Always amused by this 'talk of the ground' stuff. Only people I ever talk to at the ground are my mates or the bloke in front of me and it is always about the game, not if one of our players is supposedly signing for another team.
The moment he said that his opinion was more valid than those who attended games about 2 years ago was the moment I finally stopped taking him seriously.
It is nothing to do with discrimination against ex-pats. Once again it is the FACT that someone who attends a lot of games is going to have more of an opinion worth listening to than someone who attends no games no matter how well they try to 'inform' themselves (how do you do that by the way? Genuinely curious.)
The opinion of a couple of people which you have chosen to take as fact. He has had one or two bad games (away from home from what I recall.) but is in the main a really good player at this level.