Among his comments following Saturday's magnificent performance, Jol had the following to say - "Bobby is brilliant as a No. 9. He is a specific type of player a target man who is one of our main strengths. Whether he goes with England to the European Championships depends on what you want. As a striker you have to score goals and I hope Bobby can be a bit more productive. We have to believe in ourselves and score goals at the right moments." The positive in me says that this is praise tempered with a desire to see Bobby among the goals more regularly. The negative says, that not having more care in public staements (again) is hardly going to heal the rift between manager and player - which seemed to have at least gone quiet of late. As I understand things, Bobby has been carrying a thigh injury and that's why he came off on Saturday. Unfortunate in itself because with AJ up front on his own we didn't have an outlet and the Arsenal were able to push more players forward. Why though did Jol not at least mention the injury and how unlucky Bobby was with his offside 'goal' ? There are ways to motivate a player (remember how supportive and positive Woy was when Bobby wasn't a regular in the goal charts) and ways that achieve just the opposite. Whatever Jol intended I believe his choice of words are flawed. Mostly because of the injury I suspect Bobby won't be playing on Thursday.
C58, it is not as negative as it sounds. Don't forget he is Dutch who are a bit more straight forward with words than political animal Roy! Think Bobby is slightly stressed and under pressure! Once he relaxes he will transform to the player we had 2 years ago.
Yeah, I think you need to relax a little, C58. Nothing Jol said wasn't true - Bobby does need to get amongst the goals, but Jol underlined that by saying that's a symptom of the whole team.
Agreed with the general tone of the comments. I think Jol was being positive - 'a brilliant number 9', 'one of our main strengths' - that's high praise from any manager. The bit about scoring goals sounds like constructive criticism, which any player ought to be able to take. And it's much easier to take that kind of comment when it comes on the back of fulsome praise, as in this case. I'm a big Bobby fan, and I don't think there's anything Jol said that he should take offense at.
