Hello all. Thought I'd put my two-pence worth in, since Bas Savage & George O'Callaghan were both playing for Brighton last season.
Savage had scored 2 career league goals when we signed him from Gillingham for a year in Jan 07. At the time, Peter Schmeichel's goals per game ratio was better, so you can imagine the response a lot of the Brighton fans. However, as it turned out, something clicked for him with us and he became a bit of a cult figure. He scored 7 or 8 goals in the second half of the season & pretty much kept us out of the bottom 3. His moonwalking was probably the highlight of that season.
Last season, he was in and out of the starting 11, playing either up front or on the right wing & was most effective coming off the bench. He scored a couple of goals, but generally had less impact than the previous season. The club offered him a new 18-month contract in the Autumn, but he stalled & stalled, trying to get an offer over and above what he was worth. I think the moonwalking went to his head. Finally, our chairman withdrew the offer, revealing that Bas wanted to be the club's top earner. Our chairman doesn't like to be pushed about by players & their agents, so it was cheerio Bas. I'm led to believe he did something similar at Gillingham too.
I think he expected to be picked up straightaway, but instead he spent the next couple of months without a club. He's since said he was wrong in leaving us. Quite right - I think he'd built a rapport with our fans, despite being fairly awful, and he certainly wasn't going to get that at Millwall.
He is a big, gangly, awkward player, much of the time he bamboozles defenders because they don't know where his legs are going & neither does he. Bit of a lower league Paolo Wanchope. I've got to say, despite his cult status, I wasn't too distressed to see him go.
George O'Callaghan signed on loan for us at the start of last season. We'd tried to buy him, but rumours were that his agent was asking for unreasonable terms, so we loaned him hoping he'd come round. He looked a decent player in our team, didn't score any goals, but was tidy in midfield & looked like a leader, which we were badly missing. However, he came with a bit of a bad boy reputation (he describes himself as a cross between Joey Barton & George Best!) and things came to a head around New Year, when he criticised the board in the press over their handling of some player's contracts (including, presumably, that of Bas Savage). This came after a terrible 3-0 hammering at Milwall & the chairman was having none of that from a loan player. He went back to Ipswich, whose chairman apologised for the outburst, and they offloaded him to Cork.
I thought he was a decent enough player, but nothing spectacular, and since he had proved himself a bit of a chopper (as evidenced here - [
www.clubfanzine.com]), I wasn't too sorry to see him go. Useful player, bit of an @#$%&.
Anyway, hope that's useful! Good luck for next season.