TyldesleyLatic

I take your point VAT but backing him/and or saying we can’t change anything anyway is not doing anybody any good either

Personally I’ve become fed up of the incessant struggle to try & come 17th every year and for all Bobby’s talk of turning us into a top 10 side (which on the evidence he’s given us so far is frankly laughable) our chairman has made it quite clear in the January of 2009 that that is his only aim
But I don’t want to see my team fail at anything. I get yanked off when i see managers put out 2nd string sides in cup competitions coz “we have other priorities” and for all I agree with some of your comments about the premier league I don’t want to see us fail in this division either. I’ll still support us & I may even get to more games but I want to see us succeed at everything
This casual acceptance of our impending relegation is another thing I find baffling from passionate supporters of the club

Surely its the fact that we have a weaker defence & a weaker attack that makes people think that Latcis will find it extremely hard to get out of the relegation zone – especially when 3 of our next 4 games come against teams in the top 5 & we could be significantly further away from safety than the current 1 point with just 6 games to go

On top of that when our team has only won 1 of its last 12 league games (& only 5 wins in 28 games this season), some people find it very hard to think that somehow the team is going to pull 4 wins in 10 games out of the bag – a win ratio that the team has never come close to achieving with Bobby in charge

You’re right in that some clubs who some think are safe will get dragged down further into the mire – Blackpool & Blackburn and to a lesser extent West Brom (lesser extent in terms of the fact that many see em as relegation fodder already) but I personally don’t see anything that would indicate to me that Latics are one of the clubs capable of putting a run together to take advantage of that

Its pathetic to be honest BUT the respect of match going fans means far less to him that the grief he’d have got from United & the FA for giving a decision in the first place for an incident that he didn’t see properly

Just like that Attwell last season who clearly got his decision wrong in the Caldwell/Tevez incident & so changed his reasons for the sending off

Bloody hell if I make a cock up when I ref (as I did on Saturday when I sent someone off for a second caution when I hadn’t previously booked em) I will hold my hands up & say I got it wrong & rectify the matter

I get your general point but Skoko was signed during the close season we got promoted & Moreno was signed on loan by Bobby & not Bruce.

Also, to say Bobby has been hampered coz he was gonna build his team around Cattermole when he’s had 3 transfer windows since then to replace him (& hasn’t – adequately anyway) is letting him off the hook somewhat

On top of that when people talk about him operating with one hand behind his back & having to doing things on the cheap it fails to take into account that Bruce had his team sold out from underneath him & against his wishes. Since that first summer Bobby arrived he has not had to sell 1 of his big name players – it was Bobby who declined to offer Scharner another deal (rightly so IMO), same with Melchiot (again rightly so). Yes Bramble quite clearly engineered a move away but it was also pretty clear that Bobby didn’t rate him anyway. But in the last 3 windows Bobby has been able to keep hold of the “star” players that he wanted to.
Linked to that, on top of barely recouping anything in transfer fees he is/was one of the highest spending managers in the division before the last transfer window & has to date wated the best part of £13mill on 3 of the worst top flight strikers I’ve ever seen

He is the “fall guy” as you put it because he deserves a large part of the blame for our reversal in fortunes over the last 2 seasons.
The most stubborn, tactically naive & inflexible manager I have ever seen in my time at Latics. He turned a defence that was one of the best in the division to a quivering wreck within 3 months & during which time they conceded more goals than they had in the whole of the season before. Players who looked good under previous managers looked garbage under Bobby

As for Bobby being the only manager who would take the job 2 seasons ago or even now. You don’t know that any more than I know somebody would but if West Brom can entice Roy Hodgson when they are notoriously cautious with their premier league money then I’m sure someone of that caibre could/could have been enticed to Latics

i don’t think its frightening at all coz we’ve all seen over the last 2 seasons how stubborn & inflexible he is.
If he refuses to see there might even be the need for a plan B whilst he’s been at Latics then I aint in the least bit surprised that he was exactly the same at Swansea

What I would disagree with though is the guys statement that Sinclair is premier league quality – quite how he can say that after only having watched him in the championship I don’t know. Didn’t look anywhere near good enough to play in the top flight when he was with Latics but that aint to say he won’t be in the future

From what i saw of it I thought Latics played relatively well in spells but were undone by 4 moments of defending that a primary school side would be embarrassed about:

Figueroa should be thoroughly ashamed of himself for that first goal. Despite runnign past Hernandez he then makes no attempt to see where he is or track his run & even when he sees him makes no attempt to get back. The time has come to drop him & surely one of the youth teamers (Mustoe is it?) couldn’t perform as badly

Alcaraz – every time I see him this man is garbage. I’ve read on here people slating Caldwell after Saturday’s game, Gohouri has got flack & so has Figueroa but Alcaraz has got none. Quite why I aint sure coz he defends like an 8 yr old kid & just seems to try & follow the ball around. He shouldn’t have left hernandez for the 2nd goal to try & o for the man with the ball who Caldwell was covering. It meant Caldwell got stuck in no-mans land coz he could see Alcaraz couldn’t get to the man with the ball & yet he could see Hernandez making the run. For the 3rd goal I have no idea what he was trying to do – he was either getting sucked in ball watching or he was trying to play offside in the opposition half

Gohouri – quite possibly that worst bit of defending of the lot for that last goal

Now I didn’t expect us to win & probably wasn’t even that surprised they beat us 4-0 (better Latics teams have got just as bad or worse results) but I’d at least expect United to have had to work for their goals but they didn’t
And its the same week after week after week, where some good work in the middle & up front in putting pressure on is completely undone by gifting the opposition such easy goals. Its happened since virtually straight away under Bobby & 19 months down the line its still happening. Its either the system of defending he’s trying to get em to play, the fact that he’s bought some rank bad defenders or both
if he’s trying to put it right then what he’s trying isn’t working but if he can’t see it he must be blind

I always argue that a squad should have at least 2 players capable of challenging each other for each space – so 2 right backs, 2 left backs, 4 centre halves etc..

bearing that in mind right back is one where I think latics fulfill that brief in Boyce & Ronnie Stam. Quite why he insists on playing Gohouri there is beyond me when Stam is fit

Its left back where there is the issue & I think its criminal to only have 1 player in the squad (allegedly) capable of playing in that position. It means that no matter how bad he plays Figueroa knows that its pretty much certain that he’s gonna get picked for the next game &, knowingly or not, it makes them lazy & their form suffers. Figueroa’s deteriorating performances over the last 2 seasons are a good example of that

The fella has got a point with regards to Jewell – whenever he made any sort of comment in the press about the club’s fans or the town it was usually derogatory. In fact the most surprising thing about that recent 4-4-2 feature on Latics was the defence he gave of the club & its fans to the lazy, snide comments that usually get thrown at us.
He would also freely admit he used to write the games off against the “big clubs” & you could tell this in the vast majority of the performances, line ups he put out, tactical changes etc..
He doesn’t slate his abilities as a manager & actually says he’d rather go down with a club managed by Bobby than stay up with one under Jewell

As for stripeyrichards comment that we would have gone down in 06/07 without Paul Jewell’s management that day. Comments like that really get my goat – it may well have a ring of truth to it but if you’re gonna credit him with saving us that day, then on the flip side he deserves flak for getting us in that mess in the first place – some of his purchases & tactical decisions that season were shocking. Putting a video on before a game of some speech from a film doesn’t alter that

He does however (IMO) deserve legendary status at Latics due to where he brought us from & where he took us to, and I’d agree that a statue would be fully deserved as long as its not one based on that gruesome photo that greeted me on in the inner pages of the news of the world that particular Sunday!!!

Oh & I’m still waiting for him to fling that season ticket back at me