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Bouaouzan has to be the strangest signing we have ever made. The mind boggles as to just what the point of signing him, has been?
he is the only professional player in the UK with six (yes six, count them) consecutive vowels in his name.
Sadly, this did not compensate for him being mental and lacking in nearly every skill necessary to be able to play in even a poor team.
:) definitely not Vat69 despite his knackered knees probably in much better condition than me.Kevin Beattie is riddled with arthritis these days, and very nearly topped himself a couple of years ago. It all went wrong for him, with him having to pack up playing, and he tried his hand at being a publican (which was typical for an ex footballer) and it went wrong. His marriage failed, etc, etc.
I believe he is doing alright, now he has sorted things out.
“we couldn’t shift King because of his massive wages, something which I read (I may be wrong here) contributed to us not being in a position to sign Scott MacDonald.” – King was gone & contract cancelled before Latics bid for Scott MacDonald in January so I can’t see that one being true
“We’ve loaned out players to small clubs, and like Vat said, will still be paying some portion of their wages” – Still paying some of their wages or not, the payroll has still been reduced temporarily
“However, Martinez has admitted that he would rather have slowly introduced Gómez and Scotland to Premiership football but circumstances dictated that he couldn’t” – Whilst I know Bobby said that in his interview with the websites the other week it is actually a load of garbage & contradicts what he said about them when they signed. Gomez in particular was going to be the creative heart of the team & everything would flow through him, yet now he’s telling us he only wanted to ease him in. Espanyol, the team he came from are a bottom 6 top flight side (give or take the odd season) in a league that I would rate of a slightly lower standard than our own. he couldn’t make their team & they wanted to get rid of him yet Bobby was bringing him in as his “key” signing. Whilst no football einstein, that had alarm bells ringing for me along with some of the “lazy” media scouting reports I read
Having watched latics in all 4 divisions you get to know the types of players who will be a success in certain divisions. It didn’t take a genius to knwo that if a 31/32 yr old striker was good enough for the English top flight then he’d have been playing in it alot sooner as opposed to bumming around the Scottish leagues“Sinclair has been decent” – Has he????? Barely started a game & when he has (e.g. Pompey) he has been poor. Doesn’t even seem to make the bench these days which shows you how highly even Bobby rates him. Tasty bird or not he’s waste of a squad place & I’d guess his salary is far from next to nothing seeing as how he’s a Chelsea player
“Are we really labelling Thomas as a Martinez signing?” – Yep. He wanted him here if his comments have been anything to go by
“On the other hand, he has managed to persuade two of Britain’s (well, one’s ‘Irish’ apparently) top footballing prospects to come to Wigan. Both have been linked with moves to the Barcelonas and Liverpools of the world” – McCarthy is showing real promise undoubtedly & yes Liverpool offered him a deal when he was 16 but plenty of promising youngsters get signed up by the big clubs & fall by the way side. At the end of the day however, Bobby managed to persuade himto join latics (an established top flight club) over Wolves so I don’t doubt some of our other managers could have done the same.
As for all the clubs allegedly linked with Moses. yeah right – I think that was far more a case of Crystal Palace & his agent trying to spark a bidding war amongst the clubs who were interested as opposed to being genuine coz at the end of the day who went in for him with an actual bid? Latics & 3 Championship sides – so again yes I think it could have happened under a previous regime. I also don’t think Latics are in the position to sign players with the “potential” to be good. We need em to hit the ground running“Diamé has been fantastic this season” – No he’s not. he’s been great in some games & equally poor in others. Admittedly one of the better signings but still one with alot of improving to do. And if all these big clubs were scouting him then it hardly took a vast knowledge of Spanish football to know about him did it. When he was first linked there were many on here who’d heard of him
So for me we’ve got 2 players with potential Diame & McCarthy, 1 who looks good but (as saturday showed) is more than acapable of having complete mares & another (Moses) who I keep hearing is going to be great but we might have to wait a while to find that one out.
The rest quite simply haven’t been up to the job
“imagine the team he could build” – To quote some bloke out of Red Dwarf “I’d rather not, last time I did that it took me a week just to dry the mattress”
Having watched latics in all 4 divisions you get to know the types of players who will be a success in certain divisions. It didn’t take a genius to knwo that if a 31/32 yr old striker was good enough for the English top flight then he’d have been playing in it alot sooner as opposed to bumming around the Scottish leaguesIt’s hard to disagree with all you say, to be honest, and I particularly like the comment I picked out above. :)
To defend Martinez a little – because apparently that’s all I do and have even been knighted for it – as has been recognized by all, he is hamstrung in who he can bring in, transfer and wage-wise.
That said, he did seem to specifically hang his hat on Scotland and Gomez which has proved to be a mis-judgement.
McCarthy has been a success, but I wonder whether finding him was all down to Martinez or whether it was a deal that was in train already.
”Roberto’s transfer signings have been poor I agree, he should have bought Terry for £30m, Gerrard for £40m, Rooney for £50m and Messi for £100m and put them all on £300k a weekInstead he has spent very little on players unproven at this level and gambled on cheap foreign imports.
Anyone would think that he can’t afford to go out and spend £100m on a top class squad.”
What a, quite frankly, pathetic, childish response – with the exception of the middle paragraph
I don’t claim he’s got an unlimited pot to spend but the original poster can’t claim that our current manager has been left with a load of dross he can’t shift (when most of it has been shifted) or indeed use the word dross to condemn the previous managers signings when the current manager’s signings are as bad – and in some cases worseFair enough, I was just making an exaggerated point which is that it all comes down to “you get what you pay for” and our manager hasn’t got the money to buy quality so has to buy cheap and unproven.
We are 15th in the table and that is an overachievement.
If you don’t see it that way, then please tell me which of the other 14 clubs we should be above because we have higher gate receipts, transfer budget and wage bills?
I find it pathetic and childish not to mention completely baffling that people ( and this isn’t particularly aimed at you TL ) seem unable to accept our position in the table in the biggest and richest league in the world and are have turned so aggressively and are slating a rookie manager with the odds stacked against him to even stay in this division instead of supporting him.
“It’s hard to disagree with all you say, to be honest, and I particularly like the comment I picked out above.”
I would just like to point out that I didn’t mean it literally!!!!
“as has been recognized by all, he is hamstrung in who he can bring in, transfer and wage-wise” – To be fair, so have all our managers since we got into the top flight. We have always been competing with clubs with far higher transfer & pay budgets. Its a fact of life but Bobby seems to be doing a worse job of it than the others (with the possible exception of Hutchings).
We don’t really know if its any worse or better now than it was for say Hutchings who was given £5mill + alot of wages for Koumas but it could be that Hutchings took the gamble of splashing his cash on one big show signing & the rest went on freebies (Bramble, Sibierski, melchiot etc..).
Lets not also forget that a £7mill transfer package was agreed in Jan for this Ruben fella until his club tried to change the terms of the deal. I’ve also read from various sources that significant bids were put in for the guy at Mallorca & some fella from Espanyol but for one reason or another nowt happened.
He has also spent money on Diame, Amaya, Thomas, Caldwell, McCarthy, Gomez, Moses & Scotland. Not vast sums admittedly but as much (if not more) than Hutchings was given & (before he got the money from Palacios’s & Heskey’s sale and bought N’Zogbia) I don’t recall Bruce spending vast amounts of cash an any particular season. Just remember King but that package was less than the Ruben package. As was Valencia. The likes of Kapo, Kingson, De Ridder, Cho, Watson etc.. were either freebies or around the same amount as Bobby has paid for the likes of Gomez & Scotland“That said, he did seem to specifically hang his hat on Scotland and Gomez which has proved to be a mis-judgement” – yet now he says he only wanted to “ease” them in & some people believe him!!
I will give Bobby credit for the McCarthy deal as from what I remember Wolves had all but announced his arrival till Bobby put his bid in. His namesake Mick put him joining us down to Jonah’s powers of persuausion from when they’d played together or somet
“Fair enough, I was just making an exaggerated point which is that it all comes down to “you get what you pay for” and our manager hasn’t got the money to buy quality so has to buy cheap and unproven.
We are 15th in the table and that is an overachievement.
If you don’t see it that way, then please tell me which of the other 14 clubs we should be above because we have higher gate receipts, transfer budget and wage bills?
I find it pathetic and childish not to mention completely baffling that people ( and this isn’t particularly aimed at you TL ) seem unable to accept our position in the table in the biggest and richest league in the world and are have turned so aggressively and are slating a rookie manager with the odds stacked against him to even stay in this division instead of supporting him.”
i can see where you’re coming from to be honest but I just think its used as an excuse to gloss over some of the big mistakes our manager is making.
i don’t particularly see 15th but more importantly 4 points (having played a game more) than the bottom 3 as being over achieving. We’ve done better than that in 3 of the 4 full seasons we’ve been in this division.
He’s taken a relatively decent side & made it worse. The defence is a joke compared to the previous couple of seasons. He seems to have no alternative game plan if things aren’t going right. He seems to have been allowed himself to be swayed by certain players as to where they should be playing (Scharner). His … well i could go on & on and none of it can be explained by a lack of fundspersonally I haven’t turned aggressively on him. I thought his appointment was a mistake at the time & said so in the main because he was a “rookie” – His lack of experience & the things that has been bringing with it all season is fast undoing what other managers have spent the last 4 years & more building up.
Yes I know Latics will continue & I’ll still supoprt them but I won’t sit there & shrug my shoulders with an “oh well it was a great ride” attitude eitherPossibly.Martinez’ long term aim is to obviously build a squad capable of playing football the way that he likes; right now, we’re nowhere near that. We have the basis of a squad, but it is very young and inexperienced. On paper, our starting XI is decent, and if the league was played out on paper then we’d probably be a comfortable mid-table side, but after our strongest eleven, we have very little. Slowly we are progressing and developing the squad with the acquisition of very good players in each window and Martinez is, little by little, building a squad of players capable of playing to his ethos. But right now, we have very little experience and team selection is limited.
It’s a risky game, obviously, and if we go down this season then it will have proven completely futile, but if we stay up we put ourselves in a position to strengthen the squad again – not just in terms of quality, but depth too – and hopefully, or rather theoretically, we’d be in a position to push on a bit.
Managers need time to create a team fit to play football suited to their style, and Martinez has faith in his system and methods, and is obviously willing to persist with his beliefs despite getting tonked by Bolton and potentially being in a relegation battle, but he does this with the long-term in mind. If we stay up, his patience will be rewarded. If he abandoned his tactical ideology as soon as we go one down, then we’d never get anywhere.
He’s had two transfer windows, and been unable to shift a lot of dross that Bruce brought in during those (which will have severely hindered bringing players in), so I’ll refrain from waving the ‘Martinez Out’ banners just yet, and give the man some time. (I’d never actually wave them, because I’m not a moron, lol).
That’s my tuppence worth, anyway.
Why do people keep going on about Steve Bruce and his bad signings? Some may not have worked but he signed some real quality Palacios, Cattermole, Bramble to name just a few.
Anyway your defending the man who signed Gomez,Scotland, Ayma :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:
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