Where in the world is Afonso Alves?

[Ed. Note: Thanks to Bigus Dickus again for the pic]

[Ed. Note...UPDATE: Alves will start tonight in the FA Cup game against Sheffield United. Let's see if he lights the bloody world on fire. My money's on "no".]

Now I don't know about you, nor can I speak for anyone else, but if I paid 12.7 million pounds for something, well, anything, I'd want my money's worth. If it was a yacht? I'd ride the bastard to work each morning and pray that I don't get a parking ticket. I'd never leave my mansion if it cost that much. If it was a plane? Fuck, even if I'm heading 30 blocks downtown, I'm taking the sky way so have a runway handy.

Unfortunately for Middlesbrough, they just spent that amount on a new plaything, Brazilian striker Afonso Alves, and he's still sitting in the corner gathering dust.

It's been a bloody month since you signed him! What's going on?

The Guardian blog brought this up this morning, and it's something I can't believe I missed. Not even Shevchenko gets that little playing time for his price tag!

There are a few details worth mentioning here: it's not entirely manager Gareth Southgate's fault as the wonderfully-relaxed [can't think why... too much time in the coffee bars?] British Embassy in Holland failed to issue Alves with a visa in time for him to immediately start playing. The long lay-off was apparent in training, as he showed up quite, ahem, larger around the stomach and way off his original game pace.

Southgate did give him three blink-and-you'll-miss-it substitute appearances, but in each one, he displayed the same I-can't-be-arsed attitude, doing little to nothing during his time on the pitch.

Sure, he did manage 34 goals for run-of-the-mill Heerenveen last year, but we've seen the Dutch Corollary [as I like to call it; expect a more nerdy, detailed post on that towards the end of the week] before; quite simply, goals against rubbish Dutch league teams like Venlo and AS Alkmaar don't exactly translate well to the EPL. [Dirk Kurt anyone?]

Alves, of course, is not going to take this criticism lying down [probably mostly sitting, I'd imagine]:

"I look like I'm lazy, like Romario, but it's not the truth. I'm just playing a game with defenders. It's a tactical thing. They are not looking at me and by the time they do look it's too late, I've suddenly scored. Defenders don't know how to defend against me."

[I can't wait to see what he does to Titus Bramble.]

The Dutch Eredivisie is notoriously slack on the defensive side, and I'm skeptical as to how well Alves can adjust to the English game. His innocuous, anonymous start to a career with The Boro is troubling, to say the least.

This is a team that hasn't seen a great striker in a decade, when the silver-haired Fabrizio "White Feather" Ravanelli lit up the Riverside time and time again [I'll never forget, he scored a hat-trick against us on the opening day of the season... ugh]. Since then, they've suffered through the pain of a past-it Alen Boksic and a seemingly-blind Massimo Maccarone.

Afonso Alves has been set up as the goose with the golden egg, but right now, he hasn't laid a bloody thing.

Do we blame Farmer Southgate or the goose himself?