Anthony Vickers, a writer for the Middlesboro Evening Gazette has been kind enough to offer me this view of City's latest loan signing, Stephen McManus: http://exiledrobin.blogspot.com/2012/02/scottish-invasion-boro-view-on-mcmanus.html?spref=tw
"struggled to make the leap from a regime of one intense Old Firm game a month followed by a few easy outings" Huh? McManus....nice guy, but always not very good.
Me & Venom were laughing about McManus just the other day Remember the game he went sliding in on a player & lost his boot and carried on for about 10 minutes kicking every player in sight until Gary Caldwell had to tell him his boot was on the half way line Dive in every ****ing time He always seemed a decent lad but I always thought of him quite simple, you could picture Strachan in the dressing room telling him "Kick their number 9, everytime he has it kick him".......and big Mick walking out on the field mumbling "Kick, kick, kick". He looked really promising when he broke through, in part because he had a great season scoring - 12 I think?? Thing is at a decent level strikers can learn how to play you after a few years & his lack of pace & his knack of diving in meant he got tore apart a few times up here. Him & Caldwell had a good partnership for 18 months or so but was always a threat one of them would blunder!! He's a tough player who will give his all, no doubt. Haven't seen much of him since he left but always hoped he would learn to stand up a bit more as he matured as he could be a real decent centreback if he curbed that urge to slide in.
He should never have been made Celtic Captain, he got it by default because we were full of foreign midgets with no presence on the pitch. He wasn't even a guaranteed starter so it made no sense at all, then of course the managers had to start him because it makes headlines if you drop your captain.
His career was stifled by Strachan when he didn't partner him with an experienced centre back. Same with Caldwell. 2 young centre backs rarely works. Rogne and Muldini being the exception.
If you go back and look at the season where the likes of him, Caldwell, Thompson, Naylor etc all took a bashing for their form, there was only one consistent factor in the games they played. Glenda ****ing Loovens. Celtic went through a 6 game period with a different centre half beside Loovens in every game, and somehow Mowbray seemed to think none were up to the job, despite missing the obvious. Loovens was a ****ing bombscare, and the other guys in the team knew it. Honestly, go back and watch some of the goals we lost that season, and tell me the likes of Caldwell(who i was never a massive fan of actually) and McManus hadn't changed their game to try and cover for that ****wit.
theres a lot to be said for that ; Ive always thought that it is often possible for the best defender in a team that has one or more poor defenders in it to actually appear to be the worst , as they are trying to stick their fingers in too many dykes - so to speak. Still, caldwell and mcmanus were pretty poor.
Conversely Phil Baab looked like a world beater playing alongside Paul McGrath for Ireland. Journeyman Sean Teale looked a fine player alongside McGrath.
