Lee Croft - True Story

[JuanVelasco 27]

Coming from my best mate, and I mean my best mate of 13 years, no randomers.....Spoke with Lee Croft in a city bar, a particularly popular haunt for city players, about 5 weeks ago. Croft started the conversation by saying hello to somebody my best mate was with, who he obviously knew somehow.

Now, he has no reason to make this up as he couldnt care less about football and hasnt even been to carrow road for 5 or 6 years, just knows who Lee Croft is by others pointing him out.... Basically, in a nutshell, when realising who he was he asked whether he thought they would stay up.

Croft replied that he did thought that they would stay up (obviously he was wrong) so my mate asked what would happen if they went down, and Croft just said that it would be a bad thing for the city.

My mate then proceeded to say "would the players stay" and Croft simply said, "I dont have a clue, but I wouldnt" (he wouldnt have known that Croft was out of contract).He then said "would you stay if they stayed up". To which Croft simply said "yes". My mate then asked whether he had any offers, to which Croft simply said "Sheffield United".

What does this mean? To me it says that Croft wanted to stay at Norwich, but not at the expense of Championship football, suggesting that the contract offer was good enough but that he wouldnt compromise his reputation. It also means that he is definetely going. Im sure nobody has learnt anything new here, I have known this for ages, but there didnt seem to be any benefit of telling anybody until it became clear that he is leaving.

I have to say that I am happy that Croft didnt sign any pre contracts, and at least waited to see if we were staying up. It seems that he genuinely wanted to be playing for us in the right league.

As for Derby, I suspect that a decision will be made on that after Sheffield Uniteds play off final.

 

 

[newyorkcanary 14]

I like Croft and don''t begrudge him for not wanting to sign until he knew what division we were going to be in.  I also think that if we hold onto Clingan and Hoops (it''s possible we will) then losing him is no big loss. I was glad he got Player of the Year.  Sure, his end product wasn''t superb, but if everyone on the team worked as hard as he did, we would have had a better season.

As to the story above, what would you expect him to say, even if he had every intention of leaving.  5 weeks before the season is over, we were still alive?  Why would he say something to the effect that he would jump ship at that point?

[Grant Taylor 0]

that is right because i went to the players dinner and i was speaking to croft and he said he would love to stay but he would not if we got relegated and he said in his speach he would love to stay y would he want to leave his girlfriend likes it here and so does he but he said if we went down he would go.

[chicken 0]

[quote user="newyorkcanary"]

I like Croft and don''t begrudge him for not wanting to sign until he knew what division we were going to be in.  I also think that if we hold onto Clingan and Hoops (it''s possible we will) then losing him is no big loss. I was glad he got Player of the Year.  Sure, his end product wasn''t superb, but if everyone on the team worked as hard as he did, we would have had a better season.

As to the story above, what would you expect him to say, even if he had every intention of leaving.  5 weeks before the season is over, we were still alive?  Why would he say something to the effect that he would jump ship at that point?

[/quote]Indeed. Yet another Roeder failing - why he did not get Croft to sign another contract last summer when spirits and hopes were still reletively high I don''t know.You need to get your young and eager players tied down to long contracts - its the older ones you can afford to wait with or at least that is the theory and it has worked well at Arsenal.

[First Wizard 0]

My best mate said.....................jeez![:S]

[ca 1]

He doesn''t want to help us get out of League 1 so best that he goes!!

[AJ 1,218]

[quote user="cityangel"]He doesn''t want to help us get out of League 1 so best that he goes!![/quote]Definitely. In fairness, I can understand his point, but if he doesn''t want to be here he can bloody well bugger off!

[whoareyou? 0]

I can''t see Sheff Utd still being interested in him if they get into the Premier League!