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Ojiveojive
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Re: Golden Age
If I can't have a rattle, I want a vuvuzela
--- What a looooooooooong strange trip it's been
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24/May/2020, 3:48 pm
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M00R5
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Re: Golden Age
quote: ForeverMoor wrote:
Of course many exceptional players from across the globe have subsequently graced the league, but to be quite blunt in my opinion they have in the main been quite mercenary in their attitude and outlook and haven’t shown particularly great loyalty to anyone or anything except their wallets.
Evidence?
I don't think it's true that non-British players have been any more or less mercenary or disloyal than domestic players. Let's not forget that Blackburn bought the Premier League under exorbitantly wealthy British ownership with a squad of largely British mercenaries. I don't think that nationality makes any difference to that at all.
Let's also not forget that many of the European players arriving in the Premier League in the 90s were more professional in their approach to football than the smoking, beer-swilling, kebab-eating British players of the time. The kind of players like Andy Townsend who would start a rumour that one of their teammates was gay because he read a broadsheet newspaper on the coach to away games (Graeme Le Saux). Rather have Emmanuel Petit, Marcel Desailly (Big Ron's favourite) and Gianfranco Zola in my squad than Townsend, Ruddock "break a leg on purpose", or players that couldn't control their drinking (Merson, Adams, Gascoigne).
quote: Ojiveojive wrote:
If I can't have a rattle, I want a vuvuzela
Blow it out your ass, granddad.
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24/May/2020, 5:20 pm
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Statto
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Re: Golden Age
Following on from what MOOR5 said about the attitude of foreign / British players always reminds me about a story about David Ginola shortly after joining Kevin Keegan's Newcastle.
Apparently Keegan was unhappy that Ginola was smoking a cigarette after a game as he felt it was unhealthy but then Ginola pointed out that the rest of the players were eating greasy fish and chips with bottles of lager for the coach journey home.
It is a bit like foreign players being blamed for introducing diving to the English game whereas people of a certain vintage will remember Francis Lee.
--- Living The Dream
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24/May/2020, 6:13 pm
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ForeverMoor
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Re: Golden Age
quote: M00R5 wrote:
quote: ForeverMoor wrote:
Of course many exceptional players from across the globe have subsequently graced the league, but to be quite blunt in my opinion they have in the main been quite mercenary in their attitude and outlook and haven’t shown particularly great loyalty to anyone or anything except their wallets.
Evidence?
I don't think it's true that non-British players have been any more or less mercenary or disloyal than domestic players. Let's not forget that Blackburn bought the Premier League under exorbitantly wealthy British ownership with a squad of largely British mercenaries. I don't think that nationality makes any difference to that at all.
Let's also not forget that many of the European players arriving in the Premier League in the 90s were more professional in their approach to football than the smoking, beer-swilling, kebab-eating British players of the time. The kind of players like Andy Townsend who would start a rumour that one of their teammates was gay because he read a broadsheet newspaper on the coach to away games (Graeme Le Saux). Rather have Emmanuel Petit, Marcel Desailly (Big Ron's favourite) and Gianfranco Zola in my squad than Townsend, Ruddock "break a leg on purpose", or players that couldn't control their drinking (Merson, Adams, Gascoigne).
quote: Ojiveojive wrote:
If I can't have a rattle, I want a vuvuzela
Blow it out your ass, granddad.
Zola was a superb addition to our league I’ll give you that. Gazza is , warts and all, the best English player of the last 50 years and although I’m not generally a big fan of the Arsenal, despite all their off field failings and misdemeanours, give me Merson and Adams over the likes of Winston Bogarde, Nicolas Anelka, Javier Mascherano and Carlos Tevez any day. Utter scumbags the lot of them.
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24/May/2020, 6:44 pm
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M00R5
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Re: Golden Age
We can have a discussion about individuals, for sure. My issue is that the generalisation that foreign players somehow have a worse attitude than domestic players, or don't 'get' English football, is totally false.
Also, I totally get the love for Gazza, and his raw talent was undeniable. He didn't get the help he needed to actually make the most of it, though.
Ultimately, he achieved little in his career that would objectively mark him out as the best English player in half a century. There are plenty of others before and since who may have had less mercurial talent but achieved far greater things with what they did have.
Last edited by M00R5, 24/May/2020, 10:48 pm
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24/May/2020, 10:43 pm
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Psycho Mouse
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Re: Golden Age
quote: Of course many exceptional players from across the globe have subsequently graced the league, but to be quite blunt in my opinion they have in the main been quite mercenary in their attitude and outlook and haven’t shown particularly great loyalty to anyone or anything except their wallets.
These comments always get on my nerves a tad tbh.
Why should a footballer show any more loyalty to their employer than you or me?
I’ve asked that question for years on forums like this one and have yet to receive a logical, realistic, or sensible reply.
If somebody comes along tomorrow and offers me double my pay for the same job I’d be laughing all the way to the bank, and I suspect you would too.
Headhunting and poaching is commonplace in any business where you’re paid £10 an hour for flipping burgers, or £10k per day running a investment firm in The City.
Let’s also not pretend that Leicester won the league on a shoestring budget either. They had the 4th highest net spend in that season and brought in a loaf of players for substantial money, they were always going to to well. It just so happens that most of the top 6 had a comparatively poor season
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25/May/2020, 12:57 am
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ForeverMoor
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Re: Golden Age
quote: Psycho Mouse wrote:
quote: Of course many exceptional players from across the globe have subsequently graced the league, but to be quite blunt in my opinion they have in the main been quite mercenary in their attitude and outlook and haven’t shown particularly great loyalty to anyone or anything except their wallets.
These comments always get on my nerves a tad tbh.
Why should a footballer show any more loyalty to their employer than you or me?
I’ve asked that question for years on forums like this one and have yet to receive a logical, realistic, or sensible reply.
If somebody comes along tomorrow and offers me double my pay for the same job I’d be laughing all the way to the bank, and I suspect you would too.
Headhunting and poaching is commonplace in any business where you’re paid £10 an hour for flipping burgers, or £10k per day running a investment firm in The City.
Let’s also not pretend that Leicester won the league on a shoestring budget either. They had the 4th highest net spend in that season and brought in a loaf of players for substantial money, they were always going to to well. It just so happens that most of the top 6 had a comparatively poor season
On reflection I can see that my assertion that ambition, greed and disloyalty didn’t exist in English football before 1992 and only became rife thanks to overseas players, has more holes in it than a sieve. I did also concede in my original post however that Football in the modern era is very big business and the market forces at play make for very unpalatable side effects for anyone who loves the game.
Again this might be me reverting to type and generalising wildly, but when folk are expected to pay ever higher ticket prices for the privilege of attending a match, it sticks in the craw when they see exceptionally well paid players of any nationality failing to reciprocate by showing 100% commitment to perform well on the pitch. This dilemma has always existed in football to some extent, and it is unrealistic to expect there to be no personality clashes or dressing room politics in play at any club, but the dislocation between players and the paying public has been magnified in the premier league era and I think it is to everyone’s detriment.
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25/May/2020, 7:03 am
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Alexs Dad
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Re: Golden Age
quote: Upstart Crow wrote:
Remember being taken to the Blues at an early age and like many of the kids back in those days, late sixties, being ferried to the front of the terrace and watching most games at pitch level. Had the old wool scarf and a rattle (probably considered a dangerous object in todays game) and no swearing, well at least not from the kids anyway. What really fascinated me as a lad was the size of the Kop at St.Andrews and after the game standing on the corner of the Cov Road watching the supporters pour out of the Kop like ants pouring out of an ant hill. Totally beguiled me. Making new friends and then establishing a 'base' on the terrace which I pretty much inhabited right up to the redevelopments of 1994. Witnessing the introduction of a young Trevor Francis and watching the likes of Hatton, Burns and Worthington grace the turf in subsequent years.
Football then got perhaps to sanitised and something went awry. You started to feel like a commodity rather than part of a family. It was my introduction to Moors Green in 1997 and onwards to the birth of Solihull Moors that rekindled that thing I lacked. The people, the characters, part of a family again.
I do sometimes think that The Toilet Gang would have been a good fit on The St Andrews Kop.
Ahh..nostalgia.
My Lord Crow, I still have my rattle...if I can I'll upload a pic of it onto the forum.
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25/May/2020, 9:27 am
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RoJ
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Re: Golden Age
"I do sometimes think that The Toilet Gang would have been a good fit on The St Andrews Kop".
Standing on the Kop at St Andrews. There you go, the Gold Age in a nutshell, and I know we never won sweet " Fine Art", and there is something of that feel to the Toilet Gang you are right Bard.
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25/May/2020, 10:28 am
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Ojiveojive
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Re: Golden Age
quote: Psycho Mouse wrote:
Let’s also not pretend that Leicester won the league on a shoestring budget either. They had the 4th highest net spend in that season and brought in a loaf of players for substantial money, they were always going to to well.
Certainly not on the breadline, then? Boom, Boom.
Last edited by Ojiveojive, 25/May/2020, 3:27 pm
--- What a looooooooooong strange trip it's been
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25/May/2020, 3:26 pm
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