Jewls div 1 champions or this side

That was when we had a TEAM. All for one and one for all and that was all the way up to the first season in the Prem. If you watch any of the dvd’s from the season’s before we got promoted we played some brilliant football at times. Not kick and rush but good passing moves and good finishing. Perhaps pushing for the top level was more of an incentive for the players than just playing for survival.

I don’t think anyone posting one here would expect us to ever be anywhere near a top six position. The only excitement we’ve had in the last three or four seasons is trying to avoid the drop at the end of the season. If it was a choice between:-

a) supporting a team whose sole ambition is to stay in the Premier League regardless of the level of performance and throwing in the towel at the first opportunity in any cup competitions or

b) supporting one in the Championship who have a chance of winning more than they lose and who have a go at winning some silverware,

then I for one would choose the latter.

It seems a long time ago when I was stood on the terraces at Springfield Park (just near the chip van) with the rain running down the back of my legs and my dream then was that the team I supported would survive and not go the the wall. Then Dave Whelan came along (yeh, the one so many slag off on this forum) and my dreams changed to getting promoted through the leagues. Even then I never thought we would actually make the Premier League, but we did and the journey was fantastic. Now the dream has turned sour and I realise that the anticipation and the journey was actually better than arriving.

This team will be re-united on March 28th

Great night ahead

Its difficult to say really
There are some positions where Latics current players are head & shoulders above players in the Div 1 side e.g. Alcrarz, Ramis, Figueroa & Caldwell over an ageing Matt Jackson & Jason de Vos. Or James McArthur over Tony Dinning or Shaun Maloney over Lee McCulloch
Then there are others such as Bullard & Filan who could genuinely stake a claim in this current team, and then there’s the likes of Ellington who although I suspect that he never really had “it” to make it at this level I would have liked to have seen his partnership with Roberts at this level.
You’ve got the fact that the Div 1 side got over 100 points whereas this team will struggle to get in the late 30’s but then the div 1 side were playing Stockport, Wycombe & brentford & were the moneybags of the division whereas this team is playing the likes of united, chelsea, city, arsenal, spurs etc.. & are like penniless hobo’s in comparison

Sorry to be the one to point this out but is this not the Division 2 champions?

I have to disagree with the OP.

Yes – I’m as nostalgic as the rest. Yes – I find the Premier League to be boring. Yes – old teams probably had more team spirit (although they were still off sharply if a bigger team came sniffing).

But to say that the team that won what I still call the Third Division can be compared with a team that is playing in the Premier League is stretching the rose-tinted spectacle thing a bit far.

Unfortunately.

Jason De Vos looked out of his depth against the pacier strikers in the English games 3rd level & even more so when we got promoted & hence why Jewell let him go.
Also by the time that Latics signed him, there was a very good reason as to why Matt Jackson was signing for a 3rd tier side – because he was no longer good enough for the top flight
Gary Caldwell is far from perfect but is head & shoulders above those 2 as they were at that time
As for Figueroa – he no longer plays left back so I wasn’t comparing him to either Baines or McMillan. Incidentally I missed Baines off my list of shoe ins to the current side in place of Beausejour. Even as a wee bairn as he was then

The original poster was comparing the team that won the third tier against the team that was in the first tier twelve months ago – before it embarked on that epic run and was therefore rooted to the bottom of the league. So, let’s get three things clear.

1, we are not being asked to compare it to the current team.

2, in fact, we aren’t being asked to compare it at all because…

3, JayT only dredged it up to plug the Supporters club function at Easter

I suggest that we all untwist our knickers