Darlogramps wrote:
Genuine question - where does this "he lacked heart" and "he was pea-hearted" stuff come from?
Yes he didn't charge around the pitch like a nutcase. And yes he didn't go barrelling into challenges.
But that wasn't and will never be his game. I personally think he did show plenty of "heart" but because of the type of player he is, and the style he has, that will never come across.
I just think at times fans criticise players for not being what we want them to be, rather than judging on the type of player he is.
It's the same thing with Turnbull, when people slagged him off for not scoring goals. That wasn't his game.
To me, he often hid when the going was tough, hence the pea hearted comments. Often he was marked or bullied out of games, especially during winter - don't know if that was just a co-incidence or whether he was really a fair weather player. To me, he was the epitome of a luxury player.
As for Turnbull, well he's in his 30s now and possibly past his peak. He is not going to improve in future seasons so maybe the timing was right on this one. I agree that his game wasn't about scoring goals, but his game was also about not making a forward pass, ever, much to my frustration.
I did notice last season that he dallied around and lost possession more often than the season before.
Overall he was a good player and that cannot be denied, but I didn't think he was as great as some people make out.
More of a concern is that we've lost a massive chunk of the core of players who have been at Darlo a long timee, and with it you might imagine their mentality, togetherness and ethic has gone with them too. With the likes of Brown, Hunter, Turnbull, Portas, Scott, Gillies moving on, Thompson and Galbraith might start to feel like strangers to the others.
With all of the wholesale changes it could go either way next season. We could do well but we may take a long while to gel (based on us bringing probably 3 more fresh faces in). The biggest concern is that all the new faces don't get along in the dressing room, whereas we can all be pretty sure that we've had a great team spirit in previous seasons.
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“Everybody knows where that club is going now, so I’m out of the way. They can carry on, it’s their club, they can keep it." - Raj Singh, 2017