I would imagine they've just brought him back to try and allow Nicky to judge him with the others and to get him some football elsewhere. Looking at his spell at Plymouth alone is stupid. He's had two very successful spells at Rochdale, one in League One. Him going to Plymouth in the first place seemed very odd given their woes. He's got some ability, that's obvious to everyone except Erik.
Generally speaking, of course he has SOME ability. But ****ing hell, generally speaking even I have SOME footballing ability. The lad's 23-years-old and his departure from the worst team in the English professional leagues is being celebrated by their fans in a manner that should worry you.
Nah, but him and the almost-as-****e Mark Cullen put us 2-1 up and made me think we were going to get our first away win of the season in our final away game.
If giving a false impression of success justifies this level of criticism, then there must be hundreds of City (past and present) players you hate!
Why would it worry me? The kid ha played for us in the PL and the Championship and wasn't awful, just not very good, and played in Rochdale's League Two winning side and the team that stayed up comfortably in League One as well as Plymouth. Judge him on the whole picture. He's played for half a dozen pro clubs. His "some ability" is much greater than your "some ability".
I'm with Theo tbh. I'm not a massive fan of Atkinson's but I don't agree with players being categorically ruled out of ever being good when they are still young (see Keith Andrews and Ricardo Vaz Te) and certainly not when it appears our manager wants him back. It's hard to argue with Theo's 'whole picture'. He does link up with other players pretty well, and can use both feet effectively which gives him a Brady-like advantage when playing wide.
No two players can possibly have similar abilities then? The other day Ricardo helpfully compared Josh King to Rooney and someone else, so we could get an idea of how he plays from someone who'd seen him live a few times. It makes sense to me. All I said about Atkinson is that being two-footed he can go inside or go for the byline, like Brady.
Probably not, but he isn't as bad as some are making out. He was kind of average when he was in the first team at the start of last year. I remember at Burnley away thinking he and Barmby had been our best players.
But that was last season when we had no squad and were flirting with relegation. We are now promotion hopefuls so Atkinson shouldn't be anywhere near the 1st team IMO
He probably won't be. Brady is as two-footed as they come. I'd also argue that Chester, McKenna and Koren of the top off my head are pretty good with both feet and Stewart and Fryatt's left feet aren't too bad either.
