by JBG » Sun Jun 26, 2005 9:40 am
It wouldn't happen.
Liverpool would not shell out £5.5million and a 4 year contract for a player they signed by mistake.
They would have watched him a lot by sending scouts out and also getting videos of the player.
However, there is probably some truth in the story. It could have happened that one of the times the scout went out he watched Igor Tudor by mistake and gave a glowing report of Igor Tudor and not Biscan. I'd believe that and I'd say that happened, but there is no way Liverpool bought Biscan after only watching him once.
Houllier was not an idiot. The guy was a complete workaholic who got by on 4 hours of sleep a night. During his time off he would fly out abroad and scout players. Of course, he made a lot of wrong decisions and bad calls but I bet he had Biscan watched a few times (probably saw him play himself) and watched loads of videos of him. I reckon that the story CGGY posted is an exaggeration and what really happened was that one of the times Houllier had Biscan watched, the scout watched the wrong player and reported Tudor back to Anfield thinking it was Biscan.
Occasionally teams make mistakes, most famously of all that amateur player Southampton played in a first team match for 10 minutes after the guy and his "agent" conned Graeme Souness into thinking he was George Weah's cousin! That was sheer stupidity, but Southampton paid no transfer fee for the guy.
Jolly Bob Grumbine.