TyldesleyLatic

I’m looking forward to Mr Griffin making a bit of a plank of himself on TV tonight
He only had to have some foreign news channel shove a microphone in his face on his first day at the European parliament before he started banging on about torpedoing (dunno about my spelling there) boats of immigrants crossing the med & chucking them life jackets

“If you want to go camping in South Africa, crack on with it son. I’d wager a small fortune on you having everything you own robbed within 24 hours of getting there”

i went camping for a week whilst over there & got nowt robbed

“Also – it’s the rainy season isn’t it????”

I aint sure on that one – I think there rainy season is in their summer (our winter). Even though its scorching you tend to find when England cricket tour there (December & January) that alot of days get rained off.
I went in July/August, it rained once & the temp was in the late 60’s early 70’s (which they thought was cold)

“It’s debateable whether Bainesy has gone on to better things”

What complete & total $h!te – of course he has gone on to better things since he left Latics.
Yes, his first season with em was disrupted by injury but he got a chance to stake a claim for a regular starting berth relatively early on last season & he’s grabbed it with both hands.
He’s now playing in a side that pushes for a Champions League spot (even if it is on the fringes of that), he’s playing in European competitions & he was called up for the England squad
If that isn’t going on to better things since leaving Latics I don’t know what is!!!

so “Is his profile higher now than when he was with us?” – yes it is

“Back in the old days, we could boast of a team of top league players who were ex-Latics, so we were certainly producing them then” – That I’d agree with. One of the reasons I hate Crewe so much is all the bull that the media used to dig up about dario Gradi’s production line of talent in the ealy to mid 90’s (though some still do!), yet I remember seeing an article around that time with a list of lower league clubs who had produced players who were (at the time) earning their crust in the top flight – Latics were top. Crewe were several places down

I said “allegedly” allowed his agent to tout his sell on clause to other clubs as Bullard tells one story & the club tells another. Personally I feel that the truth probably lies somewhere in between but (as with Ellington & WBA) I find it coincidental that Fulham knew exactly how much they needed to bid in order to be allowed to speak to him

As for his actions at Fulham – IMO it shows nothing of the sort about committing long-term to Fulham. They’d spent alot of money signing him & spent more still during hsi long rehabilitation. Almost immediately he came back he started talking about wanting a new deal. Again just my opinion but that is mercenary. If he wasn’t he’d have thanked Fulham for all their effort in getting him fit & talked about rewarding that. Instead he started to publicly come out & state he wanted a new deal. If he didn’t think his deal (which he was less than half way through) was good enough then he shouldn’t have signed it in the first place

I liked him at Latics & you can see that after dropping down to non-league he appreciates how lucky he is to have made his way back but he’s as mercenary as the rest of modern day footballers. His actions in wanting new deals when the ink is barely dry on his old ones are to me shining examples of that

“why can’t these injuries happen to the mercenaries that have infected our game”

Whilst I wouldn’t have wished his injuries on anyone I’d class Bullard as a mercenary
Sure he plays with a smile on his face & is a team joker but lets not forget that this is the fella who wanted to re-negotiate his deal with Latics less than a year after signing a new & improved deal. The same fella who (allegedely if you believe some stories) gave his agent permission to tout his “sell on clause” to every club in the top flight when he didn’t get the new deal he wanted. And the same fella who having spent donkey’s out with a career threatening injury & who had by no means proved his long term fitness started to come out in the press & state he wanted Fulham to offer him a new long term deal (even though he had 18 months to run on his existing deal) & if they didn’t he would look to move on
Not to mention his alleged £50k a week wage at Hull (not that I or anyone else would turn down them wages like!!)

Yep he puts more effort into 1 game than Kapo does in a whole season but IMO some of his actions off the pitch mark him out as just as mercenary as most of the other players about these days

One of my worries about appointing Bobby & his backroom team of the likes of Graeme Jones & Graham Barrow would be that some of the ego’s in the team might not look at 3 blokes who never played outside of the bottom 2 divisions, & some of whose only experience outside those 2 divisions was a 9 month stint in charge of a club who finished 8th & think “Who the feck are these 3 to try & tell me how to play football the right way, I know & have experienced more about high level football in 5 minutes than this lot have combined”

Not Bobby’s fault if it did/does happen (or is happening) but comments from opposition managers that the players aren’t listening to him or the manager complaining after Saturday’s game that they didn’t play as instructed shows to me that it migh be happening

When Jewell was in charge he used to say quite openly that he wrote off the games against the bigger sides before the season began. He used to say it befroe the season & he used to come out in the press & say it in the week building up to the games.
I could see where he was coming from but you could also see more often than not the effect that this had on the players & the whole attitude of the team showed they were beaten before a ball was kicked.
Under Steve Bruce that outlook changed & whilst we still never won, the performances against the bigger clubs got better, we stopped shipping so many goals against em, we actually went to their gorunds & took points off em & hell at times looked like we might actually beat em.
You could see the players attitude had changed & a few of em even came out in the press & said that due to the preparation & manager they actually went into the games believing they could get something out of em for the first time. Hell the club even started to progress up the table for a couple of seasons
So, to me, the suggestion that we should play stiffs & youth teamers against the big clubs is a pathetic one no matter how tongue in cheek it was. If your only aim is to survive & you surrender games against certain clubs before a ball is kicked then you may as well not bother to play in the top flight
Unless of course you’re quite happy listening to your manager after seeing him rest 6 players at the likes of United & Liverpool – the latter of which was a pathetic display that he tried to justify on the grounds he’d got his tactics spot on coz we hadn’t got a kicking. Nevermind Liverpool had rested a shedful of players coz the had a European Cup tie & there was a chance we could have got somet out of it. Like Fulham did against a similarly weakened Liverpool side 2 weeks later!!

barely any difference whatsoever which is why the “big clubs” have agreed to it