Matty Fryatt retires

Due to a long standing achilles injury Matty has been forced to retire. Shame as he always did a good job for us back in the day especially scoring the goals to get us out of League 1

 

Him and Howard go down as my favourite strike partnership of all time.

Also a debate - not in terms of ability as obviously we have Vardy and Okazaki which won us the league - but arguably the best PARTNERSHIP we’ve ever seen?

 

Collymore and Heskey could have been dynamite. We saw a glimpse of what might have been, then Heskey left for Liverpool, O’ Neill went to Celtic and then Peter Taylor arrived. From a potential top 4 team to a pub team in one season.

 

I think Vards and Shinji combine just as well, not quite little and large as Stevie and Matty were but I’d say the current crop edge it on partnership and clearly smash it on ability. Those two are a close second imo and were fantastic at that level

 

Lineker and Smith. I'm biased though as they were the ones i have seen the most in the flesh. Only saw Howard once, it was the year we got relegated we played Hull at home and lost 0-2 with Henderson saving a penalty. Our only route to goal was to pump it up to Howard and he was immense, winning every header and working his butt off for no reward. Don't remember if Fryatt was playing but a great player for the club.

 

Elvis Hammond and Mark De Vries

 

... not even close ... Gary Lineker and Alan Smith ....Alan Young and Jimmy Melrose ... Frank Worthington and Steve Earle .. Heskey and Collymore (could have been magic) ... Heskey and Cottee ... Frank Large, Andy Lochead, Derek Dougan, Mike Stringfellow, Rodney Fearn

 

See I’m only 26 so most of those are before me

 

I realised that
Matty Fryatt was a fair finisher but too slow to really make it at the top level ... big Steve was great at what he did ... but a bit like Ewan (is a Welshman) Roberts ...limited

 

I’ll never forget that year in league 1 where he got 20 before Christmas - one of my favourite seasons where we just won every week against a new range of teams

 

Can't forget Gibson and Stringfellow had a great understanding between them!

 

And also Howard Riley and Ken Keyworth. Keyworth was the only man brave (daft?) enough to put his head on Riley's crosses - back in the day of heavy leather balls and laces. Seen him split his head open more than once with a bad connection.

 

In the last 15-20 years only real decent partnerships we have had has been Brian Deane and Paul Dickov, Dickov and Ferdinand, Fryatt and Howard, Vardy and Nugent and Vardy and Okazaki

 

DJ Campbell and Barry Hayles.

 

Yeah thanks for that, after we thought we’d forgotten them!

 

Haha I did like Barry Hayles!

 

I’m the same age as you Ed and only ever knew what turned out to be crap until enter big Nige. I remember what was then a massive win over Spurs in the FA Cup and out scorers were Hammond, Hughes and De Vries!! How times have changed

 

I remember at the time I was shocked that we appointed big Nige in the season when we were desperate for some a (league 1) big name name to take us back. Then he followed it with the ‘strange’ signings of Michael Morrison and Lloyd Dyer if I remember right and a couple of other. Just think what could have been if we hadn’t appointed him!

 

They’re the kind of signings we love! Give me a Diabate signing over Slimani etc all day.
I still think the club was in the best shape behind the scenes I’ve ever seen it under Nige. He may have his limitations as a manager and I wouldn’t want him back as manager for a 3rd spell but I’d definitely take him back in a behind the scenes capacity to sort the structure of the club out that has gone wayward. I saw Steve Walsh is on the being at Everton as well

 

I posted about that in the other thread too - I think him and Walsh just worked so well together as Pearson just let him tell him how to use the new scouted players and Pearson just did exactly that. I don’t think anyone else would allow that