Jermain Defoe (no longer a rumour)

[Chewit]

Tbf to LJ he keeps getting told to be honest ( as he can be) with the fans, however he's also got to protect his team and the club. If he'd ben gushing over JD and it didn't happen (for what ever reason) he would have been slaughtered...the lad can't win...

It’s the proverbial storm in a tea cup

Aye, maybe but he has to get back up to speed not an easy thing after a lay off...it was going so well before his hurty.

I think hurty is a better word than injury

 

[molthemackem]

It’s the proverbial storm in a tea cup


I think hurty is a better word than injury

hence why i use it.

 

[Dobblemackem]

If everyone took your have my cake and eat it perspective LJs position would be untenable.
Simple question would you sack him now ?

Then on balance tell us what he has done well. Including being one of 4 teams in the mix for promotion 2 of which have championship squads and the other has thrown big funds at buying their way out.

Our promotion teams have historically been like Wigan, teams cobbled together to get you out of the division. Once out however there is no football strategy, no way of playing which is embedded in the squad, result inevitably is failure.

That you find contrived fault and can’t see that young inexperienced players are inconsistent, dip in and out of form and you need to shuffle your pack to accommodate it, let alone when injuries prevail is to typical of fans quick to criticise without looking at the big picture.

Fans want instant success, Sunderland has been buying short term results for years now. Just show some patience in the growth of the players, team and club and we will all be rewarded.

In the meantime if we think everything the manager does we are going to agree with we are daft... but you have to take a stance either support him or don’t, but no sitting in the fence

Yes I would mate. That’s the honest answer. I don’t think he’s anywhere near as clever as he thinks he is, I don’t think he’s the tactical mastermind he thinks he is, I think he stumbles on to winning runs just as quick as he does losing runs.

But worse than all of that for me is his game management skills. I think he’s very poor in game, and if plan a fails we ultimately fail. As I’ve said when coming up against a good manager he fails a lot of the time. Appleton as an example seems to have his number.

I do think he can be a good man manager, and we do seem to have a good spirit in the team. I think he can work quite well with young lads, but also does the opposite at times. He also seems to be able to bring the best out of some of the more experienced head.

These are all my opinions, and I could be dead wrong, but it is just that, my opinion. I don’t like him as a manager, and his antics on the side line piss me off too.

All that being said, if he proves me wrong and does get us up, there’ll be nobody happier to be proven wrong. All I want at the end of the day is to be out of this league.

 

[Chewit]

I'd say because he played for us we know his qualities much more specifically than, for example, Ipswich fans. Now if Ipswich fans weren't keen then ok I'd get that, they'd only be mentioning the negatives that you mentioned. But, we know specific qualities, such as his intelligence, his movement, his professionalism and dedication, his finishing. All of these attributes would be beneficial in this league. And that's the big thing for me, we are talking about league one. And actually he's scored some really nice goals for Rangers, so we know he's still got it. You can call it nostalgia, but I think it's more than that. Call it educated nostalgia. Now, having said all that, I'd be surprised if he's the only striker we're interested in, and if we can bring in someone up front as exciting as the signing of Roberts then that would help massively to calm everyone down.

He didnt have to make Johnson v Defoe. A simple neutral response would have been fine. Then there's no winning or losing for him.

On your last point stop being so easily offended... you know what he was trying to say and it was perfectly rational

 

[royal4545]

I've also been told this by a national sports journo based up here.

If that’s the case, and I believe it will be.
Johnson has played a blinder by setting out exactly what we need and his potential role at the club.
I would imagine Defoe would have been disappointed and probably expected more, but who in their right mind would put the league’s leading goal scorer on the shelf.

Now wouldn't that be comical regards the LJ abusers on here .

Imagine if he just wanted to concentrate on the game today and his 2 new signings instead of answering something he had no control over at the time of asking.

Or he just explained he will be third choice when everyone is fit.

 

[Herberthall]

Tbf to LJ he keeps getting told to be honest ( as he can be) with the fans, however he's also got to protect his team and the club. If he'd ben gushing over JD and it didn't happen (for what ever reason) he would have been slaughtered...the lad can't win...

Whether Defoe comes or not (I'm easy) Johnson was hopeless in that PC.

 

[SebastienELLISbexter]

On your last point stop being so easily offended... you know what he was trying to say and it was perfectly rational

I'm not in any way offended. What a strange post.

 

[Wendall Gee]

Yes there is. I just made one for you especially. Made it out of the foil from my Kit Kat

You've must have had that Kit-Kat a while marra

 

[Chewit]

Yes I would mate. That’s the honest answer. I don’t think he’s anywhere near as clever as he thinks he is, I don’t think he’s the tactical mastermind he thinks he is, I think he stumbles on to winning runs just as quick as he does losing runs.

But worse than all of that for me is his game management skills. I think he’s very poor in game, and if plan a fails we ultimately fail. As I’ve said when coming up against a good manager he fails a lot of the time. Appleton as an example seems to have his number.

I do think he can be a good man manager, and we do seem to have a good spirit in the team. I think he can work quite well with young lads, but also does the opposite at times. He also seems to be able to bring the best out of some of the more experienced head.

These are all my opinions, and I could be dead wrong, but it is just that, my opinion. I don’t like him as a manager, and his antics on the side line piss me off too.

All that being said, if he proves me wrong and does get us up, there’ll be nobody happier to be proven wrong. All I want at the end of the day is to be out of this league.

Good on you, I like your argument and respect your view. I hope I don’t sound patronising but most people don’t have well thought out arguments such as yours which they swiftly forget about if we put two wins together.

 

[davoak]

@Daffy what's happening grandad duck

 

[Mickdundee]

10.22 isn’t 10 losses last I checked. Losses as a stand-alone means very little. Only lost 5 all season under Ross - guaranteed promotion by your logic

Calendar PPG man. Keep clutching those straws.

He might also want to check how many losses Hull and Peterborough had when they were promoted.

 

[Chewit]

I'm not in any way offended. What a strange post.

Plenty on here are, twisting the interview to suit their agenda

 

[sir rowell cummins]

Aye, maybe but he has to get back up to speed not an easy thing after a lay off...it was going so well before his hurty.

Gutting . We’d be top now.

 

[Sweeper]

10.22 isn’t 10 losses last I checked. Losses as a stand-alone means very little. Only lost 5 all season under Ross - guaranteed promotion by your logic

Calendar PPG man. Keep clutching those straws.

Jesus wept man. You really will bend over backwards to try and rationalise your agenda won’t you?

As I’ve said - Man City win every week. It’s be right up your street.

 

[gipetto]

I'd say because he played for us we know his qualities much more specifically than, for example, Ipswich fans. Now if Ipswich fans weren't keen then ok I'd get that, they'd only be mentioning the negatives that you mentioned. But, we know specific qualities, such as his intelligence, his movement, his professionalism and dedication, his finishing. All of these attributes would be beneficial in this league. And that's the big thing for me, we are talking about league one. And actually he's scored some really nice goals for Rangers, so we know he's still got it. You can call it nostalgia, but I think it's more than that. Call it educated nostalgia. Now, having said all that, I'd be surprised if he's the only striker we're interested in, and if we can bring in someone up front as exciting as the signing of Roberts then that would help massively to calm everyone down.

He didnt have to make Johnson v Defoe. A simple neutral response would have been fine. Then there's no winning or losing for him.

Spot on.

 

[Dobblemackem]

Good on you, I like your argument and respect your view. I hope I don’t sound patronising but most people don’t have well thought out arguments such as yours which they swiftly forget about if we put two wins together.

Don’t sound patronising at all.

I have no issue at all with peoples opinions, plenty in my group want him in, some want him out, some are undecided.

What gets my back up, is the attitude on here of your either a bedwetter or a happy clapper. Sick to death of people saying to other fans that they aren’t real fans, or they have wet minges or stop pissing the bed for having an opinion.

In the same breath I hate those that say the happy clappers are deluded, and are clapping us to the lower leagues etc.

We have loads on here which fit into the above categories, and there’s nothing worse than seeing “I told you so” threads, win, lose or draw.

Ultimately opinions are opinions, and any of us that are level headed should be able to express our opinions without the loons on either side going on like arseholes.

 

[wakey]

Defoe won’t be at the SoL today as he’s at kassam stadium today I’ve heard from the voices in my head

 

[Sweeper]

Plenty on here are, twisting the interview to suit their agenda

Not just twisting it, reinventing it. It’s genuinely pathetic.

I’ve said before - I’m 90% certain that you’d get a strong correlation between (i) people most likely to blame anything and everything on the manager whenever we don’t win; and (ii) people most likely to be all over social media spouting off about “HMS Piss the League” and talking down to other clubs’ supporters when we do win.

It all boils down to immaturity at the end of the day. Some people simply can’t process the reality of where the club is, what the club is trying to do, and the fact that it can’t involve us winning every week.

If we don’t win today - against Pompey who are hardly minnows - you can see it first hand on here at 5pm. It’s like a parody.

 

[norfolk mackem]

What if, when LJ said something like "a million things need to happen before it can happen", he really meant that we need to shift O'Brien and his wage first ?

Getting O'Brien out sounds a no brainer but the difficulty is not getting the player out but getting the player's wages out. We signed O'Brien thinking he was worth circa £6k per week and now the whole of league one have seen that he isn't so if a team are prepared to take him they are likely to only want to pay him circa £2k per week which gives us a problem.

I don't think Defoe was on huge wages at Rangers, not many players in Scotland are. I'd guess he was on something like £8k - £10k per week.

Someone said we should offer him the U23 coaching job as a sweetener which sounds all well and good but that can have a knock on effect on the people we have doing that job currently and doing a decent job by all accounts - Proctor and Dodds I think.

 

[Northumberland Rocks]

I'm exactly the same mate. I look back at some of the easy chances we missed which have really cost us in this league and would have won us the game - Wyke v Lincoln, Graham v Charlton, Grigg v Burton etc. Defoe scores those and we really could have been a Championship club again.
I know its easy to say in hindsight but, if its a choice of any of our strikers we've had at this level for one of the chances to fall to in big games and Jermaime Defoe, I pick Defoe every single time (even over Stewart or Maja).

No-one is saying he'd be the Defoe we signed years ago but he would likely be the best finisher this league has seen and those tiny margins can be huge come the end of the season.

Spot on

Not just twisting it, reinventing it. It’s genuinely pathetic.

I’ve said before - I’m 90% certain that you’d get a strong correlation between (i) people most likely to blame anything and everything on the manager whenever we don’t win; and (ii) people most likely to be all over social media spouting off about “HMS Piss the League” and talking down to other clubs’ supporters when we do win.

It all boils down to immaturity at the end of the day. Some people simply can’t process the reality of where the club is, what the club is trying to do, and the fact that it can’t involve us winning every week.

If we don’t win today - against Pompey who are hardly minnows - you can see it first hand on here at 5pm. It’s like a parody.

You are the parody. You are either Johnson or a love sick teenager.

I hope he wins today and has some common sense and put the club first and gets JD in.