Wednesday 30 June 2010

Players we love to hate


One of the best things about being a football fan is that it's quite acceptable to be a brazen hypocrite.

I'm sure there are loads of people out who, like me, spend most of their lives wishing misfortune to befall the majority of the England squad. But come the World Cup we put our differences aside in the hope that they might bring glory to the nation, only to start hating the over-hyped scumbags again when they inevitably get knocked out in the early stages.

Similar rules apply at club level; you can hate a player who repeatedly wrongs your team throughout his career, only to forget his long list of misdemeanors when he dons your club's colours. We haven't signed one of these since the days of big Lemu Fortune-West, so it's quite funny that Lingy has picked up two in the space of a week: Long-haired playmaker Adam Miller and everyone's favourite camera licking flat track bully Daryl Clare.

Miller always struck me as a narky, if talented, sort in his Stevenage days, and I've never really forgiven him for his snarling celebration when he netted a penalty against us at their place in 2007. Clare's crime-sheet mainly consists of regular goals scored against us and a reluctance to stay on his feet for any longer than is necessary, but you can't really sniff at his goalscoring record, which has remained consistently good despite his advancing years and regular changes of employer.

There's no doubting that both are talented additions to an already solid squad. In fact I'd have to say this is probably the strongest, most well balanced, group of players we've had since relegation: There's a good mix of youth and experience and brains and brawn, and no one area of the pitch where we look particularly short of cover. Of course plenty can, and probably will, go wrong between now and the start of the season, but I'm beginning to get genuinely excited about our prospects. Who needs the World Cup anyway?

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