Petrov. The managers best friend.

[Vertigo]

heard down the grapevine its his attitude in training that lets him down

lethargic and lazy and wont chip in ive heard

friend of a friend of jay spearing (im not talking bollocks by the way)

Yes, I undertand Dougie values effort in training above all else. .... Which is a shame .... coz ability & skill should count for something as well.

Wrong. If Petrov was being lazy in training or didn't look interested i wouldn't play him either. It's just a shame because he is talented.

[BWFC_Insane]

heard down the grapevine its his attitude in training that lets him down

lethargic and lazy and wont chip in ive heard

friend of a friend of jay spearing (im not talking bollocks by the way)

Yes, I undertand Dougie values effort in training above all else. .... Which is a shame .... coz ability & skill should count for something as well.

Effort is a pre-requisite though isn't it?

Without that the rest is kind of irrelevant.

[Worthy4England]

Petrov certainly has ability and skill, which is great. I'm not sure he has that much more of it, that you'd make an exception in training for him (if that's the issue)

My view is that he's great going forwards, poor tracking back and there are suppositions that he's not very good in training. If that's the case, then I think I'd let him go, because we still have the problem of who he gets in the team in front of.

In a 4, if we have (as we need) two more defensively minded players - so for argument's sake Spearing and Andrews, then you have two places to give out between Eagles (probably nailed on at the moment), Petrov, Butterfield, CYL, Pratley and Mavies. He doesn't seem to be able to get in in front of three of those -CYL, Mavies and possibly Butterfield all seem to be ahead of him in the pecking order.

In a 5, he increases his chances, unless someone thinks that N'gog is the 5th as a deep lying forward.

When he does play, we don't seem to be attacking the oppo's end that much, that they don't still have time to get down our end and score two. So I think he's probably destined for the exit in January, if we could unload him (which we might not be able to do, down to his T's and C's)

[bobo the clown]

heard down the grapevine its his attitude in training that lets him down

lethargic and lazy and wont chip in ive heard

friend of a friend of jay spearing (im not talking bollocks by the way)

Yes, I undertand Dougie values effort in training above all else. .... Which is a shame .... coz ability & skill should count for something as well.

Effort is a pre-requisite though isn't it?

Without that the rest is kind of irrelevant.

In a balanced way, yes. But what's the point of not playing your best team , so long as they are pulling their weight. Not everyone's the same, are they !?

Vive la difference, shirley ?

[BWFC_Insane]

heard down the grapevine its his attitude in training that lets him down

lethargic and lazy and wont chip in ive heard

friend of a friend of jay spearing (im not talking bollocks by the way)

Yes, I undertand Dougie values effort in training above all else. .... Which is a shame .... coz ability & skill should count for something as well.

Effort is a pre-requisite though isn't it?

Without that the rest is kind of irrelevant.

In a balanced way, yes. But what's the point of not playing your best team , so long as they are pulling their weight. Not everyone's the same, are they !?

Vive le difference, shirley ?

I think there are two points here.

1) Is Petrov worthy of a place in our "best team"?

2) A more generic debate around attitude and work ethic and natural ability.

In terms of 1) I think W4E has put more eloquently than I could, the issue with Petrov. He's not really quite good enough to just stroll around and get in the team regardless.


In terms of 2) there aren't many situations where a team will "carry" a player who doesn't have the right attitude and work ethic. I also think lots of people confuse attitude and work ethic with running around a lot, clogging and generally being a bit shit but a "try hard". And that is a common misconception.

Djorkaeff was a fantastic player, but had a superb work ethic and application to his game, so much so that for a while, even with ultra-professional and workmanlike Allardyce Bolton, he was used by Sam as a measure of what a professional player should do. He didn't run around clogging folk left right and centre, but he was always professional and always applied himself in the right way and the right areas.

Whether Petrov is doing that or not I really don't know. But I believe if he is "not really arsed" then we could well do without that sort of attitude in the team.

[Dave Sutton's barnet]

Djorkaeff was a fantastic player, but had a superb work ethic and application to his game, so much so that for a while, even with ultra-professional and workmanlike Allardyce Bolton, he was used by Sam as a measure of what a professional player should do. He didn't run around clogging folk left right and centre, but he was always professional and always applied himself in the right way and the right areas.

Again, because it's relevant, I'll tell you what Allardyce told me with regard to Okocha: you don't have to tackle, but you do have to track back and get in the way, so the opposition have to at least work around you.

I don't know whether or not this applies to Petrov; we don't have the stats and besides, it's very difficult to quantify "getting into position" (which is different to a basic distance-run measurement, being dependent on ball position and covering your team-mates). But it seems he's not top of Freedman's love-list: having featured in all three games during the Scot's first week in charge, he's only featured one in the past five - a 27-minute run-out at Blackburn.

[boltonboris]

He's had a hamstring strain. Hence why he's only been used off the bench once in the last few weeks.