TyldesleyLatic

I don’t doubt that Ellington trusted his agent to advise him as to the best course of action as everyone relies on somebody to guide them but you don’t have to do what they say – as a 17 year old who had no independence other than the money I got flogging programmes outside Springfield Park & a previous job delivering the Leigh Journal who relied on his parents for everything (food, shelter, clothing etc..), applying for University my parents were telling me to apply for law at Manchester & the reasons why I should but I wanted to do history at Aberystwyth, so I did despite the fact I trusted my parents judgement implicitly.

As a 20+ yr old man who had the independence to decide to convert to Islam & get married the day before a game without informing his employers, don’t tell me that Ellington didn’t have the balls, independence or intelligence to say no to what WBA put on the table.

Same with Moses – again no doubt his agent was waving a big fat contract under his nose & telling him how many other clubs were after him too & how much extra he could get with deals as a Nigerian international at Chelsea & that he was good enough to be playing regularly for them, but he could have said no. Whelan’s quip was I believe telling him to look at it rationally & just question whether he’d develop more playing for Latics every week or in the stiff’s/sub appearances he’d get at Chelsea & then in 12 months time he’d be able to command an even better deal. He could have ignored his agent’s advice – he chose not to & any repercussions (good or bad) from that decision lie with Moses & no-one else

Indeed!

Word at the time was he was in Whelan’s office saying he didn’t really want to go and that he accepted a contract at West Brom than was less than we was offering….

Really earned his agent fee on that one the ****.[/quote]

Blaming his agent is an absolute cop out in my opinion
Only 1 person had the ultimate say in whether he stayed at Latics or moved & that was Nathan Ellington himself – he’s an adult human male & if he didn’t want to go he could have quite simply said no he wanted to stay at Latics & sign the deal that they put on the table for him.
It’s not like Tony Finnigan held a gun to his head or anything

From what I can gather, the issue was that the total package on offer at Latics had the potential to be more than the total package on offer at West Brom but Ellington wanted a bigger basic salary which was what West Brom were offering. Whilst Latics package was heavily weighted towards appearance & performance related bonuses.
Not knocking him for taking what West Brom offered & if his performances in the top flight were anything to go by then he’d have been on next to nowt at Latics ;) but Nathan Ellington alone decided to move, Tony Finnigan merely got him the best deal out there which is what footballers pay them to do

Hate to put a spanner in the works of this debate, but you’ll have to discount Joy Division, New order & the Happy Mondays (all from Salford), The Stone Roses (Timperley/Altrincham), The Hollies (East lancs) & The Inspiral Carpets (Oldham)

In all honesty the only one of those off that list which were gleamed wholly from a quick internet search (& none from Wikipedia) were the daddy longlegs, buddha, adam & eve, noah’s ark & the immaculate conception ones
cheating on 5 out of 23 aint bad – we’re not all morons you know!! ;)
Many were gleamed from watching QI & the others just coz I’m a reet clever bastard

I get your point to be honest but in relation to say Stam & Boselli for instance, they’ve both been here now for what 2 & a half years & despite being quite high profile Bobby signings he rarely picks either of em even when they might appear to me to be the best options available.
That tells me all I need to know about the pair – it’s a bit different to a new signing bedding in
He signed McCarthy, McArthur & Maloney too & I often wondered where the hell they were & why he wasn’t playing them – when introduced they’ve been successful coz I tend to think he knew (having stepped up in class) they were now ready whereas chucking em in at the deep end may have seen them flounder

It’s all very well saying that he deserves a run in the side but Bobby & the coaching staff see him in training every day & when he turns out for the reserves & there’s obviously something there which to me indicates that they don’t think he’s up to it.
Manager’s can of course get things wrong & it took Di Santo the best part of 2 seasons to start showing (on a consistant basis) that he was up to the job but I feel that as Bobby staked so much on the fella (if the Benson incident is true) & due to the fact that he cost so much, if they had any sort of faith in him then he would be getting far more match time than he currently does.
Not only that but even when Di Santo looked at his worst, Bobby consistantly put him in the side ahead of a Boselli who was farmed out on loan – suggesting that he sees far more in one than he does in the other

So I’ll bow to Bobby’s judgement on this one

Never seen any of the alien films but watched prometheus last night & really enjoyed it
Thought the plot was good & it sets itself up well for some follow ups too

I think his limitations as a manager were always there to see even when he was at Latics:
1) Man management – In those difficult first few months he just couldn’t handle the bad attitude of the players & it took Dave Whelan getting involved for that situation to get turned around. I read an interview on line the other day from Ipswich’s captain who said that he needed to stop being so nice to some players
2) “He’s no plan B” – as a mate of mine repeatedly & drunkenly slurred at me when we lost at home to Sunderland in the championship promotion season & that was evident all through he reign. If Plan A wasn’t working he seemed to have no idea what to do to change things around & we regularly saw changes in such games like taking a right back off & putting a different right back on as if that was going to make a blind bit of difference to proceedings
3) Attitude – I thought his “I’ve already written this game off” attitude to matches against the “big boys” in this division was wrong & you could see how that translated to the players out on the pitch. Can’t rememebr which player it was but one of em said early in bruce’s reign that “for the first time we’re going into these matches believing we can get something from them”. I also don’t think he ever really endeared himself to the Latics faithful beyond what he achieved out on the pitch

From occasional views on Derby & Ipswich websites it appears these limitations were still there and, as someone else in the thread has pointed out, without the relatively big money backing he got at Bradford & Latics these limitations got exposed mroe & more

That’s nto to take anything away from what he achieved at latics like coz he got far more right than he got wrong during his time here & (regardless of where my 06/07 season ticket ended up) I consider him a Latics legend