TyldesleyLatic

Just to keep you happy,
Did Wigan Athletic manage to field any English players this week?
Were there any Wigan lads playing or any developed through the Wigan academy.

Still if you’re happy being fourth from bottom in front of the lowest attendance in the Premiers League (again) then good on you.

Have a nice day, :D [/quote]

I think I had this argument with someone on the wigantoday website several months ago
I’d just point you in the direction of your official website which clearly shows where your players come from – I have say i was shocked an appalled at how few came from Wigan!! ;)
Players have come and gone since then so it may have changed but as someone else has pointed out if only a handful of towns in England play the sport of rugby league to any serious level, then it stands to reason that the majority of professional players of the sport will come from that same handful of towns.
If the sport of football is played at a serious level in the majority of the countries of the world then it stands to reason that the “cream of the crop” will come from the majority of the countries of the world
On top of that, if Wigan RL want to sign a Wigan lad as a youth team player they have possibly St Helens & Warrington as full time professional rivals for his signature
If Wigan Athletic want to sign a Wigan lad as a youth team player we have Man United, Man City, Liverpool, Everton, Bolton & Blackburn (& I guess now even Blackpool) as competition in our division alone. Chuck in the other full time professional teams within a 90 minute radius (the FA’s max distance from a youth team players address to the club’s ground) & a picture emerges of how difficult it is in football to entice youth team players to join Latics

Its not exactly rocket science Mr Gallery

Just to clarify (& I think you got the gist Griff) that by more direct & didn’t mean lumping it out from the back to the centre forward I meant less sideways passing & more getting the ball at a players feet & getting em to run at the opposition at pace

Absolute bo110x….because as a ‘progressive’ referee you fall into the sycophantic ways of the paymasters.[/quote]

Eh???????

As for the other comments, I can understand those arguing about the 25 man squad rule & the FA have made a bit of a rod for their own back with that one

But maybe its my old school way of thinking when it comes to football. As far as I’m concerned you can have a squad of however many players you want but a manager will always have his first choice XI – the players he thinks who together give him his best team. The rest of his squad don’t make that first choice XI because he thinks the other players are better than them. He may well be happy with all of them being able to “step in to the breach” from time to time but they are there as back up because they aren’t good enough to start every week
IMO if a manager changes all but one of those first choice XI he won’t expect to win that game (regardless of the 3-2 scoreline last week) & it creates an unlevel playing field for the other teams

Personally i don;t buy the “Ian Holloway likes to have 2 teams” so he can keep the opposition guessing who he will play” line someone posted further up this thread. If you asked Ian Holloway what his “strongest” starting XI was I can guarantee you that it would not include Richard Kingson in goal & that’s where (IMO) the “he has a squad, he can pick who he wants from it argument” falls down

Maybe do a “Buy a ticket for the United/Liverpool/Chelsea etc.. game & get discounted prices for the Fulham/West Brom/Wolves etc.. game/s” promotion

or a ticket whereby you get 1 cat A, 1 cat b & 1 cat c game for a price lower than you’d pay to buy all 3 separately

Only thing is if there are only 12k on to see us play Liverpool at home whether there is enough floating interest out there which would persuade em to buy a joint ticket for other games

When played at centre half under Jewell he had a tendency to have rushes of blood to the head & either make a hash of things or lunge into tackles

IMO under Bruce he virtually eliminated that from his game & became a bloody good centre half & i think our goals against record from that time speaks volumes

Don’t really care about the bloke one way or the other but i have to say that I liked his response the other night when he was questionned about the Fabregas tackle late on in the game.

It ran somet along the lines of “It was a bad tackle, he got punished for it. Arsene’s apologised for it. Fabregas has been in to apologise for it – so that’s it. Its football & mistimed tackles happen all the time. I just wish people would stop screaming blue murder whenever one of our players does it”

Couldn’t disagree with him on that score

shorthousemuir has provided a good example of why i don’t think its right

I too was angry as f00k when Liverpool did that especially as they’d put out a full strength side against us a week or 2 earlier
Personally I just think its wrong that a team can decide it will sacrifice 3 points in one game (and regardless of what anyone says both McCarthy & Holloway would nto have expected to get a single point out of those games) & it creates an unlevel playing field & could eventually lead to accusations of collusion between various clubs

“The F.A should stay out of it, Otherwise fine Man Utd for fielding a weakened squad if they draw AFC Wimbledon in the F.A Cup 3rd round”
“Whether it is 10 changes as per Blackpool last night, or a couple of changes that top4 teams make prior to a Champions League game, the principle is still the same to me; i.e. they’re both keeping players out from one game for what they consider are more important games ahead. If you fine one, you should fine the lot.”

As I said before I do think that there’s a difference. If Ferguson made 10 changes for an FA Cup tie against Wimbledon then he would still be doing so with the intent of winning the game. Likewise when they rest a handful of players befroe a champions league game – they are still aiming to win the game
IMO if a club like Blackpool, Wolves or even Latics makes 10 changes against a “bigger” club they are doing with the intent (whether they openly admit it or not) of losing that game and as I said I don’t think its right

Actually I do remember John Deehan making about 8 or 9 changes for a good friday game away at Bristol Rovers & we got tonked 5-0 with about the only effort from latics all game a shot that went about 20 yards over. I was fecked off at the time & even more fecked off when we played Burnley (I think) a few days later & beat them 4 or 5-0 & Deehan said his team selection against Bristol Rovers was justified coz they’d won the Burnley game & it made us pretty much safe from relegation (as it happened we still had an outside chance of reaching the play offs prior to the Bristol Rovers game)
I won’t go to a cup game if a Latics manager makes it clear that they’re making big changes – if the manager doesn’t treat whatever competition with his full respect then why shoudl they expect me to feel any differently & fork out my hard earned cash for it