Petty Arguments | Page 5 | Vital Football

Petty Arguments

I’d take those four years of crazy ups and downs under Martinez over another couple of mediocre and bland years under Bruce going wholly unnoticed in mid-table any day.

Do you mean that bland period where he Bruce's team when he took over from Hutching's picked up points at a rate that would have seem them finish in the top half had they done it all season & pick up our first points against some of the "big boys"
Or do you mean the bland period where Bruce's team had us challenging for a European position until the squad started to be sold out from underneath him? And even then manage to finish 11th
That's a strange definition of bland from where I'm standing.

That's not knocking Martinez (bloody hell he guided us to the FA Cup & periodic victories against the Man U's, Mousers, Chelsea & Arsenal) & he was far more restricted in his transfer dealings than Bruce ever was but do describe Bruce's time in charge as bland when it involved escape from near certain relegation with some ease in the end & a European spot chase just seems odd to me
 
Cup apart and the end of the 11/12 season and the odd cracking match here and there Bob's four years were pretty forgettable. Just my opinion but the football was ugly on the eye and was so boring. I loved the fella as a player and as a man he is quality but sorry the football he pioneered was just not my thing. It was alien to Wigan Athletic. Nothing at all to be with forever struggling and constantly being in the lower half I just found the passing and possession football horrible. Just as bad on the eye(to me) in a different way to John Beck's Preston and Cambridge. Each to their own I suppose.
 
Do you mean that bland period where he Bruce's team when he took over from Hutching's picked up points at a rate that would have seem them finish in the top half had they done it all season & pick up our first points against some of the "big boys"
Or do you mean the bland period where Bruce's team had us challenging for a European position until the squad started to be sold out from underneath him? And even then manage to finish 11th
That's a strange definition of bland from where I'm standing.

That's not knocking Martinez (bloody hell he guided us to the FA Cup & periodic victories against the Man U's, Mousers, Chelsea & Arsenal) & he was far more restricted in his transfer dealings than Bruce ever was but do describe Bruce's time in charge as bland when it involved escape from near certain relegation with some ease in the end & a European spot chase just seems odd to me


....Just my opinion :shrug: I don’t really think three players leaving and four being brought in for over 10 million means Bruce was that hard done by. Martinez had to deal with key players being sold too - and had far less money to replace them with - difference is he didn’t kick-off or mope about it and just got in with it.

I describe it as bland because of a distinct lack of goals - we scored 35 (our lowest ever prem total) in 08/09, 10 of which were scored by Zaki alone before January. The Telegraph describe our side that season as the ‘12th most boring team in Premier League history’.

Even without Palacios and Heskey, with the players we already had - in addition to the new signings in January 09 - the team massively underachieved and could barely buy a win despite being littered with quality players.

I can’t help but feel it was more so down to Bruce being fed up and eying the exit door, with the departures of certain players being a bit of an excuse for the poor play. If Martinez had used that as an excuse for our poor play after N’Zogbia or Moses were sold on, he’d have been vilified on here.

I just felt we were just another mediocre Premier League at times team under Bruce - simply existing rather than anything else. I felt we were much more than that under Martinez. I guess what defines a good team is entirely subjective, and I entirely respect your opinion but I’m happy with my view nonetheless.
 
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Spot on Jeff - I couldn't disagree any more with what you said, but that's just the different ways we view the game. I felt there was a new and different sort of pride in supporting Martinez's Wigan - other fans all over the world spoke of us with great admiration. We didn't just seem like any other small team struggling not to be crowded out by the big boys, we felt like a club with its own identity that deserved to be at the head table. There were highs and lows, but that period was one of the greatest in Latics history
 
Personally I really started to fall out of love with Latics during Martinez reign. Since i first came to watch Latics back when i was a young lad i eat, sleep and breath the club home and away but the frustration was mentally exhausting and turning me off on football all together and i went to fewer away games and i started to dread home games and for the only time ever happily skipped games for other hobbies.

I think Roberto was a nice man and loved the club but i felt he put his 'principles' over all else and it made him too stubborn to address a lot of on field problems when they first started and only attempted to adapt when his previous refusal to react had dragged us into a mess. His style of football was too often disorganised at the back, very little movement, not great at pressing, little aggression, isolated front man with no runners, slow tempo, posession for posessions sake and an over reliance of someone like Zog, McMannaman or Moses pulling off some individual brilliance. His post match press conferences drove me up the wall with more spin than a politician and so many cliches - the last thing you need when you're already fed up with the performance and result is 'take the postives, we couldn't be ourselves in the moment, we'll learn from this, etc'. I always felt he just never would do the most straight forward and sensible things, it always had to be a bit contrarian and i think we never had a bad set of players but often under performed quite significantly. I felt we caused and a lot of our own problems due to his stubbornness to admit he got anything wrong and how unwilling he was to change much of it.

In the last few awful managers we've had ive never been as fed up as i was at times under Martinez as the mess made under them was worse but it saw us change manager quite quickly so as bad as it was it was only a few months before a shake up. But with Roberto he'd be on a bad run playing some boring, negative football, then we'd have one big impressive result and fantastic performance out of the blue that would eliviate the pressure and then we'd go on another bad run and repeat. When we were good we were outstanding but we werent good that often and the compounding of frustration either side of those great intermitent blips and the repeating of mistakes wore me down.

But at the same time that 10 or so game run between late Feb and May was the best football we'll ever likely see. It was absolutely bizarre but magic how a team who had been so poor all season turned into world beater over night.

And of course the amazing 2 performances against Everton and City in the FA Cup. A good microcosm of Robertos reign is probably the week of the FA Cup we played a Swansea side playing for nothing with half their first team out injured knowing if we won we'd probably be able to stay up and we turned in a horrific losing performance with goals coming from stupid mistakes at the back. Under the circumstances it was shameful. Then we went on to pull off the biggest ever upset by beating City in the cup playing some outstanding stuff. Then we went to Arsenal needing to pull off another miricle and didn't bother marking their best header from a corner for their opening goal and we went down with a bit of a whimper. It was the good the bad and the ugly - an epic highlight sandwiched by crushing lows.

Roberto is a funny one to look back on as his highlights were as brilliant as his lows were diabolical. I get how people can see it either way, but personally I'd say about 80% of the time we were not very good or enjoyable and 80% of the time over 4 years i found a very hard slog. You can't take away from what he achieved and some of the great memories means he will have to be considered one of our best ever manager but i also cant forget the more frequent feeling of banging your head against the wall most weeks that will often be forgotten about as they don't make the headlines.

I know it probably wont be a popular opinion shared by most but while i of course appreciated the best bits i really didnt enjoy Robertos reign overall. I'm glad Roberto moved on and i wouldn't want him back if circumstances meant it became a possibility in the future. I'm much happier now with Cook than i ever was under Martinez.

I feel Paul Cook has got the best bits of Martinez plus Bruce and Jewell mixed together without all of their weakness. And the other reccent managers who failed so miserably make me appreciate how lucky we are to have finally got such a top man at the helm.
 
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Brilliantly put there 'Arry. Funny thing was it give you a guilt complex not enjoying that drab football. The media were obsessed with how Bobby played the game. Fans of other clubs indoctrinated by the shite the media put out couldn't believe us when we said it was turgid boring football we had to struggle to watch.
 
Brilliantly put there 'Arry. Funny thing was it give you a guilt complex not enjoying that drab football. The media were obsessed with how Bobby played the game. Fans of other clubs indoctrinated by the shite the media put out couldn't believe us when we said it was turgid boring football we had to struggle to watch.

That is a good point that i forgot to mention that added to my frustration. The medias played out the line that we played wonderful football attacking football and our failures were being too expansive and open with our play which us absolute nonsense but a cliche rolled out by pundits who clearly wanted to sound informed but never watched us play much.

I remember at the time on Soccer Saturday Charlie Nicholas or Paul Merson used to get a lot of our games and they'd both say they weren't sure where people were getting this idea from and were super critical of our set up and Martinez but most pundits kept just repeating the myth.

I used to have some Everton friends and they would be suprised when i talked to them about Wigan / Martinez and his tactics as it flew in the face of what they heard in the media. But after they took him on after the first year where he did exceptionally well for them they all kept coming back to me saying all the things i told them about were now happning at Everton like a carbon copy and they hated it more than i did when we were living through it.

All this talk of Bruce and Martinez just makes me love Paul Cook even more!
 
Strange how we all see things so different, I'm not saying it was a bed of roses but in my opinion (and Paul Kendricks for what that is worth) Martinez was my favourite Latics Manager and I admired the football (and the players) when he got it right.
Didn't do the away games during this period so my thoughts a little restricted.
 
Strange how we all see things so different, I'm not saying it was a bed of roses but in my opinion (and Paul Kendricks for what that is worth) Martinez was my favourite Latics Manager and I admired the football (and the players) when he got it right.
Didn't do the away games during this period so my thoughts a little restricted.


Agreed! We’re definitely in the minority here, but there’s nothing wrong with that!
 
That is a good point that i forgot to mention that added to my frustration. The medias played out the line that we played wonderful football attacking football and our failures were being too expansive and open with our play which us absolute nonsense but a cliche rolled out by pundits who clearly wanted to sound informed but never watched us play much.

I remember at the time on Soccer Saturday Charlie Nicholas or Paul Merson used to get a lot of our games and they'd both say they weren't sure where people were getting this idea from and were super critical of our set up and Martinez but most pundits kept just repeating the myth.

I used to have some Everton friends and they would be suprised when i talked to them about Wigan / Martinez and his tactics as it flew in the face of what they heard in the media. But after they took him on after the first year where he did exceptionally well for them they all kept coming back to me saying all the things i told them about were now happning at Everton like a carbon copy and they hated it more than i did when we were living through it.

All this talk of Bruce and Martinez just makes me love Paul Cook even more!
And Paul Jewell, sorry the great Paul Jewell.