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“Vote for an Independant”
I wouldn’t vote for an Independent purely because they were an Independent & not tainted by association with one of the main parties. I’d have to agree with em.
The fact that you are saying you’ve switched your vote from BNP to him suggests he wouldn’t be my kind of candidate anyway (& that aint a criticism of you or whoever you choose to vote for)
All academic anyway coz there are no Independents standing in St Helens & Whiston. I have a choice of Lab, Con, Lib Dem, UKIP & BNP and I wouldn’t sully myself with even thinking of voting for 3 of thoseTL, I never had you down as a young idealist. Can’t believe that you’ve only just realised that all politicians will only dirty their hands by dealing with the public when there is something in it for themselves.I realised that very quickly after voting Labour in the first General Election in which I had a vote (1997)!!! I’ve spolit my ballot paper at every local, european & general election since
I get told by my family that doing so gives me no right to complain about the policies of whoever gets in. I disagree – by spoling my ballot paper (however futile that may be) I’m registering my protest at the whole, rotten to the core, system. By doing so I haven’t legitimised the election, whichever candidate gets elected to my constituency & whichever part gets elected. I think it gives me even more right to complain!!!!!“Wigan is `Communist State`full of `Labour born n bred me` dickedds”
Whilst I wouldn’t describe my mum as a “dikedd”!! she said on Sunday that she has always voted labour & always would, “no matter what” – I can’t get my head round that at all.
That said I think the change in the make up of Wigan Council over the last 15 years from total labour to one where they now have quite a slender majority (my old ward Tyldesley East used to have 3 labour councillors – now they’re all Liberal) so I think that local opinion is shifting however slowly that may be
Also, I now live in St Helens (which has elected a Liberal council since the last general election) so I don’t think the right honourable Mr Woodward is going to have that much of an easy ride“How do you remember all that? Did you take notes?”
Coz thanks to an old friend of mine getting absolutely rat @r$ed the night before celebrating Celtic beating Rangers & spending all morning chucking his ring up I didn’t get to Blackburn anywhere near as early as I wanted to & only managed a couple of scoops in the pub beforehand
Think it also sticks in my mind coz I’d never really taken to Deehan & that game just confirmed what an idiot he was.
Some games I can remember everything from whilst I’ve left others not even aware of the correct scoreline!!
You may have the advantage over me here JR being a JCL and all that – but can you refresh my memory of when they beat us 5 – 3 in the cup or was it in the 60s or 70sI remember us beating them 5-3 in the league but Roy H wasnt their manager as I recall
Anyway Roy for manager of the year for me
Blackburn beat us 5-3 in the cup (or was it 4-2?) in the cup when John Deehan was manager in 1998. Its the game where Deehan pulled his tactical master strokes of dropping his top scorer (David Lowe), changing his formation to 4-5-1, switching David Lee to the left wing & Jorg Smeets to the right (we have another manager who favours that too!!) & dropping our left back for the season up till then (Kevin Sharp) in favour of someone who hadn’t played in donkey’s (Steve Morgan).
Went 4-0 down before he reverted back to the team & formation he’d used all season & we pulled 2 goals back & had a blatant penalty turned down (for which the Blackburn player should have been sent off).
John Deehan described his initial tactical masterplan as a success coz Blackburn hadn’t “scored from any corners”!!!!Come to think of it, compared to John Deehan, our Bobby is a footballing genius!!! ;)
There was a part of me who saw that Fulham result tonight & thought “that could have been us”!!
If Whelan had allowed last season’s pre-Jan team to stay together instead of stripping it apart once safety was assured I believe we’d have qualified for Europe. True he would probably have taken the team apart in the summer & I just can’t see us having got some of the results Fulham have achieved but I can’t help thinking “what if?”
Whelan deserves praise for not letting Latics get in the financial mess that some of the other top flight clubs are in but I think that his decisions last January were the worst he’s made whilst at the club ranking even above appointing John Benson, Chris Hutchings & Roberto Martinez ( :twisted: ) as managers!!!!
I’ve had the discussion/argument with my wife & my mum about whether to a) vote at all b) spoil my ballet paper & c) actually vote for one of the parties standing
My argument in the past has been that I will not vote for the lesser of how any many evils are standing if they have policies that are at odds with what I think. As such I have a “none of the above/spoil my paper” approach to things.
However, of the major parties, I despise the Tories & as such do I accept the guilt if I “waste” my vote (as my wife & mum think it is) by not voting/spoiling my paper & the Tories get in
Personally I’m still undecided but one thing that is re-inforcing my own previous viewpoint is that exactly 1 week before a general election the only party that has even bothered to push anything through my door are the Tories. Why the hell should I be bothered to get off my @r$e and put an X in a box if during the small period where they actually give a sheet what I think, none of them (bar one) can seem to be bothered even going to the effort of letting me know what they stand for.
Regardless of the fact I live in a safe Labour seat (10k majority for Tory turncoat Sean Woodward) I think the least I can expect is for them to try & work for my vote
Their disdain for the public as shown by Gordon Brown yesterday (& I’ve no doubt they all say similar things as soon as they’ve got back in their car & are driving off) becomes more apparent each dayLeaving the petty name calling to one side for a sec, I just always assumed that the reason Bullard was taken out of the squad for the remainder of the season was that he was pished off with the way Bullard had got his agent to hawk round his get out clause fee round the rest of the division
That seemed to be what he alluded to at the time“Martinez has explained Scotland and Gomez were rushed into the side too quickly due to other players not being up to it”
Well if Bobby says it then it must be true!!! The only problem with that being that it went completely against what he said when he signed them – Gomez in particular was going to be the creative hub of our play. Scotland would have “no problem” adapting. 4 months later he was saying he’d only ever wanted to “ease them in”.
The other problem with that statement of Bobby’s was that he wants us to believe that he thought the likes of Kapo & De Ridder would be able to do the job till he eased the others in. Well you either don’t believe him (which I don’t) or you believe him & then you would have to question what on earth gave him that belief???? These were players (who along with Koumas) had been bought & dropped by our 2 previous managers coz they weren’t good enough – did he not look at their appearance stats over that period & think that was a reason why they’d only had a handful of appearances between them?? Bearing in mind Whelan’s comments about the players left by Bruce I’m sure that at some point over the summer he would have said to him “players x, y, z, a ….. etc..) are gashI’d have more respect for Bobby if he said “some of my signings haven’t worked out” than I have when he lies to try & cover up his mistakes or when I hear him talking about how good the likes of Scotland & Gomez will be next year coz neither of them will be premier league quality players in a million years & it just leads me to question his judgement if he thinks they (along with rumours re Sinclair & Moreno) will be
“this season has been a transitional season where the players and fans have got used to the “new” Wigan that plays more attractive football than a long ball game.”
All i can say to that is that you must have been watching a different Wigan Athletic to me coz the style of football has for the vast majority of games been dire. In a very select few it has looked good admittedly but there were also games under “long ball” Bruce (for all you that slate his style of football) looked pretty feckin good too
Regarding the clear out, I included everybody who I feel over the last season/s isn’t up to the job
I can’t really see the use in keeping the likes of Koumas, Gomez, Scotland, Bouaouzzan (??), De Ridder, Kapo, Amaya, Sinclair, Stojkovic, Kingson & loads of others I can’t remember now who have either had chance after chance to prove themselves & aint up to the job or in their season here have hardly featured or just not looked up to scratch, simply for the sake of making up squad numbers.
These players aren’t good enough & if Bobby wants to progress as he says he does all those who aint good enough need clearing out
On top of that I think unfortunately we’ll also lose Figueroa, N’Zogbia & Rodallega to other clubsSo Bobby either has to have a massive clear out & almost totally rebuild his squad (in which case I think we’re f00ked) or he keeps hold of most of those who make up the numbers & loses 3 of his star players & has to replace them with cheaper versions (in which case I think we’re f00ked)
I’m really looking forward to next season!!!!!!!!
:lol:
I hope so Griff & I really wish I could see these things that convince some people to say that Bobby is the man for the job, but bar the odd bit here & there I can’t – I hope I’m proved wrong
Being the saddo that I am in my lunch break yesterday I ran through a list of our squad for each position, the players I felt we needed to get rid of coz they aint good enough & the players that will probably be flogged to raise transfer funds & it didn’t make good reading.
i had us needing 2 keepers (Pollit, Stojkovic & Kingson all being released), 1 right back, 2 left backs (Figueroa being sold), 1 centre half (if Gohouri is signed up), 1 right winger, 2 left wingers (N’Zogbia being sold), 2 central midfielders/”in the hole”rs & 3 centre forwards (Scotland being flogged, Moreno released & Rodallega being sold).Not saying that’ll happen but if Bobby wants to progress the club as opposed to it treading water then that’s what i think needs to happen
If I can I’ll just respond to a few points made in this thread:
“When we have clicked we have been immense, when we haven’t clicked we have been poor” – I’d agree with that statement but with a completely different slant from the original poster. IMO we’ve “clicked” in 6 full games this season (Villa, Chelsea, Burnley, Wolves away, city at home & Liverpool) and 10 phenomenal minutes against Arsenal. In the vast majority of the remaining 31 games played so far we’ve either been below average or downright gash (& I include games in which 3 points have been picked up). So when I hear people saying “Bobby just needs to sort out a bit of consistency” to me its a far bigger problem. trying to improve on playing well in 6 games out of 31 is a far bigger problem than needing to improve consistency
“He will have more of an idea what is needed this time around” – Will he? And on what basis are those types of statements made? IMO our performances deteriorated as the season went on so i fail to see what he was learning. He continued to make the same mistakes over & over again. Its only my opinion but I felt that after the Arsenal game Bobby had 2 big decisions to make i.e. did he bring back Caldwell at the expense of Gohouri & did he persist with Moreno up front & Rodallega on the wing or stick with the players who had finished the Arsenal game so well. Again, only my opinion but I think he made the wrong decision for both of them. Pishes me off even more when the manager states in an interview after the game that “there was nothing we could do, it was West Ham’s day” ??????? :roll:
“But to think we have two of the most exciting young players in the Premier League in McCarthy and Moses” – Can we hand on heart say that Moses is one of the most exciting prospects in the game??? Forget all the clubs who were “allegedly” interested in him. Only ourselves & 3 championship clubs put bids in. So whilst i hope he’s gonna be great I wouldn’t say what a great prospect he is based on who he was linked with coz I think it was a bit of mischief making on behalf of the selling club & agent to entice a bid out of Latics. Secondly, how much game time has Bobby decided to give him?? 10 minutes here & there as a sub, we got a poor performance from him when he started against Bolton & he didn’t rip up trees on saturday neither. By no means am I writing him off but one of the most exciting young players in the league? he aint shown it yet
“We have had games where we have been unlucky and decisions have gone against us” – Swings and roundabouts though coz we’ve also had games in which we’ve been awful & managed to nick points & in which the opposition fans have come away moaning about key decisions going our way
I thought he was a great player during his whole period at Latics but I wouldn’t have him back here for 3 reasons:
1) His wages
2) His injury record
3) The manner in which (IMO) he engineered his move away from Latics & then lied to the supporters to try & keep his “I’m such a great guy & not a mercenary in any way, shape or form like all those other modern footballers” imageBlackpool
As for Cardiff – I spent about 4 days there for our Carling Cup Final in 2006 & I thought the nightlife in the city centre was pish poor. Then again i may well have been too drunk to notice anything
“Pity it aint celebrated by us as we do Paddy’s day”
To be fair there’s absolutely nothing stopping you or anybody else celebrating St George’s Day in any (legal) way you see fit
For gawds sake I’m not “proposing” to promote any team from Leigh or Atherton into the top flight I was using an extreme to show minerva (who said we hadn’t stayed up because there were worse teams than us but because we’d got enough points to stay up) that both his & filmoss’s statements were true i.e. we have stayed up because a) we have enough points & b) because there are teams in this division worse than us.
I apologise that this seems to have gone completely over your head :roll:
“And it’s coming from someone who has spent all season moaning and whining and is now unwilling to accept that Roberto has performed equally as well as Jewell, Hutchings & Bruce, even managed to achieve more in many respects by turning over some top teams and you can’t bear to actually give him a bit of credit for what he has achieved”
I am more than willing to accept that Roberto Martinez has done a better job that Chris Hutchings, but if you think he has “performed equally as well” as Paul Jewell & Steve Bruce or “even managed to achieve more” because we’ve beaten Arsenal, Liverpool & Chelsea then you’re living in cloud cuckoo land.
You’re talking about one fella who took over a team on its @r$e in div 3 & took it to the premier league within 4 seasons. Got that team to finish 10th, get to a major cup final & keep it up a second season (albeit by the skin of his teeth)
You’re also talking about another bloke who took over a team going nowhere but down to the Championship & who’d turned it around within a matter of games with the same squad as his predecessor, added some of his own signings in january & then had us performing like a top 8 side for the rest of that season. Who then had his team challenging for Europe the season after until his chairman sold the heart of his team out from underneath him before finishing 14thYou seriously think that Bobby has done better than them because in 3 games against teams in the top 5 he has got his team to win??? :roll:
Ignore the 9-1 defeat to Spurs, the biggest aggregate defeat in premier league history, 2 5-0 thumpings by Man U, a 4-0 thumping by the team who’ve scored the least number of goals in the division, a 4-0 thumping by Bolton Wanderers, embarrassing cup hammerings to Blackpool & Notts County and turning one of the best defences outside the top 4 to the worse in the division within 3 months of the season starting. I could also add any number of dreadful performances throughout the season to that listSo no, I won’t accept that Bobby has done equally as well as Jewell & Bruce because he hasn’t. 3 good results out of 35 games played won’t alter that
As I said yes he has kept us up & I think in Whelan’s eyes that is all that matters. So congrats to him for that but as I said before do i think he’ll learn from the many mistakes he’s made this season & do i think he’s the right long term manager for this club??
Judging him over the course of the season as opposed to 3 or 4 games. NO – not in a million yearsAnd when i say that, nowt would give me greater pleasure than to come on here this time next year & have my face well & truly rubbed in it after a great season under Bobby – I just think there’s next to no chance that will happen
