Has he still got no club?
Rumoured to be in Edinburgh speaking to Hearts.
He'll be taking quite a pay cut if he goes there. Must be no decent offers in the Championship for him.
Last edited by Eirambler; 02/08/2019 at 6:16 PM.
His legs are gone but he still anticipates play well and his positioning is excellent. He can play the holding role better than anyone else we have available bar James McCarthy, whose durability remains a question mark.
So my view is he can still do a job for us in a five man midfield.
But I don’t think he can play in a 4-4-2 anymore because he can’t cover enough ground.
Glenn Whelan and excellence don't go together.
I couldn't disagree more. The guy was an amazing player in terms of the role he was asked to perform, namely shielding the back four and breaking up the opposition's attack. As others have stated, his legs are gone but surely there's a team in League 1 who could used him for ten or fifteen matches this season. He'd be a great player to have on the bench to sub on when holding a lead.
I'll disagree with Colbert on the word amazing but the i think the critiscism of Whelan is misplaced most of the time. He's been consistently picked by a succession of managers because of his strengths. Every manager knew what they would get from him, no more, no less. As a manager that's a great asset in a player. He wasn't an 8 out of 10 ala Denis Irwin but he was 6.5-7.5.
The fact that no player came into squads he was a part of and took his place says a lot.
10 years in the Premier League and people think he's crap... mind-boggling.
I don't think anybody said 'crap'. Extremely limited but he obviously had something about him. If I was to judge him solely on his Ireland performances there's no way I would have thought this fella was a PL regular for so long. I do think he was almost symbolic of how limited we were as a team throughout his career with us, but it wasn't his fault he was the best available at times.
I think it's just lazy to say loads of managers picked him so he must be good, even if our own eyes told us otherwise at times. He could obviously read the game reasonably well but he was slow, uncomfortable on the ball, reluctant to receive it and generally not much of a physical presence in there either.
There was always a notion amongst his defenders that we'd miss him when he's not there and that we wouldn't have conceded certain goals if he had been on the pitch but, in general, we have got most of our better results over the years without him.
Well for the last two years McCarthy has been playing a different sport because it's rarely been football. And I'd hardly say most of our better results have been without him. Yeah, Italy at the Euros and Germany at home he didn't play, but away to Germany, Austria away, both Bosnia games he was in the team.
I agree he was slow but I don't agree that he was uncomfortable on the ball or reluctant to receive it. I think that has been his greatest quality for us in recent years. He has been willing to take possession in all situations, particularly situations where those around him would be unable to retain the ball (e.g. Hendrick).
What Glen Whelan did over the years in an Ireland shirt, did not work by any stretch of the imagination. Yet he kept doing the same thing game in and game out and was hoping, I assume, for a different result? Someone pointed out earlier that it is not his fault he was picked all the time. Absolutely true. And also true that he was and is a patriot. But in terms of ability, that's a different story. Glen Whelan is like a multitude of Irish players over the years who were not of international standard but who benefitted from a reluctance by managers to try out an alternative player, or play someone in a different role.
He didn't play in Stockholm, definitely one of our better performances around that time, probably our best. He didn't play in Cardiff either and, as Diggs says, Vienna is a strange example given he went off injured after 24 minutes. Even the Germany away game he went off after 54. Granted we conceded afterwards and needed to chase they game, but we easily played our best football in that match without him. I'll reluctantly give you Bosnia in terms of results, but we were pretty poor over there and he was dreadful that night.
Signs for Hearts - https://www.heartsfc.co.uk/news/arti...ns-with-hearts
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