When he came on for saints I was only young and I never went to the match, so just wondering if any of you lot went, and if he was really that bad as people make out? I've seen some highlights but not enough to judge.
The boy showed what a superb manager we had at the time. A manager with a track record second to most.
Every time someone tells the story of how bad he was, he seems to get a little bit worse. I think it's one of those kinds of stories.
Well you know how Fox is a Championship standard player and he looks out of depth in the Premier League? Dia was not even pro standard, so you can imagine how out of place he looked in a Premier League match.
He barely touched the ball and it was probably more what he did off the ball that made you think "hang on a minute..." He ran in random directions and probably because he knew he was ****ting it, he ran away from the ball a couple of times as not to get shown up even more. But it really wasn't as woeful as the story suggests. He did get subbed, but having seen Steve Baker play for Saints, Ali Dia still didn't manage to knock him off my personal top spot for worst player to pull on the red&white.
Was in the Archer's for it. He was only on for twenty mins or so and hardly touched it. But it wasn't that, it was tha he seemed to just chase the action like little kids do in the under-9's. Wherever it went he followed sort of thing. Just looked well out of place. And he didn't carry himself like a professional, ie; he would lunge into (attempted) tackles, but when he failed to get the ball, he would just sort of drop his head rather than get back into the game. He was crap, but only as crap as you can be without the ball. But he was still better than Neil McCann.
Have to agree with this, I was at the game and I remember him running to wherever the ball wasn't. I also remember a bewildered buzz around the team, who I think very quickly sussed that he was ****e. Strange thing was he looked the part in the warm up before the game and when he came on he again looked in very good shape, pity he had 2 left feet?
I was at this match as well and am pleased that "Down the 36" mentioned about him almost scoring as this was a recollection I had too and wasn't sure that I hadn't imagined it. There was a lot of excitement about him and I can recall that he seemed to be making a lot of runs. Up until the point when he nearly scored I can't recall him seeming that bad but afterwards he just seemed like one of those players you encounter where the game passes them by. My memory is that he wasn't obviously bad and it just seemed like in the 20m minutes or so he was on the pitch he never really got involved. I can't think back to who we were playing and the comment about him running away from the ball whenever it was passed to him might be true although my attention would have been with the players who had possession. At the time, it was staggering that the sub should himself be substituted but this was nothing in comparison to the impact several days after when it was revealed that Souness had been duped by an imposter. After this, Souness seemed to lack alot of credibility. Interestingly enough, I regularly go to a jazz festival in France and one of the blokes who worked at the hotel I stayed at played football in England for a while. I think he has a couple of seasons at Rushden and Diamonds. His name was Cedric. He ended up playing lower league football in Spain. Because of a shared interest in football, he used to love talking about his time in the game and he mentioned the teams in England he ha trials with. It was fascinating because he was really knowledgeable about the game in England and a fan of matt Le Tissier. One of the teams he had a trial with was Saints and this was at the time Souness was boss. He wasn't very impressed by Souness (although he was less impressed by Barry Fry at Peterborough who he thought was an idiot) but was not surprised at all by the Ali Dia incident. It's funny ready the comments about Dia and the odd remark about Steve Baker being the worst player for Saints, I think this had a lot to do with giving the ball away twice in the games where Pompey beat us at the Dell and he never regained his reputation even though he was a player for an amazingly long time. For me, there have been several other players who have seemed totally out of place in our squad. The first of these was Paul Moody who was highly rated by Ian Branfoot whilst being considered to be non-league standard by most Saints fans of the time. He was about 6 foot 5 and built like a bean pole. We bought him from Havant & Waterlooville and he quickly returned to the lower leagues. Around the same time, Branfoot also experimented with another forward called Frankie Bennett who similarly made an initial impression of being favourable yet quickly disappeared in to obscurity when he proved to be below a professional standard. For my money, the Ali Dia incident has assumed legendary proportions and is hugely amusing for the fact that Souness was duped. However I feel that Moody and Bennett probably are the worst two players I've seen in a Saints shirt.
I know a pompey fan who brings him up every time I see him. They really are pulling at straws now, 4-1 still comes up a lot as well. He has also said the past couple of seasons that he was excited about the next season with new stadiums to go to, wonder if he will be saying the same about the Conference.
Not sure he had much before the incident amongst those who saw through his bluster. A person who talks a good game, but doesn't manage one and from talking later to players under him at Saints at the time, he very much looked down his nose at most of the Saints squad. One of those ex great players who thinks players he managed arn't good enough to lace his boots. But also perversely, in the case of Le Tiss, a bit jealous that his abilities came so naturally to him "without working".
I was at the game and remember him having an early chance. He certainly was not as bad as you would think he would be, but maybe he just hid a bit. There wasn't any forums about to discuss the game, just a group of us on the train. Nobody really said much about him on the way home, certainly no comments about how shiete he was. Although I still go with the same guys and some claim they saw through him, but I don't remember it that way. I'm sure the pros sussed him out, but not convinced the supporters did, I didn't really, although I used go have about 10 pints before the games in those days, so even fox would look good through those beer goggles. Chicken George is by far the worse top flight player I've ever seen, except on one memorable occasion that he ripped man Utd apart. In fact the older I get, the less im actually sure that it was chicken who did that. Please could another fossil confirm it did indeed happen and it wasn't a result of the copious amount of beer consumed pre match.
Just point out that Guy the Witless would sign Ali Dia like a shot today, he'd be a great asset to the team about to "rip up" L2. I was at the match and was just bemused by what position Mr Dia was supposed to be playing. In a 30 ft orbit around the ball seemed to describe it best. I think he was subbed off when the slug balancer realised other players were no longer passing to him!
It was George Lawrence that night, I made that point in the Fergie thread as Le Tiss is credited with getting Atkinson the sack so that Fergie could take over, but really, it was Chicken who was MOTM that night. He got the first goal, ran down the right wing, cut in and thrashed a low skimmer into the far corner from 25 yards. Wasn't the only good game he had, I remember him having a cracker away at Leicester. Sadly those games where his legs did what his brain wanted them to do were only about 1 in 50. Most the time he bamboozled himself more than the opposition. Here's the clip, great open goal miss by Colin Clarke. Was also one of the rare occasions where home fans were in the away cage in the Archers. [video=youtube;GoBqbNLsVRU]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GoBqbNLsVRU[/video]
He came on and nearly scored as was said above. I don't remember him being particularly bad after that although my mate was shouting for him to be taken off. However, he does that with everyone so..........! Anyway, he went on to play for Gateshead or someone like that. So, although he might not have been Premier League standard he was still a much better player than most.
