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Pat Gavin once scored from a shot (if I remember right) from just inside the centre circle of the opposition half – He was still $h!te though!! ;)
A certain Bongsmon will be 4th official for the reserve’s game at Liverpool in a month so they should get to see this Cruyff fella at close quarters!
According to our Bobby, young Cruyff should be ready for the first team in 2 or 3 years
Completely different culture involved in supporting an American football team than there is supporting a european “soccer” team
The Colts have also only won 1 superbowl in the last 40 years so I’m not sure that they pass as one of the big boysI agree with your general point though
It’s not someone above him, but alongside.Bruce had Black, Jewell had Hutchins. Many managers have a trusted number 2 alongside them who provides good advice.
I’m afraid the problem in my opinion is not that Martinez isn’t good enough, but the support isn’t.
Complete & totally passing the buck.
Martinez is the manager just as Jewell & Bruce were. Bruce appointed Black, Jewell appointed Hutchings & Martinez appointed Jones & Barrow.
Jones & Barrow are who Martinez told Whelan he needed as his “trusted number 2’s” to make his project work & in the case of Jones (& his scout & keeping coach from Swansea) they cost alot of money to bring to the club.
Again if you’re saying that these people aren’t good enough then the buck stops with the person who appointed them & it brings into question his judgementThe same principle applies here as it does to bringing someone new to work in above him. Do you say to Bobby pick a new assistant coz the ones you have are useless & how would he react? Do you say here is a new assistant coz your current ones are useless & as you chose em we don’t trust you to be able to make the right choice this time either? What happens if you let Bobby choose & his new assistants do nowt to improve the situation? What happens if Whelan appoints one & Bobby & them keep clashing over coaching, tactics, formations????
The squad is Bobby’s, the coaching staff are his, the tactics are his, the formation is his etc.. If things aren’t going right it can’t be Bobby’s fault can it? No it must be Graeme Jones’s!!
After the “6 at the back” Walsall game me & some friends got talking to David Lee in the Walsall clubhouse after the game & you got the distinct impression that Deehan wasn’t well liked then too.
When we were driving home we noticed the club coach ahead on the motorway, hastily scrawled “Deehan Out” on mine & my mates t-shirt & hung out of the car sunroof as we drove past.
Seems a bit childish now like but David Lee appreciated the humour at the time. From what i could see as the wind blasted me in the face, John Deehan was less impressed.On useless managers, wasn’t watching Latics during his first spell in charge but Bryan Hamilton took some beating when he returned to the club & I’m sure you’d have had a queue of volunteers ready to dish that out too
Good shout Appley mon and i posted the same months ago.I just wished he had a decent mentor to seek advice in times such as now someone with vast knowledge and experience. Even if it was in a short term consultancy role to get RM moving in the right direction to becoming a really good manager. A Frank Macklintock / George Graham type who has been around the top level for yonks.If you’re saying that Martinez needs some help then you’re basically saying that he isn’t good enough & needs somebody else in to tell him what to do & where he is going wrong.
If that is the case then to be frank it means that he isn’t good enough & should be sent on his way otherwise he is just wasting valuable wage space when he is “manager” but someone else is telling him what to do.
And how would it work? I stated this the other week when someone mentioned it but rewind back to the Bolton game & Bobby shows his line up to new guy. New guy turns round & asks if Bobby is having a laugh, that team will get torn apart. Does Bobby acknowledge that error & ask the new guy what line up he should put out (& then you’re back to the point of why is Bobby there in the 1st place) or does Bobby tell new guy that he knows what he’s doing, that it’ll work & he isn’t changing his mind (& then you get to the point of what the hell is the new guy doing there if Bobby ignores the advice)?Bobby is either good enough or he isn’t. If he needs someone in “above” him then he isn’t good enough
Bobby has money to spend (albeit peanuts compared to others in the division) but Kenny Swain quite literally had none to spend.
IMO what counts against Swain is not the god awful football we had to watch (a 2-2 draw away at Leek in the cup springs to mind after having led 2-0 with about 5 minutes to go) coz he took over a squad that had somet like 8 players on the first day of training (I remember a photo in the Observer with the whole squad in it) & couldn’t spend a bean but its the fact that Graham Barrow got the same squad playing much better almost instantly & that shows that his managerial skills probably weren’t up to scratchI also believe that a different manager (& I’m talking about ones who are available at present) could get the current squad playing much better than Bobby seems to be able to – although that theory will have to be hypothetical until Bobby does go. And I don’t foresee that happening any time soon
Anyone listen to the phone in on Saturday night? They kept asking for Wigan fans to call in, but only one bothered – which just about sums up our support really. Before you ask, I was driving. 160 mile trip home for me after every home game.Anyway a West Ham fan rang in (sounded just like Ray Winston). He was basically complaining about the modern football fan, or ‘the Sky Sports generation’ to use his exact phrase. As he put it, they expect too much and expect their team to win all the time. He went on that he’s older than most and knows that being a football supporter means he will see the good times, the bad times and even the downright indifferent times. It’s part of the whole being a supporter experience. If a player makes a mistake, so what. If the manager isn’t getting the results, so what. His job as a supporter is to support his team through all of it. He may not like certain players, the owners, or the manager, but he isn’t going waste his time whining about it. He told how for half of last season a bloke behind him whined and moaned every week. Eventually he’d had enough, stood up, turned around and gave him a mouthful. Then about a dozen others all joined in. It seems the silent majority are usually quite positive and supportive.
I agree with that but only in so much as when you’re at the game.
For me the whole point of internet forums like these is to vent your spleenI stopped listening to his press stuff years ago. It’s obvious he will not make a negative utterance of any kind in public. I suspect what he says on the training ground is actually somewhat different. That said, I suspect a bollocking from Bob is like being savaged by a dead sheep as some politician once famously said.On the subject of what happens on the training ground, I saw somet on Sky teletext yesterday from Martinez saying it had been a really bad week & in light of that he was really pleased with the performance – he went on to expand on that “really bad week” & said, amongst other things, “from things that happened on the training ground”
Got me thinking (as I haven’t heard of any injuries in training) that things hadn’t been harmoniousWhen I wasn’t lounging round wasting tax payers money as a student, I was at the forefront of the “Swain Out” movement but with the benefit of hindsight, to call him our worst ever manager is a little unfair.
Yes he got us to our lowest ever football league position & I had Latics as nailed on for relegation to the conference in his 2nd season the club really didn’t have a pot to pish in at the time – sure I remember reading a story that at one point during his reign the club couldn’t even afford to buy paper for the fax machine. Bobby doesn’t know how good he’s got it budget wise compared to then.
True, Barrow got the same team performing better with a few tweaks here & there but then he couldn’t produce the goods when given a bigger budget by Whelan (the memory of him spending all summer haggling with Exeter over some fella with a surname like Cecere when he wouldn’t go higher than £10k despite having a substantial “warchest” springs to mind)For me the worst manager would have to be John Deehan – got us promoted but with the budget he had he’d have been hard pressed not to but some of his tactics & team selections but Bobby’s against Bolton well & truly in the shade:
6 at the back away at Walsall
Completely changing his side for a good friday/easter saturday game away at bristol Rovers in the 2nd div when the club could still have made a (somewhat hopeful) late push for the play offs, getting whalloped 5-0 & then bringing them all back for a game a few days later against Burnley & winning & then saying his selection against Bristol had been justified coz he was no longer concerned abotu relegation
Dropping his top scorer (David Lowe) & Kevin Sharp (for Steve Morgan), playing Jones up front on his own and putting Smeets & Lee on opposite flanks to normal for a cup game at Blackburn. Going 4-0 down, bringing his top scorer on & switching his wingers back to their correct flanks, pulling 2 goals back & should have had a penalty – then saying after the game that his initial selection was justified coz we didn’t concede from any cornersMan i could go on all day about that clueless g!t. Makes me realise how good we’ve got it now with Bobby!!!! ;) ;) ;) goodpost
I’m sure I read yesterday that the manager of Sligo Rovers had been given permission to talk to St Johnstone & that his name was Paul Cook
Darren Patterson was manager of Oxford United for a while
Pat McGibbon is manager at Newry City
Kevin Langley has been manager at Bangor City, Congleton Town, Kidsgrove Athletic, Witton Albion & more recently Northwich Villa where he was given the boot from last week
Greg Strong is manager of Rhyl
Lee Ashcroft at Kendal TownOh & I found out the other week when talking to the husband of my wife’s mate that Steven Appleton is manager of a team in the Ormskirk & District Sunday League!!!!
I suspect that Hughes would turn it down as he seems to think he is above some of the lesser clubs around
O’Neill I wouldn’t be so sure about – he was prepared to jump into the sinking ship that was West Ham last season until they publicly mishandled Grant’s departure. I know West Ham would have offered him more salary but it shows he’s prepared to look down in the depths for work
Curbishley – unless he’s happy with his TV work & doesn’t wanna move from down south I don’t see any reason as to why he’d turn it downI should point out that I’m not seeing Bobby should or needs to go just that the I feel the “there’s no-one else out there so we may as well stick with what we’ve got” argument is pretty weak (in relation to Martinez not Whelan)
THREE MANAGERS THAT WOULD BE WORTH THINKING ABOUT ARE:
O’NEIL
HUGHES
CURBISHLEYTHEY ARE ALL AVAILABLE. I AM NOT SURE IF THEY WOULD COME TO US THOUGH, BUT ALL HAVE PL EXPERIENCE AND COULDN’T BE A LOT WORSE
For various reasons, not one of them would even entertain the idea of coming to Wigan, Horc[/quote]
With all due respect Griff people were saying the same thing last season when some of the darkside were putting forward Hodgson & Allardyce as alternatives to Bobby
One of them went to West Brom (owned by a guy notoriously prudent with the club’s purse strings) and the other went to a Championship sideNow I don’t know if any of O’Neill, Hughes or Curbishley would come to Latics if offered the post but you don’t know for sure that they wouldn’t either.
Its a pointless question coz Bobby is very unlikely to get the push but if he was, if you don’t ask you don’t getAt Newcaslte on Saturday I actually felt I had stepped back in time to a place where our fans actually supported the team.There might have only been a few hundred but they got behind the team and appreciated the performance, which gave me a lot of hope for the future.
We looked dangerous every time we went forward, a view shared by my Geordie mates. If it hadn’t been for Krul and one bad decision by Hugo we wold have won at a canter. I am also taking into accunt another poor referee who should have shown a red card to Leon Best in the first half for a nasty tackle on Figs.
At the end of the game both fans and players showed their appreciation and this season must turn in our favour soon with performances like that. The players obviously enjoyed the support and with that kind of passion behind them they will continue to improve.
But I expect that a lot of our supporters (not a majority) will be only too happy to cry and boo at the next home match. This does nothing to help what it essentially a very young and talented team. Why would any young player with potential want to stay at Latics?
Bob is doing a sound job and it is only the boo boys who are whining about him sticking to his tactics. A lot of the Geordies I spoke to are envious of our manager and his beliefs. It is difficult to accept that we have lost a lot of matches but it is only a matter of time before results change for the better, imo.
I fear that the darkside will now attempt to hound Bob out of the club with demonstrations and abuse. This makes me sad because I truly love this club and I think we face a real uphill struggle to stay in a league that does not particularly want us. Booing and jeering will not help young players’confidence. We need to stick together and give them support against these teams who have more money and in matches in which the officials clearly afraid to give decisions against the bigger teams.
I support Wigan Athletic. I am proud of Wigan Athletic. We may have suffered six defeats in a row but we certainly have not deserved to lose in those matches and I feel the odds are now stacked against us in many areas.
We are under siege from a lot of people outside this club. Lack of support from inisde the DW is no help whatsoever.
There are some very sound sentiments in that post piemon but the whole point you were trying to get across falls flat on its face when you say something like “we may have suffered six defeats in a row but we certainly have not deserved to lose in those matches”
With the possible exception of Saturday’s game at Newcastle, Latics have deserved to lose every single one of those games (& the cup game at Palace)
There were very few positives that anyone could draw from Saturday; the only one I can think of was that it wasn’t my turn to buy the half-time ale.JR has a point that we were undoubtedly better in the second half, but it was hardly a stretch to improve on the first half, was it.
Like Tyldesley, I am utterly baffled as to the thought process that resulted in the selection of Gouhouri at left-back and in the absence of an explanation from Roberto I guess we will have to remain baffled.
Also, with a plethora of players capable of playing wide (Maloney, Crusat, even McManaman) why on earth we start with McCarthy out there, I’ll never know. I guess he wasn’t too happy about it either because he looked like he couldn’t be @rsed until he moved inside later but even then he wasn’t much better.
Let’s hope that it was indeed just a one-off because much more of that dn it will be a very long season indeed.
His team selectin on Saturday smacked of a manager who had spent far too long worrying about what Bolton Wanderers were capable of doing & not enough time worrying about what his own team were capable of doing to them
As he’s alluded to Bolton’s physical nature of play I can only assume that he thought a lumbering centre half would be a better bet than either a young, still wet behind the ears Van Aanholt or a slightly tired Figueroa
Likewise packing his midfield with his grafters and/or more experienced (within this team/level) playersWhatever his reasons they were really poor choices & ones that make you worry somewhat about the thought processes behind his whole reign
