The road to Mediocrity

[nutty nigel 7,507]

[quote user="gazzathegreat"]Yes, and I am not arguing that, I am saying Mike Walker''s team would beat Nigel Worthington''s team hands down. Butler was trying to say I believe that over the years the team has declined. Would any of Worthington''s team got into the 92/93 side. I suggest probably only Huckerby. But hey, I guess we should be grateful we are all old enough to have seen our team win something or achieve greater heights. Ken Brown and Dave Stringer had years of fantastic football and great achievements. Some wonderful players too. Sadly, unless I win the Euro millions we won''t have that again. Oh if only!![/quote]

We both seem to understand what The Butler saw it''s just nobody understands what I am saying. I guess that means I''m either talking rubbish or people have closed their minds to my point of view. However I''ll keep trying because I don''t think we can compare football from the late eighties / early nineties to the present day because in real terms all the clubs from the top division of those days have declined apart from the big four.

At no point have I ever said that the Championship side was as good as those teams though Gazza.. where ever did that come from[:O]

[;)]

 

 

[Buncey 1]

[quote user="The Butler"]

Good teams are usually filled with good players OBVIOUS

Good teams can accomodate one or two mediocre players. They will be helped and covered for by the quality arround them

Examples of this have been Rob Newman and Gerry Goss just to name a couple, not great but reasonable.

You can get away with this but when you have a steady decline to a reverse of this with a team of mediocre players with one or two of quality then problems.

When you have a team consisting of Marshal, Dougherty,Russell,Croft,Cureton etc with only Clingan(I''m struggling with this) then there is no one to lift the team to cover the mistakes.

This decline has been on going for some time. Pick any position on the field and trace it over the last say 10years and see the result.

Is any position BETTER than it was?

That is why we are were we are and even if we survive this season UNLESS we can start restoring the balance then this is all we have to look forward to.

[/quote]It is worrying Mr. Butler and you''re points are all very good. The problem as ol'' Nutty has never (ever!) said is that we don''t have Worthy any more. If you look at it, what major talent have we had since Worthy has left? Grant signed Marshall, who''s just about good enough (and pretty good when he doesn''t make boo-boos), Roeder has signed Hoolahan and Clingan, both of which I don''t think we''ve seen the best of yet. In these past 2 years these managers have signed poor players to replace the team that Worthy had built, a lot of those players were either booted out due to falling out (or "other" circumstances....) or because they had clauses or the ambition to seek out premiership or bigger teams in the championship.In the 2 seasons before worthy was sacked (I won''t include the premiership season) we signed: Etuhu, Earnshaw,  Croft, Dion, and if you want to push it Hughes and Colin. All players probably better than what we have now, and they''ve all gone to be replaced with players of poorer quality. Worthy had quite a few talented players sold from underneath him and he did well to replace those players (i.e. francis, ashton, green etc.) with some pretty good players. In Grant and Roeder we''ve seen managers unable to achieve this feat. The board deserve their share of criticism for letting/selling players and giving back tiny amounts of money in return to the manager, which was always gonna end up in a sticky end. But their decision to sack Worthington and the subsequent signings of Grant, Roeder and maybe ever Gunn (we''ll find out end of May) have cost us dearer. Their managerial incompetence have led us as much to the precarious position we are in now.

[lucky green trainers 0]

[quote user="Fellas"][quote user="The Butler"]

Good teams are usually filled with good players OBVIOUS

Good teams can accomodate one or two mediocre players. They will be helped and covered for by the quality arround them

Examples of this have been Rob Newman and Gerry Goss just to name a couple, not great but reasonable.

You can get away with this but when you have a steady decline to a reverse of this with a team of mediocre players with one or two of quality then problems.

When you have a team consisting of Marshal, Dougherty,Russell,Croft,Cureton etc with only Clingan(I''m struggling with this) then there is no one to lift the team to cover the mistakes.

This decline has been on going for some time. Pick any position on the field and trace it over the last say 10years and see the result.

Is any position BETTER than it was?

That is why we are were we are and even if we survive this season UNLESS we can start restoring the balance then this is all we have to look forward to.

[/quote]It is worrying Mr. Butler and you''re points are all very good. The problem as ol'' Nutty has never (ever!) said is that we don''t have Worthy any more. If you look at it, what major talent have we had since Worthy has left? Grant signed Marshall, who''s just about good enough (and pretty good when he doesn''t make boo-boos), Roeder has signed Hoolahan and Clingan, both of which I don''t think we''ve seen the best of yet. In these past 2 years these managers have signed poor players to replace the team that Worthy had built, a lot of those players were either booted out due to falling out (or "other" circumstances....) or because they had clauses or the ambition to seek out premiership or bigger teams in the championship.In the 2 seasons before worthy was sacked (I won''t include the premiership season) we signed: Etuhu, Earnshaw,  Croft, Dion, and if you want to push it Hughes and Colin. All players probably better than what we have now, and they''ve all gone to be replaced with players of poorer quality. Worthy had quite a few talented players sold from underneath him and he did well to replace those players (i.e. francis, ashton, green etc.) with some pretty good players. In Grant and Roeder we''ve seen managers unable to achieve this feat. The board deserve their share of criticism for letting/selling players and giving back tiny amounts of money in return to the manager, which was always gonna end up in a sticky end. But their decision to sack Worthington and the subsequent signings of Grant, Roeder and maybe ever Gunn (we''ll find out end of May) have cost us dearer. Their managerial incompetence have led us as much to the precarious position we are in now.[/quote]after our relelgation - worthy signed players that were not good enough to mount a credible promotion challenge...etuhu is the only one playing in the prem now (although earnie sat on derby''s bench for most of their recent prem season) - and it could be argued dickson was going nowhere under worthy - it was granty who got this player going,,,the rest were substandard and after leaving us - most went down into the lower leagues...or retired like dion - sure dion helped us out in a relegation battle - but he wasn''t a top 6 player when he came here...imo - only earnie was a top 6 replacement,,,and crofty has largely disappointed - even though this season he has done much better - is he still a top 6 winfer in this league...nah...i don''t think so///only tiny taylor and maybe lita (although his recent form with reading is not much to shout about) have been genuine top 6 signings for us in this league,,,

[nutty nigel 7,507]

[quote user="lucky green trainers"][quote user="Fellas"][quote user="The Butler"]

Good teams are usually filled with good players OBVIOUS

Good teams can accomodate one or two mediocre players. They will be helped and covered for by the quality arround them

Examples of this have been Rob Newman and Gerry Goss just to name a couple, not great but reasonable.

You can get away with this but when you have a steady decline to a reverse of this with a team of mediocre players with one or two of quality then problems.

When you have a team consisting of Marshal, Dougherty,Russell,Croft,Cureton etc with only Clingan(I''m struggling with this) then there is no one to lift the team to cover the mistakes.

This decline has been on going for some time. Pick any position on the field and trace it over the last say 10years and see the result.

Is any position BETTER than it was?

That is why we are were we are and even if we survive this season UNLESS we can start restoring the balance then this is all we have to look forward to.

[/quote]

It is worrying Mr. Butler and you''re points are all very good. The problem as ol'' Nutty has never (ever!) said is that we don''t have Worthy any more. If you look at it, what major talent have we had since Worthy has left? Grant signed Marshall, who''s just about good enough (and pretty good when he doesn''t make boo-boos), Roeder has signed Hoolahan and Clingan, both of which I don''t think we''ve seen the best of yet. In these past 2 years these managers have signed poor players to replace the team that Worthy had built, a lot of those players were either booted out due to falling out (or "other" circumstances....) or because they had clauses or the ambition to seek out premiership or bigger teams in the championship.

In the 2 seasons before worthy was sacked (I won''t include the premiership season) we signed: Etuhu, Earnshaw,  Croft, Dion, and if you want to push it Hughes and Colin. All players probably better than what we have now, and they''ve all gone to be replaced with players of poorer quality. Worthy had quite a few talented players sold from underneath him and he did well to replace those players (i.e. francis, ashton, green etc.) with some pretty good players. In Grant and Roeder we''ve seen managers unable to achieve this feat.

The board deserve their share of criticism for letting/selling players and giving back tiny amounts of money in return to the manager, which was always gonna end up in a sticky end. But their decision to sack Worthington and the subsequent signings of Grant, Roeder and maybe ever Gunn (we''ll find out end of May) have cost us dearer. Their managerial incompetence have led us as much to the precarious position we are in now.
[/quote]

after our relelgation - worthy signed players that were not good enough to mount a credible promotion challenge...etuhu is the only one playing in the prem now (although earnie sat on derby''s bench for most of their recent prem season) - and it could be argued dickson was going nowhere under worthy - it was granty who got this player going,,,the rest were substandard and after leaving us - most went down into the lower leagues...or retired like dion - sure dion helped us out in a relegation battle - but he wasn''t a top 6 player when he came here...imo - only earnie was a top 6 replacement,,,and crofty has largely disappointed - even though this season he has done much better - is he still a top 6 winfer in this league...nah...i don''t think so///

only tiny taylor and maybe lita (although his recent form with reading is not much to shout about) have been genuine top 6 signings for us in this league,,,
[/quote]

Well.. for what it''s worth, and I''m sure you already knew it anyway, I agree with Fellas where as I believe Lucky is just trying to spin the facts to make all the Worthy Out stuff correct. Because stating that Etuhu and Earnshaw are the only players Worthy signed after our relegation to play in the Premiership as a negative is surely spinning at its best. Surely that is a positive and proof that Worthy did in fact manage to keep some quality at the club after good players were sold. OK, only two, but come on Lucky - how many players did other clubs manage to buy who went on to play in the Premiership? Sure some went up and came back down again with their clubs, but how many were wanted to improve the squads of promoted teams? Like I said in an earlier post... the game has changed. The Premiership is now full of the best players in the world. Steve Bruce won''t go from Gillingham to Norwich to Man.Utd anymore, Mick Phelan won''t take the same route from Burnley.

I caught a bit of Steve Coppell on SSN tonight and he was saying the gulf between the top and the middle of the Prem is about a division and the gulf between the top and bottom is two divisions. I believe he''s right and I believe he was also right about there not being much difference between the top and bottom of the Champs. That''s why all the teams can beat eachother and why poor finishing or mistakes in defence are crucial. As are poor refereeing decisions and Norwich have had more than their fair share on all three counts this season.

Anyway, to get back on to the road to mediocrity, I reckon that back in the late eighties we were on a level footing with Manchester United but now we are the equivalent of three 80''s divisions below them. However before we cry too much about how we have managed to fall so far behind I think we should recognise that this is much much more to do with them moving forward than us going backwards. Because where as in the late eighties we all lived in the same land of opportunity in this century we certainly don''t.