. “There is nothing on the agenda until the club says otherwise,” one of Saha’s advisors said. “At the end of the season, the club told Louis to report back for pre-season training and he is now on holiday.”
Cruz appears to be 10 times the player he was in Germany, however that is no use to us if he spends the majority of next season, like he has done in the past, on the medical table. We have suffered too many times before because of an injury prone striker, so our replacement should be someone with a cleaner track record.
Do you think signing Roque Santa Cruz is worth the risk?
