OldBlueLady
Junior Blues Coordinator⭐⭐
Brilliant old thread that I have no recollection of at all!!! :clap:
I hear this quite a bit, yet in the late 1980s if a player killed a high ball with one touch, it was such a novelty that they'd be applauded. Nowadays if a player miscontrols a high ball they'll be groans as it is now expected as par for the course. Was the standard in the 60s and 70s really that much higher than the 80s and if so what went wrong so quickly?
Back then the full-backs would have been players like Paul Roberts and Andy Dixon. Are you really telling me that they are more skilful and had better technique than Ben Coker and Jason Demetriou?
Even if I cast my mind back to our great team of 1990 and remove my blue-tinted promotion glasses the likes of Dave Martin, Brett Angell, Spencer Prior, Dean Austin, whilst heroes, all had what maybe described as occasional "heavy" touches compared to the likes of Ryan Leonard, Nile Ranger, Anton Ferdinand and Jason Demetriou who are far more comfortable on the ball. Admittedly the likes of Ranger and Ferdinand have played top flight football, but so did Angell, Prior and Austin! And this is a mid-table team rather than the table topping legends of 1990-91.
I agree totally on functionality, efficiency and percentage football (although players are now far less likely to "play the percentage" and boot the ball out of play). Teams are better drilled and a lot of the extra running that not drinking 8 pints every night allows is spent on defensive work. If you want to make the argument that football is less entertaining, I'm completely open to that argument (especially with (a) the loss of terracing and (b) the current manager). But less skilful? The skill levels are off the chart; it's just that they are largely neutralised and the bar has been raised so that skill that was once noteworthy has now become mundane.
Thank you - I now realise that football has been sanitised - for every Paul Roberts there was a David Crown, for every Andy Dixon a Martin Ling, for every Brett Angel and Ian Benjamin, for every Dave Martin a Keith Jones.
Football had cloggers at the back and skilful forwards. Now there's no clogging every one is the same and run around like Duracell bunnies with their GPS trackers. The forwards had to be skilful to avoid being clogged. All they have to do now is get leaned on, fall over -get a free kick and the crowd bays for a yellow or red card. Bring back the cloggers for some excitement!
This with the fact that somewhere the game went from the winning team scores the most goals to the winning team concedes the fewest goals has reduced the excitement in large cases to who will get the goal in a one nil result.
If you saw Sam on MoD a couple of weeks ago he said he kind of said " The trouble with West Ham fans is that are not content to be happy with just a clean sheet - they want football as well!" I ask you what hope is there.
For every Dick Bate ........ a donkey .
We would have been better off with Master Bate. Didn't he come here highly recommended? I could be wrong, but didn't he have some sort of connection to the FA before he became our manager?
We would have been better off with Master Bate. Didn't he come here highly recommended? I could be wrong, but didn't he have some sort of connection to the FA before he became our manager?
According to the Sunderland Echo interviews for the job took place in Leeds and Manchester towards the end of last week, no mention of Phil
His managerial and coaching career, courtesy of Wikipedia.
It's probably fair to say he did better in all his other appointments than he did at Southend.
1975 Buxton (Player-Manager)
1977–78 Mossley (First Team Manager)
1978 Sheffield Weds (Youth Team Coach)
1980–1985 FA North West Regional Coach
1985 Notts County (Chief Coach)
1987 Southend (Manager)
1987–88 Lincoln City (Assistant Manager)
1988–92 Leeds United (Coach)
1992–95 Malaysia national football team (Technical Director)
1995 Hereford (Coach)
1998 England U16s-U20s (Coach)
1998 England national women's football team (Caretaker Manager)
2005 Canadian Soccer Association (Technical Director)
2006 Watford (Technical Director)
2012–15 Cardiff City (Academy Manager)
I was sort of right then, he did work for the FA before he came to us. Shocking manager, and to think he got jobs after we sacked him.
He must be our all time worst manager and that's saying something with the crap we've had over the years.
Corrections needed,sorry!....Duncan Forbes was essentially a centre-half(Norwich) and Jimmy Scoular always a right-half(Newcastle).Exactly, those personal duels within the game. I well remember McKinven taking on the fearsome Jimmy Scoular, a typical hard case fullback but in the twilight of his career with Bradford Park Avenue and leaving him dumped on the ground snarling, as well as many a tussle with the Colchester fulback Duncan Forbes, another defender who took no prisoners.
Could of been worse , could of had Murphy as his number 2 .He was in "charge" when we lost 8-1 at Gills (and our one was an OG) and 6-2 at Notts County. He "managed " for 8 or 9 games, losing 6 in a row conceding 24 in those 6, 28 in 8. Ah, things could be worse!
No correction needed in either case.Forbes played right back for Colchester against Southend in 1963, 1964 and1965 in all three seasons when McKinven was on the leftwing, most memorably when the winger scored two in the 6-2 win on November 7 1964. Scoular was a right half for most of his career but ended up as a fullback at Bradford.Corrections needed,sorry!....Duncan Forbes was essentially a centre-half(Norwich) and Jimmy Scoular always a right-half(Newcastle).
He was in "charge" when we lost 8-1 at Gills (and our one was an OG) and 6-2 at Notts County. He "managed " for 8 or 9 games, losing 6 in a row conceding 24 in those 6, 28 in 8. Ah, things could be worse!
He was in "charge" when we lost 8-1 at Gills (and our one was an OG) and 6-2 at Notts County. He "managed " for 8 or 9 games, losing 6 in a row conceding 24 in those 6, 28 in 8. Ah, things could be worse!