A sorry state of Affairs

It pains me to say this but it appears that Latics fans have sunken to another low this week with the departure of Pawel Abbot to Charlton. Thankfully it seems to only be a minority of fans who seem to think that the man who scored a third of Latics’ goals last season despite playing through the pain barrier and needing an operation in the first few months and being out for a following 2 months.

This isn’t the first time a decent player has been slated by our fans, as we all remember the unfair abuse that Neal Eardley received whilst he was at the club, I remember being 4-0 down at Hereford when all of Herefords goals came down our LEFT-hand side (remember that Eardley was playing on the RIGHT) and one fan shouted “this just goes to show how bad you are Eardley”. He then went on to be voted in the PFA League 1 team of the season and went on to make a move to a club in a higher Division. I think the problem with Eardley is that people complained when a winger beat him, but if people actually paid attention to the game going on you will find that in most cases the winger will beat his opponent every time. For example when Chris Taylor gets the ball everyone expects him to beat his man and in most cases he will but does that make the player he’s beaten no good?

Then there was Chris Killen who unfortunately spent most of his career with us injured, which I admit is not much use for us considering how much he was being paid, which is hardly his own fault as his contract was written up when Chris Moore was chairman. But some people seemed to of translated the fact that he was no good to us with his injuries for him being a rubbish player. Again he went onto bigger and better things after he left our club, but what people seem to forget is that in his final full season in 04/05 season he played 30 games and scored 15 which translated means that he had a goal to games ratio of 1 in 2, is that the ratio of a rubbish player?

The above examples begs the question, is this the case at other clubs? The answer to that question is a yes to a certain extent, there will always be a player at a club who will receive unfair criticism at every club. But there seems to be a pattern emerging at Oldham where the players who do get slated seem to go onto bigger and better things, why just this week Sheffield Wednesday rejected a £500,000 bid for Jermaine Johnson from Nottingham Forest. Whereas players who receive lots of praise like Mark Allott and Danny Whittaker are playing for Chesterfield in the League below. I asked one of the fans who didn’t rate Abbott, Eardley, Killen or Johnson what he wanted to see in a centre forward and he gave the response “A striker can shoot on target and can beat at least 2 opponents.” That to me was a very general response and sounded like he described Lionel Messi as the ideal striker at Oldham, well is the Pope a Catholic? Does poo smell bad? Of course Lionel Messi would be a very welcome addition to the Oldham forward line, theres just one tiny problem with that, Oldham Athletic play in the 3rd tier of English Football with very little money whereas Lionel Messi is disputed as one of the best forwards in the World. A general response to any question usually suggests a lack of intelligence and my worry is that the questioned person’s opinion is not a lone one. This week the supporters trust has recently launched another player share scheme I just hope for the sake of the club that the fans don’t have a say on who is bought, as for Pawel Abbot, he is now in a better team and we will see how well he will do, I wish him all the best and although I’m not too down heartened at his departure as we have a new regime who intend to play a different way, you’ve got to wonder what goes through some peoples heads.