Loyalty

[Damocles]

It's their bloody jobs to go out and do their best on and off the pitch.

You don't expect any less from any other professional, a doctor you don't expect to have some days where he just can't be arsed and then angles for a transfer to a different hospital whilst putting in half arsed shifts and threatening to not turn up to his clinics. Bollocks.

I was recently reading a study into the performance levels of athletes, and how too much motivation causes them to fuck it up, as does too little. Maybe one of our resident sports scientists can flesh the point out a bit more for me.

What I am trying to say, is that athletes' performance is a physical and mental thing that drives them every day, and is different from a normal job. By your logic, our Winter Olympic team are also a bunch of people who are putting in half-arsed shifts, as are our cricketers. You cannot reasonably compare the job of a professional athlete to that of a normal person.

Players need to grow a pair and realise that they are privilaged to be playing a sport for a living and getting very well payed to do so. Even if fans give a torrent of abuse for a poor performance, so what, it's justified. It would be justified if a patients wrote in and complained about a doctor after a botched operation and even reported him to the GMC. Come on, players are professionals and not some sort of different species that needs to be wrapped in cotton wool so their egos remain undamaged.

We aren't talking about wrapping them in cotton wool, we are talking of treating them like any other person. If your local barlady had a bad day, maybe miscounted the change a few times, or missed somebody in a queue, would you scream "YOU'RE SHIT, AND YOU KNOW YOU ARE!" in her face, spit at her, say she should be sacked and then come home and type it all on the internet?

Of course not.

As I say, the comparison of their jobs to the jobs of real people can't really be done because professional athletes (especially footballers) live on a different planet.

 

[goatboy]

we may romantacise about "our" club and "our" players due to club loyalty and some may jump the gun with their opinions just a little but the bottom line is (until recently) we paid their wages, end of. if your boss at work does'nt like what you do he tells you and you ship up or they fuck you off, end of. i don't understand why people are so patient with these primadonnas, for the kind of money they are on we'd run ourselves literally into the ground for "our" club. granted the dunne debacle was'nt best handled but i refer you back to my "bos fucking you off" comment. this is a business the same as the shop you work, or business you run etc, thems the rules.

very very few examples of real loyalty within football these days and even when people mention those such as giggs (who i do think loves his club) who needs to move when their families are settled and gthe are on £70,000 a week for the next 5 years. few are loyal, some are unambitious but are happy collecting a fat wedge at a decent club.

as for wright phillips, when he earns a better contract then we'll give him one. personally i think most defenders have him sussed now and he'd be an impact player for the next couple of years.

we have paid their wages, have we got in return what they have had from us?