What the hell happened from last week? Spurz 2 Spineless Shits 0, and this was like West Ham away, only worse.
I think the writing was on the wall in the 4th minute when Carl Cort missed an absolute sitter. There was no fight, unlike last week, nobody wanting to tackle, or win the ball, etc etc. Why? I’ll tell you why – player power. Half the squad on there today should seriously consider not turning up next week against Bradford. It’s quite clear that they know they’ll be out in the summer, so they decide that they’re only going to play what they want, when they want.
I think the Reservoir Don summed it up best when he said “they’re not playing for the manager, they’re not playing for the club, they’re not playing for themselves”. So who are they playing for? Their agents? You won’t be surprised to learn that both Cort and Euell, once again, were totally useless, though they weren’t the only culprits (Jupp was horrible today, Kimble – who returned only because we needed a proper left back, methinks we should have stuck with what we had last week….oh yeah, Blackwell was injured and couldn’t train this week – was awful, clearly at fault for the second goal, disappointed about Hughes, KC tried hard but got no real support from anyone, ditto with Double H, and as for Andy Roberts……).
What’s the worst about this is that when you get Jason Euell going on telly the night before, claiming that you want to leave (for “bigger and better things”) and then have the temerity to say that you’ll put 100% effort in. I think the problem is, as mentioned earlier on, that a great deal of the players know they’ll be out in the summer. But why aren’t they playing for themselves, as much as anything?
Do you think that somebody like Leeds will come in and buy Carl Cort? Do you think that somebody like Lincoln will come in and buy Carl Cort? No, because I reckon that once their agents “tapped” them about leaving in the summer, they just don’t want to know. Happened with Dean Holdsworth, don’t forget, and now the same is happening with too many of the first team squad.
Now, why pick on Cort and Euell? Because they’re the two worst culprits. They are the ones who are supposed to get the goals to relieve the pressure on the defence, yet they don’t do their job. They are the ones who have to perform probably more than the rest of the team, yet they’re the laziest of a bad bunch (a view shared by many around me today).
So, what to do before May 14th? Simple. Get Wayne Gray back off loan from Swindon, get whatshisface from Raith back off loan (forgot his name, I’m really sorry), and bung them in the first team. Play people who WANT to play. Play Dry Martini [injury notwithstanding] from the start, he looks more up for it than the rest of them, put Damian Francis in, he didn’t look any worse than half the “established” stars there today.
Fuck it, put Leaburn in if Lund can’t run 90 minutes. Something like that will happen in the summer anyway, why not do it now, we’ve got nothing to lose have we? Except our Premiership place. I don’t fancy our chances with a strikeforce of Cort, Euell and Gayle, not if their minds are elsewhere. Sadly, because of our lack of depth in the squad, and other factors as listed below, we’re stuck with these wasters – what concerns me is that these sort of people are considered our “best players”.
Anyway, you know that calls for Drillo to be sacked will intensify, though what difference anyone else would make is something nobody has really properly explained to me, and never likely to either. People say that Drillo should go because he can’t motivate the players. Well, if fighting for your Premiership survival isn’t motivation enough, then frankly you should not be a pro footballer.
In a nutshell, if you’re going to sack Drillo at the end of the season, you will need to sack half the team beforehand, because there is no way whatsoever that keeping this squad will somehow improve under a different regime. This squad, despite what Olsen has bought in (which has been generally good, Badir excepted), is still extremely stagnant, self interested and demotivated. NOBODY could motivate this lot, JK couldn’t (and indeed his methods and man-management are probably the cause of a lot of the current problems). MH and DK couldn’t. Drillo can’t either.
That’s three different managers, three different managerial styles, same shit. There’s a correlation there, and “getting Olsen Out” ain’t going to change squat. Think about it : Drillo has had to change what he wants to play simply to keep the hyper-inflated egos in the squad happy. He’s changed from 4-5-1 (which looked as though it was starting to work) to 4-4-2 just to (alledgedly) keep the players “happy”. Why he did that is unclear, but I don’t believe that Drillo is given a free reign to do what he wants as yet – I firmly believe that there are strong, almost unbreakable political interests within the playing side of WFC, and this may explain why people like Euell and Cort still get games, and REMBE always got the captaincy.
And what’s happened? A seven game losing streak at the moment, not many wins before then either. Says it all really, doesn’t it. Make no mistake – we deserve relegation this season, but whether we will depends on Sheffield Wednesday. The players deserve first division football next season, because that’s where their attitudes belong – away from the Premiership. I don’t think Drillo deserves relegation (and the subsequent abuse he’ll get), after all when you consider the crap he’s had to deal with this season (and what he inherited, don’t forget), the fans in general CERTAINLY don’t, but the people on the pitch do. And that’s the worse bit of all.