Dirty TackleAnzhi say QPR were “out of their minds” to pay Christopher Samba transfer fee
In the football equivalent of a car dealer howling with laughter as you drive away from the showroom in a clunking lemon with sawdust in the tank and no brakes, Russian side Anzhi Makhachkala have belittled Queens Park Ranger's decision to take Christopher Samba off of their hands during the January window.
In a bid to stay in the afloat for another year, the club that sits seven points away from safety at the bottom of the Premier League triggered a release clause to pay a club-record fee of £12.5m ($19.5m) for the Congo defender. They also agreed to pay him £100,000 ($157,000) every single week over a four-and-a-half year contract. Despite the fact that he is 28. And his name is Chris Samba.
Speaking to a Russian news website, Anzhi director German Tkachenko said what we are all thinking, adding that they actually "wept" when the agreement was made. The Guardian translates:
"At QPR he will earn almost as much as he did at Anzhi. In my view QPR have lost their minds.
"When they agreed to pay his release fee we wept. He [Samba] wept. Everybody says that he ran away from the club, but that's not true. He didn't put any pressure on the club until we received an offer from QPR for £12.5m, the amount required by his contract."
To be fair, Tkachenko also credited Samba as being "one of the top five defenders in Europe" in the same interview, but it is quite possible that the translation omitted the word "overpaid" from that sentence. The former Blackburn centre-back, meanwhile, helped QPR concede four goals at Swansea on Saturday. With a few more performances like that, Harry Redknapp will need someone else to pay £12.5m for him in the summer.
