A Funny State Of Affairs

By: Bill Osborne
Date: 05/10/2001

IT WAS announced this week that Wolves defender Ryan Green was coming to Grimsby on trial and it was hoped he would be included in the Reserves side against Lincoln City. As it turned out Green did not play and there were reports that a misunderstanding had occurred regarding his availability.

Today, manager Lennie Lawrence, made a statement to Mariners Net, the official site, in relation to the situation regarding Green.

"Ryan Green is with us for training and has been since Tuesday. Originally, he was meant to arrive on Monday but for personal reasons his arrival was delayed by 24 hours. Had he arrived on the Monday, we may well have used him in the reserves, but in the circumstances we decided not to."

"We wanted to have a longer look in training before registering him for the reserves, and besides there were a few of our own players who we wanted to look at ahead of Friday evening's game with Rotherham."

Now to the onlooker, that seems a reasonable explanation but Lennie also went on to say: "Ryan has got a lot of ability but he has not even been a regular in Wolves reserves this season and he is short of match fitness."

"It is unlikely that he can do us a job in the short term which had been hoped due to Macca's injury, and a loan at this stage does not look on for us."

Then why might you ask, did Lennie bring him in? If he was looking for a replacement for Macca, one would assume that he would be looking at a match fit player, capable of fitting into the team. If has as now been revealed, Green is not a contender then what was he doing at Grimsby in the first place?

Surely when one looks at acquiring new players, certain pertinent information is sought regarding his plans, his availability, his match fitness and some idea of his capabilities. This appears not to be the case in this instance so it seems we can assume that Green will be added to the long list of "might have beens" and goodness knows, we have had plenty of those.

On the other hand, I might have missed something but on this one, Lennie has me beat!

Our pundits on the Message Board might know better.

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