Footballers and Self-Awareness Don't Go Together, Do They, Roque?

As any Manchester City supporter will no doubt tell you the decision to buy Roque Santa Cruz was possibly one of the worst in the clubs long and distinguished history of bad buys.

Those old enough will point to the £1.5m purchase of Steve Daley from Wolves now coming a close second to RSC's tenure at the Blues.

As rocky (sorry for the awful pun) as even Robinho's stay at City was, at last he played and even scored a few.

But let's keep this to the fact and figures shall we.

RSC was bought from Blackburn by ex-manager Mark Hughes for £18m. That was a startling sum as there wasn't any other club vaguely interested in the player, the race for his signature was a one horse one, so why pay so much?

Not only did City overpay they also bought a player with a very poor record in terms of his fitness and one who was still recovering from knee surgery.

He eventually managed 20 appearances in eighteen months and scored four goals, one against Scunthorpe and two against Sunderland we're the highlights.

But that doesn't paint the full picture as he was woeful the few times he was allowed to play.

In his last appearance for City he managed to do almost nothing against Birmingham City.

His stat's for that game were:

Played 24 minutes, passes attempted six, passes completed three, tackles 0, shots 0, assists 0, goals 0.

And that was more than he achieved when he pulled on the sky blue in most of his other games.

But today he signed for Blackburn on loan and when interviewed about the change he said that he "Felt marginalised by the manager and that his move to Blackburn was like coming home".

"I want to get playing and scoring goals again and this is a real chance for me to prove myself after a frustrating period."

I am pretty sure that City fans would like to ask RSC why he didn't take every chance to prove himself at City, as he played with little or no noticeable effort.

Indeed he seemed to sweat more worrying about his place on the coach home than during his on-field minutes!