First and foremost may I apologize for the cliche.

Last night was the first full 90 minutes that we have seen one of the January recruits who we have signed on a permanent basis – Medo Kamara.  When he was doing the rounds in the rumour mill it was said that Tottenham Hotspur where tracking him with a view to a potential £16m bid for the tough-tackling midfielder.  So how come only 1 year later Bolton Wanderers can sign him for a dramatically reduced price of £300k?

Well, in the 1st half of last night’s game I thought I had the answer – Tottenham must have changed their minds when they saw him play.  Medo looked off the pace, committing foul after foul, every pass was to a Blackburn player, he was constantly out of position and chasing the game, even heading the ball or merely holding onto the ball he looked shaky.  I thought that he’d either be subbed or sent off before half time.

Then we got to the 2nd half.  Medo looked assured on the ball, he made some crucial tackles, interceptions, he was passing the ball about well, carving out some great opportunities for our full backs to run on to, he even had 2 decent shots on goal (one of which Chungy should have buried after the Blackburn keeper had parried it!).  So the 2nd half gave us more of a glimpse of why Tottenham were tracking him.

Watching Medo reminded me a lot of watching Nigel Reo-Coker.  Reo-Coker, for all of this faults, was a solid player for us in my opinion and was the kind of player that we were lacking in the 1st half of the season.  We didn’t have the Makele/Mascherano kind of player who does the dirty work and breaks up the game for the more creative players to enjoy a bit of freedom to produce the chances at goal.  I personally would like to see more of Medo as if he can grow into a game that much in such a short space of time I believe he can become a permanent fixture in the Bolton midfield as we push for promotion (and I didn’t think I’d be mentioning the ‘P’ word a couple of months ago!

What do you think?  A complete gamble?  A flop? Or could Dougie have found an absolute gem and the final piece in the Bolton jigsaw?