by bigmick » Sat Nov 13, 2010 1:52 pm
There's no question that our 18 million quid right back has been bitterly disappointing for 18 months or so now. It's even at the stage where we have a young kid coming through who is actually a centre half who looks to all intents and purposes like a better bet.
It's the managers job to get Johnson to play better. Obviously Roy didn't sign him in the first place, but equally obviously he has to try and maximise the assets at his disposal, such as they are. At his best, Johnson is definately one of our better players so i don't blame Roy for trying to gee him up a bit. Some players respond to the arm around the shoulder, some people respond to the kick up the jacksy, some prefer it behind closed doors and some respond better to it being out in the open. Whatever has been tried before with Johnson clearly hasn't worked, so it'll be interesting to see if this latest attempt gets us anywhere.
Naturally the crew are laying into Roy because he went public in criticising Johnson (bizarrely the same crew who laid into him for backing Poulsen and not joining in with the booing), but I for one think this new approach is worth a shot. Sooner or later we are either going to have to get some of these "assets" producing, or we are going to be staring down the gunbarrell at some some serious losses. Already we've got a 20 million pound midfielder on loan in Italy, an 11 million pound striker who can't even get on the bench, as well as a bloke who we've only just taken delivery of who's on 80K a week and is palpably not good enough. The last thing we need is Johnson adding to our extremely expensive pile of deadwood.
I hope Roys tactics work on him, if they do those who have predictably stuck the boot in will have a chance to say they called it wrong and well done to the manager.
"se e in una bottigla ed e bianco, e latte".