You are talking about MA, so you’re bang on with the” more stupid than you could ever imagine” decision.
You may be right, but it’s only supposition on your part, no one really knows apart from the individuals involved, like I said the correct decision was made not to renew his contract, it’s a shame the situation wasn’t handled better and we’d have at least got something for him before the pandemic came and ended any chance we had of selling him.
I get your point, it's a little more than supposition, let me put it this way the whole dynamic changed when Pearson took over.
It seemed to with a lot of the players, especially the ones out of contract or that he was able to let go, the two obvious exceptions were Weiman and Baker, both of whom are his type of player, and both we’re willing to accept much lower wages. edit I believe there are a few others he’s only using because they are contracted so he’s unable to move them on, Bakinson and Palmer, to name two.
It was about convincing SL that the decision to keep him was flawed, SL thought he was better than he actually was and also more popular, but I would say by then most BCFC fans had sussed him out. I agree with all of the stuff about his off field character, I met him once he was a charming and engaging man but I believe in some cases BCFC had become to charitable to players who had been serial failures and I believe that one or two are still with us.
I believe most fans knew his weaknesses, I certainly did, however we paid the price of and got a compromise, to get anyone better would a/ cost more to buy and b/ cost more in wages. He was what we were willing to pay, a decent championship standard player.
We will agree to disagree about his standard, but I take your point about what you get for 5mil in the striker category and we spent that amount on two for a very poor return.
You’ve posted before what you consider his weaknesses to be and honestly I agree with most of them. if we as a club wanted better we needed to pay more than 5mil and the corresponding wages. It’s not his fault we didn’t .
That's not my argument to be honest, we signed him and offered him a contract, my problem always was he seems to have been poorly coached, never sorted out his positioning in the box and how simple it was to ease him off of the ball and how easy he went down. The trick was missed not keeping Wilbraham on as a bit part player but primarily as a coach for our strikers, but I believe him and Elliott were considered a threat by the manager.
I agree completely, I’d have loved Wilbraham to stay, who knows if he’d been able to pass some of his knowledge to Fam he may of become a much better player, he was good for morale too, even now I’d like him as a coach. I was completely underwhelmed when he joined, how wrong was I, amazing bloke.
The guy was a quality striker, who had honed his craft and knew how to get the best out of his ageing legs, defenders knew that they had been in a game coming up against him, I suspect most defenders never felt that when marking Diedhiou. Wilbs and Elliott were the catalyst's to our great promotion season and sadly both were sacrificed almost certainly for inferior coaching staff IMHO.
As I said I was underwhelmed when we signed him. He took about 10 mins into his first game for us to win me over. Edit As one of our other poster would put it. He was “different gravy”
I agree and he was really good that season with a good scoring record and we really missed him when he got injured during that season as well. But just like gravy when left, it's gets thick and lumpy.
If you ever get to see that pod cast Wilbs done you would understand why he never stayed. Also the current set up bombed Elliott out. It was poor all round IMO
As I recall Wilbraham wanted to carry on playing, so I don't think he saw coaching as something he was quite ready to do when his time with us was done. I also see the very thinly veiled pop in your comment about Fammy being poorly coached.... The guy couldn't trap a bag of cement, things like that should have been coached into him long before he joined us. The truth is he was a poor signing and LJ and MA have to be held accountable for that. We did well from France with Kodja, and MA thought it was easy to repeat that success, as we all saw it wasn't. AI said before, that if Fammy would accept a significantly lower wage and be a squad player, he could have been a good option to keep, but he and his agent were clearly never going to go for that, so thankfully we didn't cave, and he left. Good luck to him, but he will never play at a higher level than he did with us.
Apparently so and he is now also playing for some ****ty Turkish club as well, 2 bullets dodged in one season, very unBCFC like.
Nothing thinly veiled in my pop. The first touch I agree should be taught from the outset, positioning in the opponents box is something very different and could and should have been coached, as for going down easily he was a big strong guy how he allowed that to happen, god knows.
I have seen that podcast and to be fair I thought that Wilbs was incredibly self controlled, it was obvious that he had little or no respect for LJ but kept his powder dry.
Again, both of those should be natural for strikers, and he should have been able to do before joining us. I don't think any of the 3 managers he had at City would have, or did change that, he simply didn't have it. A poor signing, simple as. Let's see if another manager 'coachs' that out of him? I'm tipping not!
