Where was Guthrie again?!

[Lacoste]

Just goes to show that BM had the man management skills of a concentration camp guard

[Maguire]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

Well clearly they are.

Peter Odemwingie got booed last night when came on for West Brom. If that had been at Reading you'd all have sung his name and talked about how "he could bring the goals we need".

I wouldn't necessarily say Guthrie got dropped for playing well either - that's pure revisionism in my mind. He played "okay" at best. In fact the second half against WBA was the first time he ever looked worth his salary IMHO.

[Elm Park Pasty]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

Well clearly they are.

Peter Odemwingie got booed last night when came on for West Brom. If that had been at Reading you'd all have sung his name and talked about how "he could bring the goals we need".

I wouldn't necessarily say Guthrie got dropped for playing well either - that's pure revisionism in my mind. He played "okay" at best. In fact the second half against WBA was the first time he ever looked worth his salary IMHO.

I wouldn't excuse Guthrie's behaviour. He wouldn't be the first footballer to open his mouth on Twitter about what was angering him, nor was he right to refuse to travel, even if he would have sat on the bench again. However, I do find his frustration understandable given what was happening at the time. He also isn't the Messiah, but given a run in the team he may have been a useful component in it.

Peter Odemwingie would be regared as a pr*ck at 99% of clubs. I can't ever recall a footballer driving from his club to one he wanted to be transferred to in an attempt to force it through, and making a right Tw*t of himself on Sky Sports in the process. PO has been continually crtical of the club and his employers via Twitter, which is a bit more than passing comment on tactics or management style?

[Maguire]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

Well clearly they are.

Peter Odemwingie got booed last night when came on for West Brom. If that had been at Reading you'd all have sung his name and talked about how "he could bring the goals we need".

I wouldn't necessarily say Guthrie got dropped for playing well either - that's pure revisionism in my mind. He played "okay" at best. In fact the second half against WBA was the first time he ever looked worth his salary IMHO.

I wouldn't excuse Guthrie's behaviour. He wouldn't be the first footballer to open his mouth on Twitter about what was angering him, nor was he right to refuse to travel, even if he would have sat on the bench again. However, I do find his frustration understandable given what was happening at the time. He also isn't the Messiah, but given a run in the team he may have been a useful component in it

Very fair and balanced.

[Hoop Blah]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

Well clearly they are.

I don't think people are excusing it, they're putting some context and reasoning around why it happened. There is no excusing him not turning up for the Sunderland game, but there are circumstances that contributed to it that probably prevented him getting the full on vitriol he otherwise might've.

Possibly puts into perspective the mess this season has been.

[melonhead]

:|

at that point, he hadnt done aything that raised a positive eyebrow from me(chelsea/stoke aside).
now he has started to(like jem and HRK)due to a change in management/style.

how does that change how he played under brian?

and how has that got anything to do with people were blaming brian for guthries poor performances?

It seems strange to claim you have always accepted that McDermott diminished Guthrie's performances whilst at the same time agreeing that he had done nothing whatsoever of note on the pitch.

Imho.

Earlier in the season you wrote Guthrie off as an awful signing, a failed experiment – a handful of games under a new boss and you are praising him. Maybe the signing was right, but Brian wasn’t up to it?

nothing strange about it, unless you misinterpret what im saying in your eagerness to crow over your love of guthrie from the first minute he arrived.
i never said he was awful, always said i liked him, hes exactly what we needed. he was for sure a failed experiment under mcdermott, mainly cos brian got scared and reverted to his old style after 2 games. somewhat understandably.
what im saying is that none of that diminishes guthries own responsibility for his actions on and off he pitch. ultimately he is in control of everything he does. he dealt with things badly off it, and played poorly on it.thats his fault.
to me there is no dichotomy in also saying that of course brian takes his share of responsibility for managing a player to that point.

saying brian wasnt up to it is daft though. sometimes players work, sometimes they dont. was alex ferguson not up to managing djemba djemba or veron?
and the main point i should really make here is that in no way does saying at that point; id not seen guthrie do anything on the pitch to make him worth his reputation and my expectations, contradict also thinking that guthrie being played out of position/wrong system for him was affecting his game.im just saying that what a good proffesional would have done was go out and prove to the manager that he was good enough to cope with any system demanded of him. imo.
he simply didnt do enough to force mcdermott to build the team around him, as he attempted to do in those first two games.


i think what you'll find about me is that, im fiercely loyal, to a fault, to every manager we have, up to the point they leave.
at which point my loyalty switches to the new man, and grows with each success he gives me.
so lol at thinking im some great Mcdermott apologist.
the king is dead, long live the king. etc

[Extended-Phenotype]

Yet Federici is accused on here of doing the same thing, without any evidence, except the testimony of the bloke down the pub and he gets criticised for it. One of your favourites actually does refuse to be on the bench and it's excuse after excuse, now including the laughable claim that he was treated badly. How exactly? Because he wasn't picked? Well, again, when the same thing happened to Federici we were told on here that that is "just a fact of football".

What about Shorey? He's criticised on here for getting pi55ed on a night when he knows he's not playing and we're told that he should've been ready to play even though Basil Brush would rather pick the under 12's left back than him basically because of a contract clause. That should make the "Now that's what I call being treated Badly" album.

Sure I'll get a "hilarious" Inferior-Prototype barb. Oh how we'll laugh.

Chill out, fella – only giving my opinion, which is entirely rational – vindicated by the fact you have to pin other peoples fallacy (Feds and Shorey criticism) on me in order to argue against it. Take a look; I defend Shorey on his thread and have only ever criticised Feds for his performance on the pitch. If you look at the ‘great keeper debate’ thread, I give a pretty balanced opinion on there saying we are blessed with two great keepers, the preference of one shouldn’t mean ripping the other to shreds.

I was even careful to word my opinion on Guthrie so as not to appear excusing him. In my opinion, he was playing as well as anyone else and was rather unceremoniously dropped, then underused, despite obviously deserving time as a new recruit to bed in, and then forced to watch some dire midfield performances from his competition without retribution.

Does this give him the right to throw a paddy and refuse to play? No. Is it “stupid” but “understandable”? I think that’s a reasonable take.
If he and the manager’s relationship hadn’t broken down so badly that (a) he wasn’t even making the bench any more and (b) he rashly thought refusing to play was the only way forward, we might have been enjoying the player we are now.

As for Feds, I hope we keep him – that would give us two of the best keepers in the league. And Shorey, whatever people say about him he still looks set to finish the season as the player who put in the most number of accurate crosses into the box which is an important accolade (both points I have already made).

As for you, well – pretty much agree with you apart from all the 'hating me for wounds suffered in an argument two years ago' bits.

[melonhead]

Kind of agree, but i'm not going to go overboard after one good performance against opponents who allowed us all the time in the world to play football.

He obviously has some talent but I'm not sure about the application.

Also amused by the way his earlier performance involving miscontrolling the ball, pinging passes into the stands and so on were all McDermott's fault.

I disagree. Who said that then?

loads of people.
loads of people still saying it

Brendy, that's when you said people have been blaming all Guthrie did was McDermotts fault.

McDermott takes a lot of the blame for Guthries performances. It's nice to see you accepting that.

thats just daft.
in no way does saying alot of people have been saying all the bad stuff guthrie did was brians fault contradict me saying that brian must take responsibility for his failure in man management. they have, and he did.

ive always said mcdermott(or any one) must always take ultimate responsibility as the manager, thats what hes payed for, and in the end he did when he got the sack.
he didnt make guthrie pass sinmple passes straight to the opposition though, or shank long/passes and shots into the stand, nor did he force his head to go down the first instant one of his colleagues misplaced his pass, and nor did he force him to refuse to play. in all of those instances guthrie MUST take the responsibility.

[melonhead]

Brendy, it sounds like you now accept that McDermotts tactics and handling of Guthrie did contribute to his poorer performances, on field mistakes and his failure to live up to your expectations as a player.

ive always accepted that, im just not having that taking any real spotlight away from dannys reaction which was "unforgiveable" for a proffesional footballer.
for that the buck stops with danny.

all the rest is down to danny and brian pretty equally

And you're still going on about something that happened nearly 5 months ago, really?? It really is that long ago and what does it take for some of you to forget it?

For the life of me, I cannot get my head around the fact that Guthrie was bought by Brian in the past to play football which doesn't suit his style of play and that point isn't highlighted by anyone. Why on earth would you scout someone/watch someone, then buy him to play a different role to what his style of play is? The mind boggles.

some one asked about it, so i answered.
personally i doubt ill ever forget that danny guthrie refused to play in a game due to some pathetic childish sulk. pretty sure that will remain in my memory until dementia kicks in.
that doesnt mean i wont forgive him. i forgave him as soon as he apologised to the squad and made up with brian and played his first game back.
ill forgive him even more with every performance of that quality at the weekend, and ill certainly move towards a full reconcilliation if he stays here next season and takes us back up.
at that point he will be my oxf*rd hero


& that point is already highlighted by many many people tbf

[melonhead]

I'd say McDermott was 75% to blame for the Guthrie 'Sunderland affair'.

The usual scenario is that a regular starter plays badly for multiple games in a row, gets benched and then reacts badly. In this scenario, obviously the player is completely at fault.
This was not the scenario with Guthrie however. In the Guthrie affair, the regular starter played badly for multiple games in a row and was still not benched, leading to a reaction from those on the bench.

I was not remotely surprised by the Guthrie incident, it had been coming for weeks. In just the previous game, away at Southampton, Reading were screaming out for a passing central midfielder but McDermott snubbed Guthrie, bringing on Hunt for Tabb. The only person that seemed surprised by the Guthrie Sunderland affair was McDermott.
Did I feel hatred to Guthrie? No. I felt empathy because the form Leigertwood was in even I might not have accepted being snubbed for him (and I'm shit at football).

In a voluntary sport situation, if I turned up to play every week and was never allowed off the substitutes bench due to the manager's blatant stubborn favouritism, even though I was at least as good as those on the pitch, then I would stop bothering turning up for games.

Obviously Guthrie is a professorial sportsman and the two situations are different. You could say he has to remain professional and carry on, but at the same time he is a player at his prime age, probably expecting first team football when joining the club, whose career was essentially being wasted by the manager. Overall, I can only give Guthrie 25% of the blame.

Clearly McDermott did not learn very much from the incident, hence the fan's reaction later in the season to Leigertwood being substituted off. Other players, including McCleary, and now to a lesser extent HRK, have since spoken out about what they felt was McDermott's favouritism.

[melonhead]

Refusing to go to work when you've been treated badly is pretty understandable imo. Stupid, yeah. But hardly close to "unforgivable".

Sitting on a bench (if he was lucky) watching three other morons hoof the ball to the opposition for 90 minutes? "Fukthatshit" isn't an unbelievable reaction.

do you see those quotation marks?
like when a divvy student says something and does that thing with their fingers.
i put them there cos since ive already forgiven him it wasnt really unforgiveable.
i was simply trying to indicate all of that without typing it.
but i had to anyway

[melonhead]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

[melonhead]

I don't think anyone's excusing Guthrie's behaviour

Well clearly they are.

I don't think people are excusing it, they're putting some context and reasoning around why it happened. There is no excusing him not turning up for the Sunderland game, but there are circumstances that contributed to it that probably prevented him getting the full on vitriol he otherwise might've.

Possibly puts into perspective the mess this season has been.

didnt see him get any vitriol tbf. as soon as brian said theyd had a chat, and hed apologised to the other players

[melonhead]

run out of people to reply to
but +1 anyway

[Extended-Phenotype]

Way to spam the board.

[Hoop Blah]

he didnt make guthrie pass sinmple passes straight to the opposition though, or shank long/passes and shots into the stand, nor did he force his head to go down the first instant one of his colleagues misplaced his pass, and nor did he force him to refuse to play. in all of those instances guthrie MUST take the responsibility.

See you still don't seem to be getting the part that asking him to play in a way that was alien to him had on his performances or probably his state of mind.

All players make mistakes yes, and I don't think Guthrie made any more than others, but where he might've made errors you didn't expect him to make (or more of them than your expectations) theres an element of blame on the way he was asked to play (and it would seem he's making less mistakes now he's in a side coached and set up to play a style he's more suited to).

[Hoop Blah]

...but there are circumstances that contributed to it that probably prevented him getting the full on vitriol he otherwise might've.

Possibly puts into perspective the mess this season has been.

didnt see him get any vitriol tbf. as soon as brian said theyd had a chat, and hed apologised to the other players

He got some boo'ing and comments here and there, plus of course some stick on here and twitter at the time.

My point was that he didn't get the same level of abuse that one might expect considering what he did.

[winchester_royal]

I think a significant part of Karacan and Guthrie's improvement is the increased number of options they now have when looking to make a pass. The full-backs are playing higher up the pitch, the wingers are coming inside and offering, and in general the players all seem more eager to show for the ball. Therefore whereas Guthrie often had to pass the ball through the eye of a needle to the only available team-mate, he can now pick and choose his passes depending on whether we're looking to retain or attack.

[melonhead]

he didnt make guthrie pass sinmple passes straight to the opposition though, or shank long/passes and shots into the stand, nor did he force his head to go down the first instant one of his colleagues misplaced his pass, and nor did he force him to refuse to play. in all of those instances guthrie MUST take the responsibility.

See you still don't seem to be getting the part that asking him to play in a way that was alien to him had on his performances or probably his state of mind.

All players make mistakes yes, and I don't think Guthrie made any more than others, but where he might've made errors you didn't expect him to make (or more of them than your expectations) theres an element of blame on the way he was asked to play (and it would seem he's making less mistakes now he's in a side coached and set up to play a style he's more suited to).

no i am 100% getting it. its been tough to get my puny mind around such a difficult concept, but im getting there.......

i simply do not believe that anyone else is responsible for those individual actions. people are always very keen to shift the blame away from themselves. he needs to deal with that blame, move on and make it right.which he is doing, has been doing since the incident, and i am very glad to see that on the back of that, and under new management he is becoming the player i wanted him to be from the start.

brian has already dealt with his share of the blame, by being sacked for the decisions he made.he moves on, i move on, we move on
etc

[melonhead]

he didnt make guthrie pass sinmple passes straight to the opposition though, or shank long/passes and shots into the stand, nor did he force his head to go down the first instant one of his colleagues misplaced his pass, and nor did he force him to refuse to play. in all of those instances guthrie MUST take the responsibility.

See you still don't seem to be getting the part that asking him to play in a way that was alien to him had on his performances or probably his state of mind.

All players make mistakes yes, and I don't think Guthrie made any more than others, but where he might've made errors you didn't expect him to make (or more of them than your expectations) theres an element of blame on the way he was asked to play (and it would seem he's making less mistakes now he's in a side coached and set up to play a style he's more suited to).

already accepted fully that i have higher expectations of danny guthrie than of the championship journeymen and kids our side was made up of.
i dont want him to be as bad as them. i wanted hin to be better, and im fully aware that i may be more critical of him as a result of my higher expectations, and have said as much.

yeah brian asking him to play differently for the benefit of the team must have affected him. but hes a proffessional. and the buck stops at him for his attitude that came from that