[Archived] Le Saux Retires

[Eddie]

Fair enough I can see why lots of people don't like Boumsong, but I saw more of him in France than I did of him at Newcastle (where I have seen the highlights...if you can call them that) and at Rangers (where I understand he did very well). He was excellent in France and that is what I'm basing it on, I don't think you can turn into sch a bad player when you showed yourself to be such a good one.

As for McCarthy, what he did for Ireland was really very impressive and you just have to look at what they have done since to realise just how good a manager he must be. Fair enough he failed with Sunderland this year and in fine style. They never got the rub of the green though and even though they are a pretty poor side they deserve more points than they have picked up. History is littered with good managers who have failed at one club or another. I'm not saying he is a fantastic manager but I think he certainly knows enough about football to be a pundit for you or I .

[Billy Castell]

He did do pretty well at Ireland, I give him that. But he is a desparately limited manager on the whole. He has been at Sunderland long enough to equip them with life in the Premiership, but has bought a series of mediocre cloggers, and not improved them one bit. He comes across as a decent and honest guy, but is not much cop as a manager. What I disapprove of is that the studios are littered with numpties like Reid, who is worse than McCarthy getting cushy jobs telling the world that manager X got his tactics wrong.

[Eddie]

You know they would probably say the same about us having a go at them as being underqualified to be on TV.

[pleasure]

Why was that funny?

397942[/snapback]

laughing was harsh eddie.

sunderland fans dont love him, they couldnt wait for him to get the boot -mostly for reasons that i specified on the day he got sacked (different thread).

one of irelands most successful managers- not difficult. he had the best crop of irish players (there has every been) to choose from (given, duff, both keane's, quinn).

as a pundit the guy's better than most on the bbc, and he's not slagged rovers off yet! i've stopped watching 'match of the day' but from what i can gather hansen was scathing of blackburn on saturday, must be catching.

[Eddie]

Hansen wasn't scatching of Blackburn.

I've met very few Sunderland fans who thought he should be sacked and that certainly wasn't the impression they gave in the media either.

As for it being that easy to get Ireland to qualify for the World Cup ahead of the Netherlands and then make it past the group stages (when he didn't have Roy Keane and Robbie Keane wasn't in the same sort of form he is this season) why hasn't it been repeated since he's left?

[joey_big_nose]

From Alan's link:  "He was promised that he had a glittering future within the corporation before he left Southampton last summer."

Well after Southampton were relegated to the second tier of football last season for the first time since 1978 (a season last year in which Le Saux appeared to be more interested in travelling up and down the country to commentate on matches for the Beeb rather than concentrating on the relegation battle he was involved in) - Le Saux should have done the decent thing and offered his services to Southampton in Division 1/ The Championship this season to try to help them out of the mess he and his Saints team-mates created by getting relegated.

Unfortunately, I suspect Mr Le Saux saw long-term pound signs in his head in terms of a career with the BBC - where he probably planned to stay for several years until quitting last week in a fit of pique. It was perhaps typical of Le Saux's temperament. When things don't go his way, he spits his dummy out - like throwing his Chelsea shirt at the bench after getting upset at being substituted during a game in his first spell at the Bridge. Rovers signed him shortly afterwards and he won a Premiership medal with us.

He should have been damned grateful to Rovers for signing him after he disgraced himself at Chelsea - but instead he was happy to walk out on our club. I gather that Le Saux plans to write an autobiography soon, where he'll no doubt give a sob story about being hard done to by the BBC.

On a different note, but still related to football pundits - forgive me if I've mentioned this point before - but I think it's an absolute joke that the BBC have hired the services of Mick McCarthy as an analyst and match summariser for the World Cup this summer.

How can this useless and tactically inept Premiership manager have any credibility when it comes to speaking on TV about the world's best players, when he failed so utterly abysmally with Sunderland? It looks like they'll go down with the worst top flight points total in history and I know Mick likes to spin the yarn about not having had any money to spend last summer - but the truth is that they spent a similar amount to Wigan before the start of this season.

If I was a Sunderland fan I'd be disgusted to see Mick McCarthy on the box this summer after the tripe he served up this season.

397869[/snapback]

I find it amusing that you demand such expertise from those who hand out opinions!

I suppose in the grand scheme of things McCarthy is no Wenger, Mourinho or Ferguson but he managed the twentieth best team in the land this year, so unless the other nineteen were not available, why not? The most 'respected' pundit in the land, Alan Hansen, has little practical experience.

I also rather suspect that you loathe the entire BBC team to a man, so why not watch ITV? Or perhaps you could turn the sound off and do your own commentary? I think it is the only way you could be satisfied...

[Billy Castell]

I suppose paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw (I think it was him) would be appropriate:

"Those who can, do, those who can't commentate."

[Anti Euro Smiths Fan]

"Robbie Savage called me a faggot and a queer," says Le Saux

Whilst not condoning the gibes, I feel that Le Saux is right when he says in his book: "I took things more seriously than I should have done. I reacted to gibes when I should have laughed them off."

Le Saux made the situation worse IMO by taking the gibes too seriously. His former Chelsea team-mate Tony Cascarino used to be called a poof by other players because before Tony started his career at Gillingham he worked for his Dad in a hairdressers. Cascarino used to laugh off the gibes and didn't let them worry him.

Earlier this year a guy in the pub tried to start winding me up by calling me a poof. I was half-tempted to smack him in the mouth, but the best thing to do is not to react and not to take these sort of things too seriously.

Le Saux is right when he says of Paul Ince: "He was a prime example of someone who could dish it out but could not take it."

I've always had that impression of Paul Ince. He's got a big mouth and plenty to say for himself on the pitch, but if anyone has a go back at him he'd go ballistic. He's someone with a big chip on his shoulder who likes to dish it out but can't take it.

[mattyboy6000]

having read that article me thinks he dost protest too much

good player though.. around the time he was called up he was on fire, no-one wanted to tackle him

and with regard to his departure.. I think that entire era post ray declaring he'd leave unless he got the gaffers job was all a little haywire, until I read TP's memoirs I am making no judgements.

Edited September 10, 2007 by mattyboy6000

[Damage]

having read that article me thinks he dost protest too much

WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP!

So the guy wasnt a typical thicko jock. You think he's a bender!

In you're next posts you'll be slating the daft cockneys for being media sheep and booing DB.

You are pathetic, hypocritical idiots.

Can't you see that the guy suffered some terrible abuse? Its obvious where his anger came from. Wonder how much winding-up David Batty had been responsible for in the Blackburn dressing room? Its easy for me to believe that "thinking" people like GLS are not the destructive force in football dressing rooms that accolades goes to the weak and feeble minded like Robbie Fowler. In my experience its the homophobic ones that have the strongest tendancies.

Just to clarify ......

den removed a previous post that I quoted so it no longer appears here. I presume beacuse the preveious post was possibly defamatory. It was much more accusatory than the one quoted above. In case anyone is wondering why I have had a bit of a "hissy fit" above.

Edited September 10, 2007 by Damage

[Daremz]

The incident with Robbie Fowler he highlights is quite shocking to be honest. And I think Le Saux is right in his occassion.

[tcj_jones]

I'm shocked that there is no mention of David Batty...

[mattyboy6000]

lol... terrible abuse? I'd imagine I would have said "yes I am gay, hahahaha" and moved on. Retrospectively I think Fowlers' taunts are pretty funny. The reason he got so much stick appears to be his inability to laugh it off. I would suggest his so-called intelligence is no more than that.

Edited September 10, 2007 by mattyboy6000

[Presty On Tour]

don't know if this is a daft question or not but could someone please clarify is le saux gay or not or don't know?

i thought he had a family but with todays going on's you just never know!

[Blackburn Ender]

No, he is not.

Graeme's argument is this:

[Blackburn Ender]

No, he is not.

Graeme's argument is this: If he ignored the jibes it might have become accepted that he was gay, thus damaging his employment prospects in the game.

If you wereconstantly subjected to taunts of this nature in your workplace, you'd be pretty fed up, too, I guess.

The Batty in Moscow incident is in tomorrow's Times.

Edited September 10, 2007 by Blackburn Ender

[thenodrog]

Footballers books are simply to make money from Joe 'stupid' Public simple as that. They seek to highlight controversy cos thats the only interesting thing after the footballing exploits. All footballers inc G le Saux should let their actions on the pitch do the talking cos everything else hardly matters. He was a fine player (best full back we've had since Keith Newton) if a little stroppy and thats all there is to it. Why cut down half of Scandanavia to add unimportant irrelevancies to that basic fact?

[FourLaneBlue]

The Times - Le Saux on the Batty fight in Moscow

[Blueboy Downunder]

as graeme explains how the club started to break up in the summer of 1995, i too as a rovers fan, have and always will be haunted by our fall from grace and even now after reading that extract from his book, it still makes me extremely sad. i am willing to bet that if all of those players got back together for a sit down, they would all like to go back in time and change things.

[mattyboy6000]

Footballers books are simply to make money from Joe 'stupid' Public simple as that. They seek to highlight controversy cos thats the only interesting thing after the footballing exploits. All footballers inc G le Saux should let their actions on the pitch do the talking cos everything else hardly matters. He was a fine player (best full back we've had since Keith Newton) if a little stroppy and thats all there is to it. Why cut down half of Scandanavia to add unimportant irrelevancies to that basic fact?

and there it is

[M-K]

Le Saux said: "Ray Harford was distraught. He felt that it was a reflection on his management, that it showed he must be doing something badly wrong. Poor Ray – he didn’t deserve that."

But he also said: "Ray Harford had replaced Kenny Dalglish as manager and there was an edge between the players. Groups started to form. Tim Sherwood, Batts, Chris Sutton and Mike Newell – the stronger characters – got away with things that would not have happened under Kenny and started to break the unity of the team."

Quite contradictory. I remember feeling betrayed by Dalglish at the time. Did he ever explain why he bottled it like he did?

[cletus]

Yes, upsetting times indeed for all Rovers fans

It all unravelled rather spectacularly didn`t it! No-one really knows what went on behind the scenes, but it is pretty obvious to me it started falling apart when King Kenny moved upstairs to become 'director of golf'. The Batty/Le Saux incident was sort of the icing on the cake.

[Sandiway Blue]

Le Saux said: "Ray Harford was distraught. He felt that it was a reflection on his management, that it showed he must be doing something badly wrong. Poor Ray – he didn’t deserve that."

But he also said: "Ray Harford had replaced Kenny Dalglish as manager and there was an edge between the players. Groups started to form. Tim Sherwood, Batts, Chris Sutton and Mike Newell – the stronger characters – got away with things that would not have happened under Kenny and started to break the unity of the team."

Quite contradictory. I remember feeling betrayed by Dalglish at the time. Did he ever explain why he bottled it like he did?

I believe it was Uncle Jacks unwillingness to `splash the cash` on improving the squad after we had won the title.

Dalglish knew the squad needed strengthening to be able to compete with the top clubs.Whereas Uncle Jacks opinion was that the squad had just won the league and was therefore better than everybody elses.

Dalglish realised what would happen the following season so therefore baled out.As a thank you to Dalglish Uncle Jack offered him a job as director of football.

As much as Harford was well liked and a good coach,i don`t think he was the right kind of person to be a manager.Had we got a proven manager in at the time who knows what would have happened?

The benefit of hindsight eh!

R.I.P Ray & Uncle jack

Edited September 11, 2007 by bacup blue

[mattyboy6000]

a few things went wrong inlcuding the apparent reluctance of Jack to strengthen post-premiership, but notably Peter White reported that Ray Harford threatened to leave for a management role unless he had a crack at the managers job, this was in the LET about April 95 (from memory). I would suggest this provided the impetus for the re-structuring, and not Kenny's desire to leave a proverbial sinking ship

Edited September 12, 2007 by mattyboy6000