Zat Knight leans on Owen Coyle to bring Reo-Coker back. OC suffers neck injury.
You know how it is. You go away for a weekend with the wife and when you return, you find that Zat Knight is dictating our transfer policy.
Now, this is obviously not the case, but we will get to the meat of the matter in a moment. First, let us all cast our minds back to Friday and the Forest match. As it kicked off, I was twenty minutes out of Euston Station, and with Mrs X’s rule of not using my phone to watch the game, I was keeping up with things via Twitter. And what I was reading wasn’t much fun. It appeared that we came out of the blocks slowly and that Forest could have been out of sight before Chris Eagles cancelled out Lewis McGugan’s spectacular opener. I managed to catch the last twenty minutes at the hotel and it all sounded very end to end stuff, with the ball played along the floor as well as up to SKD. All very pleasing. And whilst we managed to contrive to allow Forest back into the game, we appear to be getting better as we go along. So, by about November, we should be scoring in the first ten minutes.
There is little else that I can give you about the game, so I point you towards either Manny Road or Smurf’s Soccer Spot if you fancy reading anything about the game that you haven’t already read.
As for Zat Knight, I understand that he was impressive on Friday night. This, you may imagine, would have me frothing at the mouth. Nothing of the sort. I don’t want a Bolton player to fail, I just had a feeling that this was a bad signing. At the moment, it turns out I may have done him a disservice, and that he has found his level. One tackle on Friday was quality and, whilst one tackle doesn’t make season, if this continues there won’t be many others around with a bigger smile than me.
As for his dictating transfer policy, he appears to be leaning on OC to try and get Nigel Reo-Coker back into the club. NRC has not found many suitors since activating his relegation release clause and, whilst a return would seem unlikely, the club are still looking for that one player in central midfield.
Ironically, on the day that would have been Nat Lofthouse’s eighty-seventh birthday, the twitterverse was divided between those who felt that NRC would be a good signing and those who wouldn’t touch him with a barge pole due to his perceived lack of loyalty.
Personally, if the club manage to re-sign NRC it wouldn’t bother me on iota that he walked away from the club in the summer. Players move on, that’s a fact of football, and NRC obviously felt that he had something more to give the Premier League. The club agreed to include the release clause and he was perfectly within his rights to walk away. What this has to do with his ability as a footballer, I don’t know. It’s not like he’s Michael Ricketts. Or Mark Fish. Those two proved to us more than ten years ago that players have little loyalty to a club and players like Sir Nat are few and far between these days.
As for Knight trying to get his friend back to the club, I was left thinking this. Along with him trying to get SWP to the club last season, does Zat Knight only have small friends? It’s a shame Gary Coleman is no longer with us.
And mentioning Sir Nat, the club have announced that his statute will be unveiled on his birthday next year, which is a nice touch.
Elsewhere, the old story about Wigan being interested in LCY has raised its head again. Lazy stuff it may be, but until the window closes in three days time, this story will carry on. We don’t need to sell him, we don’t want to sell him and we shouldn’t have to sell him. LCY is an important part of this season’s attempt on promotion. If we do fail to get back up, there will be an exodus from the club and you would expect him to be at the front of the queue. But that is for the future.
Fantasy League now and while I took a header down the league thanks for Fergie not playing Rooney, Ian Williams and his Beertown Wanderers have taken over at the top of the table, ousting Fantasy Stalwart’s Rodericks XI. Alex Banner’s Croston FC makes up the top three. Team of the week is Adam Grady and his Red Stripe Belgrade. The usual prize goes off to him.
Right, no rest for the wicked. A Crawley Town preview coming right up.