I just woke up from a state of shock. Lloyd Dyer possibly scoring goal of the season with his RIGHT FOOT!!
Lloyd what the hell went through your head to shoot with your right foot. We all know that foot is for standing and nothing else
Bolton Wanderers manager Dougie Freedman: "Leicester have done it in a way that I would like to copy with young, hungry players. "They went and bought their players for a significant amount of money; we are going to have to find them a little bit rougher and polish them up." I don't want to be picky at such a happy time but the buying expensive players experiment under Sven brought no reward. Our team is no longer made up of players bought for said shed load of cash...we've offloaded them to Bolton!!
Just what I thought! Pearson hasn't spent big money, he just played about with the squad who faltered last year, galvanised them and added one or two significant new players, The trouble is, Leicester now have this reputation of being a big spending club. Unfair.
I think we need to put a bit of perspective on that ... Sven was undoubtedly told "go get promotion ASAP" and was given a warchest ... OK he brought in some players who proved to be disasters - Mills, Beckford and to a lesser extent (at least playing wise) Danns ... but he was shackled to some extent by who wanted to come .. he bid more for Jelavic than Everton got him for, but he didn't want to come to the second tier of English footie ... he also brought in both Kasper and Nuge ... both of whom might not have come if it had not been for Sven's presence and also Yakubu and Sol Bamba ... so it wasn't all disastrous ...
It wasn't all disastrous but spending big didn't get us promoted, our team now, who NP didn't spend a 'significant' amount on did. It just seemed an unnecessary insult to Nige & staff, especially Shakey/Walsh to suggest that's why we won the league. We signed players who did want to come & have developed some we had. The backroom staff have worked hard on getting extra from the players, and its paid off. I decided to feel aggrieved for them, it's their credit & not the cheque book that have got us promoted. Its a bit rich (no pun intended) from Dougie when he signed some of the players we spent big on.
I suspect Doogie meant it partly in relative terms ... Bolton are so weighed down by debt that I suspect his budget for next season is peanuts ... also, whilst he has signed our rejects I suspect it is on vastly reduced terms ... I suspect he is also trying to make a point to his owners...
I agree, it does come over as a backhanded compliment. He's not the first to drop that line either. In terms of transfer fees, we're only £1m down in the last two seasons combined compared to Bolton's £5m. The only hangovers from the Sven spending spree heavily involved are Nugent (free), Kasper (£1.5m) and Konch (£1.5 - St Ledger and Danns are still here but have hardly been pivotal to our success). Most of our first team cost £1m or less but I think Filberto is right in saying that Bolton don't even have the money for that now.
