Hard work beats talent if talent doesn't work hard.

[DrEFC]

So none of the all time star teams worked hard? I don't know how you can have 9 pages of this. Del was talented but didn't work hard enough for the team for him to be a viable long term player. Star or not, you have to work hard, harder than anyone else is perceived to, to be top of your game. The more athletic players & team will win more frequently & consistently.

 

[MikeH72]

I remember when we had Roberto Martinez as manager who built a team of utter clueless lazy cart horses who couldn't be arsed breaking into a jog, what a nightmare that was.

 

[DrEFC]

this isn't true I'm afraid, to be a top level sportsman, genetically you've won the lottery, no doubt huge amounts of graft also go into it, but you still need to be a bit lucky upon your creation

But out of the genetics lottery winners, who will be the best- the one that works the hardest. The motto belonging to this thread is applied to professional athletes. Joe bloggs could train to be a decent footballer, just not a elite pro.

 

[Groucho]

absolute nonsense about Barkley, the lad worked as hard as anyone this season

Opinions. Fair dos mate.

 

[davek]

Maybe you don't go back that far but the best club team for many was Real Madrid for much of the 1950's

I dont, but I can appreciate that a team with players like Puskas and Di Stefano would have been formidable.

 

[davek]

Then that's the media teams fault for not requesting that Barkley be singled out in questions at pressers. If they weren't persistent then the contract situation would have been left where it should have been, away from publicity

Koeman started it and encouraged it.

 

[davek]

So none of the all time star teams worked hard? I don't know how you can have 9 pages of this. Del was talented but didn't work hard enough for the team for him to be a viable long term player. Star or not, you have to work hard, harder than anyone else is perceived to, to be top of your game. The more athletic players & team will win more frequently & consistently.

*sigh*

 

[ianefc]

absolute nonsense about Barkley, the lad worked as hard as anyone this season

I agree. Lots of revisionism going on about Barkley this season. From early December to mid April was the best and fittest he's been for the club. A constant danger, controlling displays, even in games like Spurs away.

I just want that contract signed.

 

[DrEFC]

*sigh*

You ok, hun?

 

[Bluebonic]

Yep, cant have one without the other...which is basically what RK was endorsing. However, his actions since being here - marginalising our creative players - makes me think it's a stance with more negative meaning to it.[/QUOTE your consistency and refusal to yield in your stance against Koeman is admirable! I always admire people who have the courage of their convivtions! I am unsure of how your name should be pronounced? dave K, Dav Ekk or Day Vekk? I use Day Vekk, and was listening to an advert that uses a version of Lennons 'Across the Universe'. I started using your name instead of Dagaru Deva, and now, each time i hear it, the guy is singing 'Dagaru, Day Vekk, om, nothings gonna change my world'

Its kind of apt

 

[Eggsyblueskin]

You cant compare the rest of the world of work with an entertainment industry. People do what they can in everyday life to make things work out without the requirement for inspiration or creativity. The division of labour sees to that. Very few people have the privilege of escaping the mundane.

Football is not called working class ballet for nothing. It should seek to uplift us and its professional practitioners have the job of doing that. If I want runners and jumpers I can see that in track and field.

Working class ballet? I bridle when I see phrases like that, they represent to me the attempted gentrification of a working man's entertainment. They are coined by middle class journalists and writers who are slightly embarrassed to be associated with a proletarian sport so pepper their observations with fancy epithets to justify their passion. At its heart football is two gangs of men trying to carry an inflated pigs bladder into the opposing village's goal, by any means necessary, it was a recipe for disorder and mayhem. When it was introduced to working class cities in its codified form it was to distract us proles from gang warfare and violence, and it worked because of that inherent mayhem at its core. Football is visceral and occasionally violent as it should be. If you want ballet, go to the Covent Garden.

 

[PeregrineT]

No, not necessarily. Better players come at a price. The only way of combatting that as far as most managers in lesser clubs in the PL are concerned is to do the opposite: become dour and overly defensive. That's another reason they'll always be 'down there'...as well as the gulf in cash there's a gulf in imagination.

Hardly, if you ever decide to watch a world cup, you will see the play become dour and overly defensive, because that's what top teams do at that level due to its effectiveness. Every world cup people complain about how defensive teams are and how little creativity they have, and yet thats what the top teams do to advance.

It is no surprise to the normal observer that 4 out of the 5 best defences in the league made the champions league, and other won the europa league and the cup.

 

[dave abrahams]

Working class ballet? I bridle when I see phrases like that, they represent to me the attempted gentrification of a working man's entertainment. They are coined by middle class journalists and writers who are slightly embarrassed to be associated with a proletarian sport so pepper their observations with fancy epithets to justify their passion. At its heart football is two gangs of men trying to carry an inflated pigs bladder into the opposing village's goal, by any means necessary, it was a recipe for disorder and mayhem. When it was introduced to working class cities in its codified form it was to distract us proles from gang warfare and violence, and it worked because of that inherent mayhem at its core. Football is visceral and occasionally violent as it should be. If you want ballet, go to the Covent Garden.

Exactly, and Amen to that Eggsy.

 

[davek]

Working class ballet? I bridle when I see phrases like that, they represent to me the attempted gentrification of a working man's entertainment. They are coined by middle class journalists and writers who are slightly embarrassed to be associated with a proletarian sport so pepper their observations with fancy epithets to justify their passion. At its heart football is two gangs of men trying to carry an inflated pigs bladder into the opposing village's goal, by any means necessary, it was a recipe for disorder and mayhem. When it was introduced to working class cities in its codified form it was to distract us proles from gang warfare and violence, and it worked because of that inherent mayhem at its core. Football is visceral and occasionally violent as it should be. If you want ballet, go to the Covent Garden.

 

[Walken]

I agree. Lots of revisionism going on about Barkley this season. From early December to mid April was the best and fittest he's been for the club. A constant danger, controlling displays, even in games like Spurs away.

I just want that contract signed.

me too mate, and I complete agree, lots of butthurt fans now pretending he never played well, I love watching Ross