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I’m not saying that Allardyce did apply for the Burnley job. Or that he didn’t. I seem to remember his saying in the press that he would be interested in hearing what they had to say if they approached him but that it somet completely different
Whether or not he’d come here & whether or not he’s looking for bigger & better things I don’t know & I don’t know who you know to be able to comment on whether I think their info is valid but I’d hardly describe Blackburn & Bolton as that much “bigger & better” and he worked there. There is also a difference between looking for bigger & better things & actually being able to get them – I’d like a job that pays me £100k a year but I’d more than likely take anything that was offered to me which was more than I’m on now
I also think the impression in English footballing circles is that Allardyce will work you wonders at a small club with a limited budget but he’s not really cut out to be at a “bigger club” – despite what he may thinkIf we went for a manager from the championship at present we wouldn’t be in exactly the same position as when Bobby got the job coz he’s made the squad worse in my opinion. Being scared that you might make another mistake in appointing someone shouldn’t (IMO) be used as justification for keeping someone in the job who is quite clearly not up to it
I wasn’t saying Bobby is on what Bruce was on but I do know he forked out somet in the region of £3mill in compensation to get him & his team over from Swansea & a big wedge was paid out to Brum as well. If he thinks its worth it he will put his money where his not inconsiderable gob is
Roy Hodgson I think would be able to work within latics pay scales – lets not forget that although he’s had high profile jobs at Inter Milan & Liverpool he’s also shown he’s more than willing to work at clubs all over Europe who won’t have been paying him anywhere near what he’d get as a premier league manager
Being the youngest manager in (supposedly) one of the best leagues in the world & being “one of the best young managers in the world” are 2 completely different things – one does not neccesarily follow the other
It certainly doesn’t (IMO) from what I’ve seen of him in actionAs for Bobby leaving us. I’ve no doubt that he feels some emotional attachment to us from his time as a player but at the end of a day its a job/career to him & if any club that offered better pay, better prospects and better prestige than Latics do then he would leave. Who wouldn’t? & I wouldn?t blame him one bit.
To think he’d only leave us for a “fantastic job” at a “really big club” is the stuff of fairy tales in my opinion
If I remember at the time the only club he turned down to come to us was Celtic. Admittedly a far bigger club than us but they were in turmoil at the time, the scottish league is hardly the most prestigious & a club who had just finished 12th in the English top flight & who were talking of going to the next level came in for him
If it had been any other English club in exactly the same position he would have turned Celtic down to go to them too rather than stay at Swansea
Its a very romantic view you have of Bobby but I don’t think its a very realistic oneNot saying we’d get any of these but if you don’t ask then you don’t get:
Sam Allardyce
Martin O’Neill
Martin Jol
Avram GrantThat’s just off the top of my head – I reckon there’s probably at least half a dozen Championship managers who could do a better job as well
Tyldesley
You know full well none of those managers would come to Wigan, nor could we afford any of them. I’m surprise you’ve even mentioned them. I’d have expected it from bicky but not you!
Also, Avram Grant? Are you serious? At Portsmouth he was known as BBC (bibs, balls, and cones). He inherited a team at Chelsea, took Portsmouth down, and is on the verge of taking West Ham down.
How do you know a Championship manager would do any better. They’ve either never managed in this league or haven’t exactly set the world alight. Remember, Martinez was a highly rated Championship Manager when he joined Wigan.[/quote]
Standish, as you’ve said to somebody later on in this thread about Allardyce – How do you know??
In reality you have no more idea whether any of those would turn the job down than I have any idea whether they would accept the job
Likewise just coz I don’t know for certain that some of the succesful Championship managers could do a better job than Bobby doesn’t mean for certain that you know that they couldn’tIn terms of not being able to afford any of them I wouldn’t be so sure. I think Whelan has been quite generous towards his last few managers – we’ve paid the sort of compensation to both Birmingham & Swansea that I’ve seen very few (if any) clubs pay to others when they’ve nabbed their managers. I would also assume that Bruce was on a pretty decent wage at Brum & would only have left there (even with all that ownership malarky at the time) if he was offered a pay increase.
You also don’t know what any of them are likely to ask for, any more than I doI also forgot to chuck Roy Hodgson in so I’ll do that now
As for what Avram Grant was called at Pompey, I don’t really care to be honest – there are a few nicknames that people know Bobby by too
Martinez has a genuine love for wigan (like we do) and eventually he will come throughAnd what do you base the second part of that statement on?
The fact that he is constantly able to adapt his tactics to the players he has at his disposal, the opposition we’re playing against or the way an individual match is panning out. Or is it the excellent performances with free flowing high scoring, low conceding football that is reaping its rewards both in terns of entertainment value & points on the boardOr is it just blind faith based on absolutely no evidence whatsoever?
There were some pretty valid points in the original post of this thread even for a fully paid up member of the darkside like me but the whole post loses any credibility with the statement that:
“He is one of the best young managers in world football”
I’m sorry but there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back that statement up. None
And as for not using us as a stepping stone. What is the phrase? Wake up & smell the coffee??
As someone else has pointed out, tell that to the Swansea fans – during his time there he spoke of his love for the club, his loyalty towards them & how you’d have to drag him kicking & screaming out of there as a manager. I didn’t notice much of that when he left to join us (unless you were a Swansea fan, chairman or player). The fact of the matter is that if by some miracle he was to get a better offer from a bigger, more prestigious club, with better long term prospects he would be out of here quicker than he was out of Swansea.
here’s hoping!!!This season as seen the emergence of Callum Macmanaman and Routledge Plus a English youth international In the goalkeeper young Nicholls I thinkHow has this season seen the emergence of those 3??? One has played one full game & 2 sub appearances. Another isn’t even playing for us & a 3rd aint had a sniff of 1st team action for us
The words clutching & straws comes to min
PS – didn’t the reserves get mullered 6-1 the other week (sure I saw it on SKY). Yes I agree that Bobby really is laying the foundations for our future success!!!
Loudmouth has put his own particular brand of spin on this. Wigan were actually the 11th highest spending team in the Premier League. Net spend was £6.75 million (about the price paid for Boselli). Take into account however, that the net spend for the previous year was MINUS £15 million, with close to break-even on the previous two years. Clearly a percentage of this money was earmarked for transfers, with the rest of funds coming from the one-in, one-out policy.I don’t need LMB to put any kind of spin on the figures as I remember seeing SKY showing them earlier on in the season. I’m also well aware of what has been brought in in terms of player sales. For me its you who’s trying to put “spin” on the figures. It doesn’t alter the fact that Bobby has been given quite alot of money to spend on players in comparison to many other managers in the top flight who are making a far better fist of things than he is. He didn’t sell anyone this summer anyone who went he decided to release – he just added to the squad (Boselli, Di Santo, McArthur, Alcaraz, Cleverley, S Caldwell, Al Habsi) & yet the teams performance has got worse. I don’t care what happened 2 or 3 years previously in terms of player sale it doesn’t alter the fact that this summer (within budget – every club has one) was able to get rid of the players he didn’t want, keep the ones he did & add the players he wanted & its got worse.
Did you actually watch the same game as me? He made two substitutions, we got a goal back, and were camped out in their half until the end of the match. Aside from an equaliser and a winner, what more can you ask for?
Boyce was flagging and was replaced by the more attack minded Stam – who incidentally, looked dangerous when he came on. Thomas was having a stinker (in my opinion), and was replaced by Watson who again, is more attack minded than Thomas, and has the ability to pass the ball in forward motion. McCarthy came off with ten minutes to go, and a third striker was thrown on.
We scored with the help of a massive deflection with a shot that was going nowhere & other than that huffed & puffed but didn’t make their keeper make one save of any note (if any saves at all). That’s what I expect – I expect a manager with the ability to say “we’re 2-0 down here & need to get back into the game quick, they’re comfortably containing us so I’ll change things round a bit to get em out of their comfort zone” not “we’re 2-0 down, this system is working fine, the players are all in the ideal positions for their skill sets, and we look like we can go on & win this with the help of a couple of deflections to our wayward shooting & poor final balls so I’ll just take off a tired player & someone who’s having a stiner & keep everything as it is
I don’t deny Boyce was flagging or that Thomas needed replacing but you could have taken off those same 2 players & put a far more attack minded set up out there at a time when Villa were quite happy sitting on what they had
And yes an equaliser & a winner would have been great had we come anywhere close to getting one. Apologies for nto being happy that we scored with a deflected shot & had an effort which went narrowly wide :roll:Correct. I’m sure even the biggest optimist wouldn’t claim it to be performance of the season, but it was nowhere near as bad as some were claiming on this forum last night.
Fair enough but I guess some of the frustration comes from the same old story of basic errors costing us goals (in this instance 2 from a player he signed), having the lions share of possession but doing little with it – yes we had 22 shots on goal according to one stat I saw but very few of em tested Friedel
What an absolute crock of sh7te! At the end of the day, the person Martinez need to please most is Whelan. If not, he’ll be out of a job. If he keeps the books balanced and hits targets, he’s doing well in Whelan’s eyes. However, do you really think Martinez is under the impression that he is doing a good job in the fans’ eyes by being in the bottom three? Do you think he has lived in a bubble for the last few years and has not seen what has been happening in recent seasons at his old club, and what supporters’ expectations are? Yes rant and rave on a forum such as this, but what positive effect can booing at a game or singing ‘You don’t know what you’re doing’ have? Do you think he doesn’t watch TV or read newspapers, and will subsequently see his team and performances being slated?
To be fair I take your point about who Bobby needs to please & him knowing he probably isn’t doing the best of jobs despite what he may say in the press, and to extent the lack of positives that booing & the chant of “you don’t know what you’re doing” would have had on him or the team but:
a) if he knows he isn’t doing a good job in the fans eyes (who at the end of the day do count as we are paying customers – ignore what we’re after & people will vote with their feet) why does he seem so incapable of learning from his mistakes
b) How else as a paying customer/supporter can somebody let Martinez know that they are far from happy with his efforts?No Tyldesley, it isn’t a case of being ‘brain dead’, it is a case of loyalty, support, optimism, and being realistic. Martinez will not be sacked by Whelan, so what options do you have left?
1. Complain and stay away from games
2. Support your team and try to encourage them because there’s nothing else you can do to change it.I’d call it mindless optimism. To be optimistic I have to have some evidence that the optimism is justified otherwise its blind faith. Martinez has given me no indication from the last 2 seasons that he is in anyway shape or form the right person for the job, in this division or any other division. Just because Whelan has stated he won’t sack him (just like he said he’d never employ a foreign manager!!) doesn’t mean I should just shrug my shoulders and accept the drivel which has been served up in the vast majority of Bobby’s reign. I’ll still be supporting Latics long after Bobby & Whelan have gone as I’m sure you will. That’s my idea of loyalty & support not in my mind mindlessly cheering & encouraging whatever lame efforts I get to see – for what its worth i won’t boo or chant anti-Bobby stuff during games but if its been poor I will do at half time & full time. Its the only way I can let them know I aint happy.
It might not achieve owt but what will cheering them after a dreadful performance achieve either??It’s looking likely we will go down, and yes we will still attract good young players – albeit relative to the division we are in. If we get promoted again, then we’ll sign Premiership quality youngsters again.
I aint so sure. We got through the leagues by spending big on transfer fees in comparison to many other clubs & whilst yes we could all argue that the likes of West Ham’s squad cost far more than ours & our wage bill was always amongst the lowest in the championship (not in the other divisions) we were still for a time big-hitters – that’s why players came to us & that’s why the club was somet like £32mill in the red when we reached the top flight.
That aint gonna happen if we go down & there are other clubs in the championship who will now offer exactly the same opportunities to youngsters that Latics would & they won’t choose usI’ve been watching Latics for the last 24 years & have done my time travelling to the likes of Hereford, Torquay etc.. in the lower leagues on a midweek night to see us get beat. Incidentally i was also at hereford with about 20 other hardy Latics souls for Graham barrow’s first game in charge when we were about 6 or 7 points adrift at the bottom of the entire football leagueand??????
And nothing Arky. I don’t want a medal for it, I don’t want praise for it, I don’t claim to be some sort of superfan for it & I know there are others who could point to far longer period of support to farther flung places
The only reason it was mentioned was in response to the initial poster who labelled all the people who are criticising “JCL Boo Boys”
My point however badly put was that some of the most vociferous critics of Bobby are some of the longer term fans and are far from JCL’s who haven’t seen the bad old daysJust because someone happens to agree with your opinion does not mean they know any more or less about football than anybody else is my response.
For a start not everybody moaning about Martinez is a JCL. I’ve been saying that I didn’t think he was up to the job for over a year now & nothing I’ve seen in the meantime has convinced me otherwise – & I’ve been watching Latics for the last 24 years & have done my time travelling to the likes of Hereford, Torquay etc.. in the lower leagues on a midweek night to see us get beat. Incidentally i was also at hereford with about 20 other hardy Latics souls for Graham barrow’s first game in charge when we were about 6 or 7 points adrift at the bottom of the entire football league
I’d also say that virtually every Latics fans knows that the club cannot go out & spend £24mill on a striker. They also know that our current manager has spent over half that amount on 3 strikers who couldn’t hit a cow’s @r$e with a banjo & 2 of whom were shipped out within a year of arriving & as LMB has pointed out on another thread Bobby was the 9th highest spending manager in the division up until the current transfer window so the excuse that he has no funds doesn’t wash
The whining boo boys as you put it are sick to the back teeth of the manager making the same mistakes, game after game, after game, after game …. & learning nothing from those mistakes. The man is so one-dimensional formation wise & tactically that it beggars belief. The changes made last night were booed not for the sake of it but because we could see that at 2-0 down all our manager could think of doing was make 2 like for like substiutions – so basically he thought that 2 players he didn’t think were good enough to start would turn the game round for us. Any manager worth his salt would have tried to change things round a bit but all we got was the same old tactics & the same old formation but with 2 different people.
I’d also say that Latics didn’t put in an excellent performance last night – it was better than against Fulham & Arsenal admittedly but that isn’t saying much. We may have had 22 shots but only about 6 of em were on target if I remember my stats correctly & of them I can only remember 1 testing the keeper (& that was coz of a deflection). Even the Sky TV commentators said on numerous occasions that there was some good pressure but it never seemed to create any real clear cut chances
You say Di Santo was outstanding? Not sure I could go with that coz bar his header early on I can’t remember him having a decent effort as goal. As a striker I’d expect that at the least – again the Sky commentators criticised him on a couple of occasions for not making the effort to get into the box to get on the end of some decent crosses
You imagine “how good we’d be if we could call on Victor & Cleverley” – I can tell you. Not very. For a start our manager doesn’t rate one of enough to start him in games & secondly its only relatively recently that neither of them have been available for selection & we’ve only been out of the bottom for 3 games all season
There is supporting your team & there is supporting someone who is quite clearly in no way shape or form up to the job. If people don’t criticise him he’ll only think he’s doing an even better job than he currently thinks he is.
People said give him time, let him build his own squad but the squad his now virtually his. he’s been given the amount of transfer windows he said he needed to change things round & we’re getting worse (results wise anyway- on the plus side at least we don’t seem to get mullered by 5 or 6 or 7 or 8 or 9 any more). The vast majority of his signings are poor.
For me the only brain deads are those who think that teh only way out of the situation we’re in is to get behind someone who makes mistakes, doesn’t learn from them & who by his own admission is stubborn & pig headed (& its costing us). When we do go down (& I think its a cert this season) I don’t think we will continue to attract good young players – the only reason the likes of McArthur, McCarthy & Moses came to Wigan in the first place is coz we were a Premiership club. When we go down & when we don’t have the spending power that we used to in the football league those players will go elsewhere & we’ll still have the same incompetent buffoon in charge of the team
Not saying we’d get any of these but if you don’t ask then you don’t get:
Sam Allardyce
Martin O’Neill
Martin Jol
Avram GrantThat’s just off the top of my head – I reckon there’s probably at least half a dozen Championship managers who could do a better job as well
It was 3 so that was up at the end of August last year
He did extend that towards the back end of last season to 2 whole seasons & he now seems to be saying that the first 2 seasons were always going to be a “transitional period” and that its only after that when the club will see the benefits of what he’s doing nowNo doubt if he’s still here this time next season that it will have been extended again
Are you sure that we’re only allowed 2 loan signings in the squad and that its not just 2 loan signings from other premier league/english clubs??
I only ask coz the only potential signing that I’ve heard either Bobby or Whelan talk about is a “foreign striker on loan”.
I assume (stupidly perhaps) that the club has done its homework & so either a) Al Habsi or Cleverley are to join permanently b) that we can have another loan signing or c) one of Al Habsi or Cleverley is going backAssuming that we will play 4-5-1 & bearing in mind that Piscu has played 60 mins of competitive football since May of last year and McCarthy is unlikely to be match fit I think that the following is the best line up we are likely to see Bobby put out:
Al Habsi
Boyce Gohouri S Caldwell Figueroa
McArthur Diame
N’Zogbia Rodallega
Gomez
Di SantoI’d like to see him (if he has to stick to that formation) be a little bit more adventurous & start with McManaman down the left, Di Santo in the hole & Rodallega up front and at a push McCarthy instead of Diame
