Will Freddie Ljungberg be a Lubo or Gravesen?

What will Celtic get from new signing Freddie Ljungberg?

Will it be a glorious Lubo-like spell watching a magician at work in the type of environment that his talent was made for, or will it be the bull-in-a-china-shop swansong that was Thomas Gravesen’s Celtic career.

There are three words that haunt and scar Ljungberg’s reputation and they are West, Ham and United.

The Swede’s move across London was an expensive disaster for the club but over the last ten years West Ham have been pouring money down the drain at an incredible rate with a succession of players being written off despite massive transfer fees and big money contracts.

With the ‘greedy b*&*&d’ tag and injury prone stigma attached to him the Swede headed off to the MLS and rediscovered the enthusiasm for the game that drained away at West Ham.

The MLS allowed him to fully recover from a hip injury in a less demanding environment than West Ham’s annual battle with relegation and in an interview for the Arsenal website he comes over as a player with something to prove as well as being something of a free spirit.

Interviews with official club productions can often seem boring and predictable but in this case Ljungberg opens up with a lot of truths about his move to America and clearly at the time had an open mind about returning to Europe with a point to prove.

USA.Arsenal.com: David Beckham came to America with great fanfare a few years ago and joined the L.A. Galaxy. Clearly, it did not turn out as well as both parties would have hoped.  Did this give you any cause for concern before you signed with Seattle?

Freddie Ljungberg: “A little bit. I was always compared to Beckham a bit my whole career, but we’re two totally different people. Of course, I get the question all the time, ‘are you just going to do like Beckham and take the money’. I don’t mean that in a bad way to Beckham, but that’s what fans say, ‘take the money and go back to Europe’ kind of thing.

“And that’s why the league, and Seattle, wanted me to sign a much longer contract. I signed for two years, because I felt that’s something… I know I want to play here for two years and I’ll keep my word to that. But his decisions are his decisions, and my decisions are my decision and we’re two different people.”

USA.Arsenal.com: How did the move to Seattle come about?

Freddie Ljungberg: “That’s quite a long story. I was a free transfer for the first time in my life last summer, which is amazing, you can choose where you want to play! That hadn’t happened before. Because I’m free, there were options everywhere to go and play, but I said to my agent, I wanted just to take it easy and sit down and take a break and see what I want to do, where I want to play, and stuff.

“You know agents… they’re always on you, they always call you at home ‘this club, this club, this club’… whatever, but I was like, I didn’t want to know. I just wanted to take it easy. In the end my decision was, I wanted to do something totally different. A bit of a… an adventure. Something of a challenge, and help the sport here in America. That’s how it really came about, which might surprise a lot of people that I came here this early. Everybody said ‘you should wait another two years and play a bit more in Europe and then go.’ But that’s how it came about.

USA.Arsenal.com: You scored your first MLS goal in your first start for Seattle. How important was it to get that first goal out of the way early and to do it with such flair?

Freddie Ljungberg: “It’s always nice to get the first goal out of the way because of the attention of when the first goal is going to be there and to do it straightaway, that’s a nice feeling. The reception I got and the comments after the game from the people were amazing. Of course that’s nice, but it’s all, how do you say, just rolling on from there and I’m very happy.

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