As a Baggie, was sorely disappointed in Peter ODW last night. Without his signing to WBA from Russia would anyone have been aware of him over here? OK, he is 31 so he wants some securirty and Albion are one of the few clubs who are financially well managed but dont have the support of some dodgy Russian or Chinese owner so have a wage cap and are loathe to offer extended contracts to older players. He wants out and whilst I fully understand those baggies fans who take the pi** out of his whinging about having a family to support and needing 40k a week or whatever ( when they are normal people on less a year than he wants a week, who work hard to pay the mortgage etc), this whole obscene wage structure is not of his making. Fans are loyal to their club by definition. Players are like you and me, we might have a degree of loyalty to our employers but most of us, if offered twice the wage for doing the same job with similar or better security, would take it. So cant blame him for that. JP is well known as a tough negotator so noway was he going to let ODW go for the £2m "Onest 'Arry"(
) was initially talking about. Anyone with half a brain would have known that. Clearly ODW wanted out but clearly this couldnt happen unless the club could bring in some replacements. The squad simply isnt big enough and the run of recent poor results is mostly proof of this when, due to injuries etc, first team training would involve only 13 players. The club repeatedly stated that because of this situation its first team players were not up for sale. Doubtless, had they had a more suitable offer from QPR or whoever and some replacement recruitment done ODW would have been on his way and all would be happy as its evident that retaining a player who doesnt want to be there is not a good thing. So why then did ODW drive all the way to Loftus Road, make the statements he did to SKy only to find that QPR wouldnt let him in the gates? (had they done so they would, of course, have been in trouble with the FA as he had not had permission from WBA to speak to them). It seems that some agent had advised him to travel down to try and force the situation, and from the players comments to SKY it felt like he was already speaking as a QPR player. Anyone who has seen any of ODW's "Twitters" can see that his english is not too good and this makes him appear nuttier than he probably is , but clearly someone had turned his head so that he felt a move to QPR was virtually a done deal. Most people would blame greedy agents and doubtless this is true. But what of "Onest 'Arry"? Did he say anything that might have encouraged ODW's actions. He may be a respected manager but I for one wouldnt put it past him. As for ODW, will he try to earn back the respect of his fellow team-mates, the fans , the manager? He is a talented player, who can change games for us, but he is also frustrating, lazy and selfish in games. Fans prefer the likes of Shane Long who never stops trying. JP has played hardball with his player but I doubt there are any winners here. I know players have a limited time window in which to earn the big money and that few can subsequently move into coaching/media careers afterwards and its not right to go back to the old days when player/legends of clubs like Astle ended up as window cleaners or whatever but the current financial obsenities of the game driven by SKY or greedy agents/players or the wealth of dodgy foreign "businessmen" is killing the game and the whole ODW thing is a perfect farcical example
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Topic: peter odemwhingie agents, greed and how money ruined football (Read 752 times)