Pity Poor Alfie, A Man Out Of Time

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

So farewell then, Adam Le Fondre; he isn’t a Wanderer. What’s the opposite of “olé, olé”? “Oh nay, oh nay”?

The timing sucked: burying bad news midmatch with a spin-doctor’s slippiness. Ken Anderson claims it was done to avoid people being “misinformed with speculation”, what with cat having already slipped bag, and the announcement’s most notable adverb “reluctantly” sums up the Wanderers staff’s attitude. But the decision might be the right one.

A transfer like this will always provide – has already provided – for the kind of argument that is unprovable and therefore, via the internet’s dark logic, incontestable. Parky didn’t like him, it was a signing foisted upon him. If Parky didn’t like him, he had a strange way of showing it, frequently fundamentally altering his formation to attempt to accommodate his most obvious goal threat.

Parkinson tried two up top and it got Bolton promoted with a back three which later proved itself manifestly unsuited – at least with the contemporary playing staff – to second-tier football. After selling Gary Madine last winter he tried Le Fondre up top alone and watched the team’s possession and penetration dwindle from frightening to invisible. More recently, he tried Le Fondre in a No.10 role in which the Stopfordian striker gave his all but too frequently found himself outside his favourite place: the penalty area.

Le Fondre’s type of fist-clenched, rabble-rousing football is as popular as his goals, so it’s no surprise to sense anger at his departure. Anger usually springs from fear, and there will be an understandable worry that Wanderers’ already limited goal power will be further weakened, as was the case to an almost disastrous extent when Madine was sold. This shouldn’t be anything like as much of a blow to Parkinson’s plans. It’s early days, but Josh Magennis looks much more the sort of forward figurehead the preferred formations require.

It has become increasingly difficult, since the latter half of the previous decade, for players who offer little outside the 18-yard box. Football formations have always been about players and space; modern systems demand wider spheres of influence. Since Mourinho supercharged Allardyce’s 433/451 formation by topping it with Didier Drogba’s fearsome alliance of physicality and firepower, the majority of football formations have been spearheaded by a solo frontman augmented by various arrangements of auxiliary attackers. Playing two up top leaves you a man short in midfield or defence, neither of which is sustainable for long.

As with linguistics, management can be prescriptive or descriptive. The former imposes an idealised structure, the latter reacts to circumstance. Parky has done plenty of the latter but has always hankered for 4231 and this summer has gone so far as to state that preference, alternating with a 433. Alf suits neither set-up. That’s why a man with one of the Premier League’s all-time top-10 per-minute strike rates - largely plundered from the bench - found himself back in the third tier with a team like us.

Ask Jordan Rhodes, on whom several managers have speculated eight-figure fees only to struggle to fit him into a starting XI. Ask Michael Owen, whose rapid decline after 2006 arguably owed as much to changing tactics as pinging hamstrings. Ask Ruud van Nistelrooy, summarily ejected by Sir Alex Ferguson despite scoring 150 goals in 219 games; United won the league once in his five seasons there, but three times in the following four seasons as Fergie turned to the wider skillsets of Ronaldo, Rooney and Tevez.

Ultimately, Wanderers will go on. But this most curious of relationships – multiple loans, re-signings, etc – is over. Everyone at Bolton will wish Le Fondre all the best, from the grudgingly contract-cancelling chairman through the selection-shifting manager to the fans, including those who incessantly demanded he started every game and those who feared the effect that would have on patterns of play. That those arguments are now moot will not stop them raging and being used as straw men for binary internet arguments, but let’s not allow that to mar the memory of Bolton’s most popular player in a decade.

[BWFC_Insane]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

[Jugs]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

He writes for 442, doesn't he?

But yeah - well written, man.

For the record, I miss ALF lol.

[bristol_Wanderer3]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

Click on DSB's "Day Job" link BWFCI

Enjoyable read DSB. Can't argue with it. I have always felt about ALFie that he never really tried to evolve, that he enjoyed the rush of being the hero, the goalscorer too much. As the game has evolved, guys like ALF needed to become no 10's or to offer some contribution from wide positions. He never really seemed prepared to do that, maybe he just didn't have the engine for it, and he knew it?

[BWFC_Insane]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

Click on DSB's "Day Job" link BWFCI

Enjoyable read DSB. Can't argue with it. I have always felt about ALFie that he never really tried to evolve, that he enjoyed the rush of being the hero, the goalscorer too much. As the game has evolved, guys like ALF needed to become no 10's or to offer some contribution from wide positions. He never really seemed prepared to do that, maybe he just didn't have the engine for it, and he knew it?

I know what he does. Just meant it seemed a bit too good to use as a post here!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

Click on DSB's "Day Job" link BWFCI

Enjoyable read DSB. Can't argue with it. I have always felt about ALFie that he never really tried to evolve, that he enjoyed the rush of being the hero, the goalscorer too much. As the game has evolved, guys like ALF needed to become no 10's or to offer some contribution from wide positions. He never really seemed prepared to do that, maybe he just didn't have the engine for it, and he knew it?

I know what he does. Just meant it seemed a bit too good to use as a post here!

Thanks. As you asked, I'm going freelance in mid-September, until when I'm still a FourFourTwo employee. They don't need something on second-tier strugglers... but I need the practice after a month off And I enjoy writing for TW, I don't have to explain every reference.

That last line was originally "Bolton's most popular player since John McGinlay". I meant that as in the terrace hero whose name is sung lustily at quarter to three in the pub next to the away end our fans are about to occupy. I realised that it was perhaps a bit clickbaity to ignore The Lancashire Galacticos but I genuinely think we haven't had a player as popular with that specific fan demographic since Kevin Davies was in his pomp. I'd be interested, as ever, to hear who might have been more popular in that slice of time – since Megson's first full season. And as ever, there's no right answer...

[Jugs]

Klasnic and Matty Taylor were popular, but ALF is right up there. Not seen so much furore over a player leaving for a long time.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Klasnic and Matty Taylor were popular, but ALF is right up there. Not seen so much furore over a player leaving for a long time.

Yeah, I agree they were popular, and I'd say we've had better players (like the bloke who's won every medal with Chelsea and 60-odd caps for England). But as far as fan's favourites go, ALF takes some topping - perhaps helped by the old greener-grass 'Andranik Syndrome' that every time he didn't play in a loss his stock rose higher.

[BWFC_Insane]

Wow. Brilliant post. Bit too good for on here, you should have written that somewhere you'd get paid for it.

I'd contest the last line only. Most popular player since 2008? Not in a million years. Last 3/4 years? Sure.

Click on DSB's "Day Job" link BWFCI

Enjoyable read DSB. Can't argue with it. I have always felt about ALFie that he never really tried to evolve, that he enjoyed the rush of being the hero, the goalscorer too much. As the game has evolved, guys like ALF needed to become no 10's or to offer some contribution from wide positions. He never really seemed prepared to do that, maybe he just didn't have the engine for it, and he knew it?

I know what he does. Just meant it seemed a bit too good to use as a post here!

Thanks. As you asked, I'm going freelance in mid-September, until when I'm still a FourFourTwo employee. They don't need something on second-tier strugglers... but I need the practice after a month off And I enjoy writing for TW, I don't have to explain every reference.

That last line was originally "Bolton's most popular player since John McGinlay". I meant that as in the terrace hero whose name is sung lustily at quarter to three in the pub next to the away end our fans are about to occupy. I realised that it was perhaps a bit clickbaity to ignore The Lancashire Galacticos but I genuinely think we haven't had a player as popular with that specific fan demographic since Kevin Davies was in his pomp. I'd be interested, as ever, to hear who might have been more popular in that slice of time – since Megson's first full season. And as ever, there's no right answer...

Given in that time period we had Davies, Campo, Stelios, Diouf, Chungy....it just seemed a bit of a stretch. ALF came in fairly barren times, and certainly was popular. But I suspect he'd not rank above many of those on the list for many fans.

[Prufrock]

Not sure Matt Taylor was popular with, ahem, all of that crowd.

They had a weird affinity for Petrov. Think Alf the most popular since we were relegated. Probably says as much about how dreadful they've all been since.

[jmjhb]

Stuart Holden was pretty popular.

[Prufrock]

Aye, and I suppose he technically was on the books after relegation (though in reality his career ended at the moment our fate was sealed by that fecking Rag prick.

[GhostoftheBok]

Good article, well done.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

That last line was originally "Bolton's most popular player since John McGinlay". I meant that as in the terrace hero whose name is sung lustily at quarter to three in the pub next to the away end our fans are about to occupy. I realised that it was perhaps a bit clickbaity to ignore The Lancashire Galacticos but I genuinely think we haven't had a player as popular with that specific fan demographic since Kevin Davies was in his pomp. I'd be interested, as ever, to hear who might have been more popular in that slice of time – since Megson's first full season. And as ever, there's no right answer...

Given in that time period we had Davies, Campo, Stelios, Diouf, Chungy....it just seemed a bit of a stretch. ALF came in fairly barren times, and certainly was popular. But I suspect he'd not rank above many of those on the list for many fans.

By this time 10 years ago Campo, Stelios and Diouf had all played their last games for us; they were in the pantheon but also in the past. Chungy was popular without being put on a pedestal like Le Fondre. To me, Davies is the only one that comes into that popularity category.

Nolan, maybe. And Nolan shared something of the everyman quality that Le Fondre seemed to capture - a connection with the fans, like McGinlay, an old-fashioned "one of us" thing. It's kinda hard to explain but I think in that 2.45pm, fourth-pint atmosphere, Le Fondre's name would be more passionately sung than any of those you name bar perhaps SKD.

[Prufrock]

That last line was originally "Bolton's most popular player since John McGinlay". I meant that as in the terrace hero whose name is sung lustily at quarter to three in the pub next to the away end our fans are about to occupy. I realised that it was perhaps a bit clickbaity to ignore The Lancashire Galacticos but I genuinely think we haven't had a player as popular with that specific fan demographic since Kevin Davies was in his pomp. I'd be interested, as ever, to hear who might have been more popular in that slice of time – since Megson's first full season. And as ever, there's no right answer...

Given in that time period we had Davies, Campo, Stelios, Diouf, Chungy....it just seemed a bit of a stretch. ALF came in fairly barren times, and certainly was popular. But I suspect he'd not rank above many of those on the list for many fans.

By this time 10 years ago Campo, Stelios and Diouf had all played their last games for us; they were in the pantheon but also in the past. Chungy was popular without being put on a pedestal like Le Fondre. To me, Davies is the only one that comes into that popularity category.

Nolan, maybe. And Nolan shared something of the everyman quality that Le Fondre seemed to capture - a connection with the fans, like McGinlay, an old-fashioned "one of us" thing. It's kinda hard to explain but I think in that 2.45pm, fourth-pint atmosphere, Le Fondre's name would be more passionately sung than any of those you name bar perhaps SKD.

Does help when your name rhymes with the club's!

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

That last line was originally "Bolton's most popular player since John McGinlay". I meant that as in the terrace hero whose name is sung lustily at quarter to three in the pub next to the away end our fans are about to occupy. I realised that it was perhaps a bit clickbaity to ignore The Lancashire Galacticos but I genuinely think we haven't had a player as popular with that specific fan demographic since Kevin Davies was in his pomp. I'd be interested, as ever, to hear who might have been more popular in that slice of time – since Megson's first full season. And as ever, there's no right answer...

Given in that time period we had Davies, Campo, Stelios, Diouf, Chungy....it just seemed a bit of a stretch. ALF came in fairly barren times, and certainly was popular. But I suspect he'd not rank above many of those on the list for many fans.

By this time 10 years ago Campo, Stelios and Diouf had all played their last games for us; they were in the pantheon but also in the past. Chungy was popular without being put on a pedestal like Le Fondre. To me, Davies is the only one that comes into that popularity category.

Nolan, maybe. And Nolan shared something of the everyman quality that Le Fondre seemed to capture - a connection with the fans, like McGinlay, an old-fashioned "one of us" thing. It's kinda hard to explain but I think in that 2.45pm, fourth-pint atmosphere, Le Fondre's name would be more passionately sung than any of those you name bar perhaps SKD.

Does help when your name rhymes with the club's!

Imagine the Wolfsburg fans' dismay when Wolfgang Wolf resigned.

[Prufrock]

Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo!!

[TANGODANCER]

Surprised nobody mentioned Gary Speed amongst those..

[officer_dibble]

Wheater is pretty popular as well with that ‘could go for a pint with him’ quality.

But yeah spot on piece really. I have no issue with him going, especially if he gets that first team spot he wants. Cant argue with that at all.

Find it odd we have let him go at this point in the window - but a couple of loan signings possible. Find it even odder he’s gone for a free - can’t imagine his wage that is now free was massive, and Australian teams do apparantley pay transfer fees. So why not one now?

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

can’t imagine his wage that is now free was massive

Iles calls him "one of the top earners in the squad".

http://www.theboltonnews.co.uk/sport/16 ... le-fondre/