Well he lost his mojo when Allardyce started playing him as the front man in a striker-less formation and then as a wide man because Jarvis was so consistently hopeless, but now, it seems, Diame simply wants out.
How else can you account for his ridiculous comments about team mates not trying? Team mates not good enough might be a reasonable observation, but the one thing I witnessed all season was a team desperately trying to overcome its very severe limitations. Who, exactly, were the non triers?
Well, for sure, it wasn't any of O'Brien, Noble, Collins, Tomkins, Reid, McCartney, Carlton Cole, Taylor or Jarvis. Now you can question whether some of those should be in a Premiership team, never mind a team striving for a top ten finish, but to question their desire and effort would be madness in the extreme. The one thing every one of them could be relied upon to do, is run until they drop (which we only just avoided!).
What about Nolan? Well according to Diame, things got better after January when the competition for places increased. That rules out Captain Kev then, because with Morrison's departure, his place in the team was absolutely guaranteed. And with the situation improving in January, he clearly wasn't thinking of Carroll, because he hadn't kicked a ball during the period when players were supposedly not trying.
Does the finger then point at Demel? If so, it seems harsh because he always looked committed to the cause to me, even if lasting 90 minutes seems to be a challenge for the guy. Adrian or Jussi? Daft idea.
So, who are we down to? Joe Cole, Downing and Morrison? Well they were contenders for the one area of the team where there was competition for places, so Diame's argument flounders even if he is right that these three were more interested in themselves than in the team - which I can well believe. But to be fair to Downing, he did a lot of tracking back and I lost count of the number of blind alleys he ran up in most games.
So maybe it was Mogodon Maiga that Diame had in mind. Maybe Mo doesn't understand that the guy is just shit!
Or Boomtown Rat perhaps? Well the fact he defected mid season tells us he was unhappy at being used only occasionally by Allardyce but, again, I saw a player running and running and running whenever he wore the shirt.
If I've forgotten anybody, I apologise. But what difference did the new arrivals in January make anyway? They barely started a game between them, so the "competition for places" that they offered was virtually zero.
No. Mo was talking out of his arse, unless he was talking about his own attitude of course. One thing's for sure, he has guaranteed himself a cold shoulder from his team mates when they return to training, which suggests to me that he wants out of the club before the start of the new season. But if he's dreaming of a top 6 club coming in for him, then he's in for a disappointing summer. True Allardyce played him out of position for most of the season but that's because he was found out in the engine room of the team, giving away far too many free kicks on the edge of our box, which, with Jussi in goal, led to goals!
1 comment:
Always seemed to me that
Diame himself wasn't that much of a tryer
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