For me what makes our current plight even worse, is seeing the rise of westham under SA not because i care about the fate of WH at all, but because their achievements are based upon the same model as what SA did here. He spends all his money on a small number of talented players, it's what we should've been doing instead buying championship players. Today they scored straight away from a long ball headed down by carroll ala SKD. They have tactics that work, a game plan, players that fit the system perfectly, players that give 100%, an efficent and effective transfer policy (buy up ) And to top it all buy a superb striker (carroll) who'll be a perfect fit for SA's WH. The exact player they need, you could hardly handpick a better player for them. Oh and there is 0 chance of them being relegated. We have none of this. what we have is a manager who says "tactics aren't important it's about players".

It's like WH looked at our success and emulated it exactly, and we looked at thier complete ineptitude and thought, yep that's what we should do, be more shit like WH.

Playing in succesful Prem teams are Al Habsi, Nolan, Cahil, Vaz Te and Walters EDIT: I forgot Taylor, Jussi, O'Brien. EDIT2: Danny Guthrie! There is almost an entire PL team playing in the PL made up of former BWFC players! I wonder if we could swap them for Pratley, Ream, Sordell, Mears, Wylde, Andrews, Mills? I fecking doubt it.

Today West Ham destroyed Fulham with a starting 11 that included Jussi, O'Brien, Taylor, Nolan and Vaz Te.

Vaz Te!?

It goes to show, it's not always about the players, but the tactics you apply.

Sam Allardyce is a good manager.

He is however can be as stubborn as Owen Coyle. Remember Fulham away 2-0 down? He didn't know what to do/didn't beleive in changing it.

All I'll say is what happens when he takes them as far as he can? The whole cards will come tumbling down again.

But he's in the premiership, we're not, we were qualifying for Europe, now we're losing to Crawley Town.

I'll admit.. I preferred Allardyce's stubbornness.

Small? Didn't they sign a dozen players this window and a dozen in January?

Yes he maximises player potential and tactics. I read an article where he analysed every corner in the premier league and noted where the clearing heading landed. Wherever the ball was most likely to land he's place a man to pick up second balls. Can you imagine Coyle ever doing something like that?

You'd certainly have a few of those back if you could..Mind you when most left i think fans here thought the moves were ok.You can put a useful team together of ex players still playing who would have still fitted our wage structure.
Al Habsi
O'brien Faye cb lb
Walters Guthrie Nolan Taylor
Diouf Vaz Te

Al Habsi in particular ought to have been given his chance,having Faye back this summer would have been smart too.Vaz Te and Walters had to go down a level to get back up to some degree and OBrien did look like a permacrock. Nolan needed a fresh start too.

It's been interesting to see the speed at which Diouf has gone from being booed to revered at leeds(90 minutes I believe)

It's mildly galling but realistically there is only Al Habsi and to a lesser degree Taylor whose releases looked iffy at the time.

You could put it down to management or just the fact that players can stagnate and need a fresh start.

I believe that its true that players can stagnate but then its down to them and the manager to try to bring them out of their slumps of form. The problem we have is that OC's football philosophy has bought in too many players to the club who are to my mind simply ordinary championship level players and the sort of player one could call "luxury" or inconsistent. Mavies, Eagles, petrov, Ngog, Afobe, mears and alonso are prime examples. They are not team players and their heads go down far too quickly.

Our squad is full of the sort of player who cannot inspire but are the type of player who look good in better teams. We now have what a lot of anti SA fans wanted, a team of younger and in the main British type of player. Over the last 4 years I can only point to a couple of players (ignoring loans) who I have really thought were good buys.

As for Al Habsi, that move proved to me that OC knows nothing about goalkeeping and was prepared to sacrifice a great player in that position. In fact that sale had a double whammy as without him Wigan would have been relegated.

Nice post. The decision to drop Jussi for Bogdan for much of the season was also incredibly naive. Who does that? Imagine Jussi being flattened by Jonathan Walters?

The timing could not be worse for me. You know that pile of old tshirts you have in your drawer - the ones that only get used for sleeping in? Due to laziness with the washing I was down to my last one yesterday, which just happened to be a TheWanderer-branded "BWFC: The European Invasion" tshirt from this site's earlier and happier days. As anyone who has this shirt knows it features an iconic image of Big Sam bawling out orders from the touchline.

Much to blame OC for. Selling AAH is near the bottom of the list. So is promoting a promising young goalkeeper for an ageing and increasingly unpopular goalkeeper. Can I imagine Jussi being flattened by Walters? Yes, very easily. Like I say, there's a hundred things to more legitimately blame the manager for.

Who - despite last week's clanger - played well in the Premiership this weekend whilst Bogdan was flapping against Hull. And there's more chance of Jussi flattening Walters than vice versa.

Promoting a promising young keeper in a relegation battle in place of an experienced campaigner is a bit unusual though, isn't it? And what does popularity have to do with it? I didn't blame this decision for our plight. I said it was naive, which it was. Only hindsight has demonstrated that to me, but the manager is the one being paid millions for his foresight.

Jussi had lost it when it came to going for crosses and may have done no better than bogdan for the 2nd this weekend. The assumption when al Habsi went was that the management believed bogdan a better prospect. Al Habsi really should have remained number one after the season when he got in due to Jussi being injured. He was the better keeper but for whatever reason Jussi went back in and al habsi had to be sold really.Couldnt be expected to rot in the reserves. Hopefully Bogdan will live up to his promise. He's another looking a bit shellshocked,most of them do at present. It's a symptom of having no belief and no confidence. Being mismanaged for 18months is making even our better players look like muppets

It is indeed slightly odd but had Coyle stuck with the old guard and still gone down he'd have been decried for that too (see correspondence re Davies, K., passim). Rightly or wrongly there was many a post on here that Jussi had "lost it". As for AAH, we could sell him for £4m and couldn't shift Jussi for that sort of fee.

I'm not pointing a finger at you as I don't know what your thoughts were at the time but I remember the vast majority of this board wanted Bogdan in as number 1 when he got a small run of games during Jussi's injury. Can't blame Coyle for that then if we all agreed at the time!

Still though, Coyle out.

Jussi threw the ball in his own net last week.

Kept a clean sheet this week

i don't see much promise unfortunately. one game against Spurs where he pulled off a few instinctive saves. by the same stage of his Bolton career as Bogdan is at now i reckon Jussi had more than a couple of game turning displays.

And you'd be wrong.

maybe. cant remember. but Bogdan is pretty shite

Against a team that barely made an effort on goal. I think i remember one shot right at him.

Not in favour of one or the other, just pointing out that he didn't really have much to do.