Andy Reid(b 1982)

[Noelys Guitar]

What position did Reid play yesterday? He set up the first goal from the right.

http://www.boxofficefootball.com/sun...-0-highlights/

Free role. Switched wings constantly. I thought he played OK yesterday. Good first half. He had loads on time on the ball in the second half but too often chose the wrong option.

[irishfan86]

He started on the left, but Sbragia seems to want the midfielders to switch around, as like you say, Reid was on the right for the goal.

He also found himself in the middle at times as well.

Sunderland were playing a fluid system and WBA just never seemed in it.

While I agree that Reid made a few poor decisions, these were when the game was done and it didn't matter.

At the end of the day, he played in a brilliant ball for Jones' goal, and scored a fantastic header as well.

One of the stars of the game, but it really was a team performance last night.

[Closed Account]

Played as an orthodox left winger, only appeared in middle or on the right from broken play. Counter attacks or when he ambled over to take a free kick.

Made a few bad decisions. Like when he chased the ball to the byeline but after doing the hardwork, he didn't look up and overhit his cross. A quick free kick and quick corner didn't work out for him either but I wouldn't fault him for effort. Anytime he gave ball away, he worked hard to win it back. Tainio and Malbranque were the stars of the show and Richardson was ineffective. Would of preferred to see Reid in the middle.

Got a good reception when he was substituted. Can't see him featuring much for Trap. Not pacy enough for a winger.

[Razors left peg]

Played as an orthodox left winger, only appeared in middle or on the right from broken play. Counter attacks or when he ambled over to take a free kick.

Made a few bad decisions. Like when he chased the ball to the byeline but after doing the hardwork, he didn't look up and overhit his cross. A quick free kick and quick corner didn't work out for him either but I wouldn't fault him for effort. Anytime he gave ball away, he worked hard to win it back. Tainio and Malbranque were the stars of the show and Richardson was ineffective. Would of preferred to see Reid in the middle.

Got a good reception when he was substituted. Can't see him featuring much for Trap. Not pacy enough for a winger.

Has to be a better winger than Andy Keogh though!

[Stuttgart88]

From Saturday's Financial Times - why no mention of Andy Reid?

Teams should think twice before shedding their fat players
By Simon Kuper

Ronaldo, once the greatest footballer on earth, now has the belly of late-phase Elvis Presley. In spite of this, Corinthians in his native Brazil have just signed him. However, one of the last surviving fat men in sport will soon be squeezed out of the exit doors like so many other fatties this last decade. Their demise is sport's loss.

A century ago, there were sporting legends who could have eaten today's streamlined players as a pre-game snack. The Victorian cricketer W.G. Grace wielded his belly as proudly as his bat; his contemporary, the Chelsea goalkeeper William "Fatty" Foulke weighed 24 stones; and in baseball, Babe Ruth reportedly once limbered up for a Yankees game with four porterhouse steaks, eight hot dogs and eight sodas.

Few minded. In 1958, when Real Madrid were courting the great Hungarian footballer Ferenc Puskas, he told the club's president: "Listen, this is all very well, but have you looked at me? I am 18 kilos overweight." Real signed him regardless. In the 1970s, when a physical trainer approached the football manager Brian Clough and boasted that he could make his fittest player physically sick in 10 minutes, Clough replied: "The moment the league starts awarding two points for that, I'll give you a job."

As late as the 1990s English football featured pregnant-looking players such as Paul Gascoigne or Julian Dicks. Fans sang, "He's fat, he's round, he bounces on the ground," and "Who ate all the pies?" Secretly, they liked sportsmen who looked like them. It's no coincidence that the two most popular English cricketers since the 1970s have been Ian "Beefy" Botham, and Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff, now slimmer but who was nicknamed after the chunky caveman Fred Flintstone.

Admittedly, there always were puritans who persecuted fatties. When a woman chided the baseball player John Kruk for being a tubby smoker, he famously replied, "I ain't an athlete, lady, I'm a ballplayer," a response so good he later used it as the title of his autobiography. In 1995 Kruk retired, soon after telling a newspaper that he wanted to spend the rest of the year "eating at the Sizzler's buffet". Fat athletes were wobbling off stage.

Coaches had got hold of computers and were starting to measure more things. They followed Damon Runyon's dictum: "The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet it." While the rest of us got fatter, athletes went the other way. Baseball players started using steroids. In football, Arsenal ditched its traditional pre-game meal of baked beans and Coca-Cola (not a joke). Even cricketers discovered the gym. In Basel during the 2008 European Football Championships, two leading managers had a quiet chat at a sponsor's evening. The content: "How many kilometres do your full-backs run? And your central midfielders?"

Teams began blaming failures on lack of fitness. Brazil flopped at football's 2006 World Cup with two strikers, Ronaldo and Adriano, who looked like blow-up doll replicas of themselves. No team of that stature will ever weigh that much again. To find fatties in sport today, you either have to admire the recent photos of Ronaldo or scour some obscure teams. The Bermudan cricketer Dwayne Leverock, an obese policeman, redeemed last year's World Cup with a brilliant one-handed slip catch and subsequent earthshaking jig.

As that suggests, fat athletes have their uses. One day last February, when Ronaldo was still playing for AC Milan, Daniele Tognaccini, one of the club's trainers mused about that.

Tognaccini was sitting at the pristine Milanello training ground listing Milan's keenest runners. "Cafu, Kaká - he is the kilometre man - and Gattuso." He risked a joke: "Ronaldo, no." But then Tognaccini revealed a counter-intuitive truth about soccer: there was no correlation between running lots of kilometres and winning matches. He said: "Often, it's better if you don't run."

Another Milan official in the room joked: "So Ronaldo is fantastic?"

"Yes," said Tognaccini seriously. "Football is not a physical sport."

The Oakland A's reached the same insight about baseball. In the book Moneyball, Michael Lewis explains how the A's signed fatties whom no other team wanted. None of them could "outrun the hot dog vendor in a 60-yard dash", but that didn't stop them hitting baseballs. Lewis concludes: "Titties are one of those things that just don't matter in a ballplayer."

They certainly haven't stopped Ronaldo. The Milan Lab, after measuring everything measurable in football, concluded that the key quality in the game was not body-fat percentage but "sensory perception": the ability to assess the field of play in an instant. "Ronaldo," says the Lab's director, Jean Pierre Meersseman, "can perceive a situation so fast and react to it, it's just amazing."

That is why fans of his favourite club, Flamengo, are now turning to black magic to punish him for joining Corinthians. The man's better than an athlete. He's a ballplayer.

[geysir]

Andy Reid has become the standard defense reference when a footballer (like Scott McDonald) is accused of putting on 5 or 6 kilos,
'he's not fat, just big boned like Andy Reid'.

Just how do bones put on weight, become big and then lose it again on occasions?

[lionelhutz]

I was at the game on Saturday and I thought Reid played very well. I watched him closely enough throughout and his work rate was excellent although he was sucking air at one stage! He played on the left for the entire game and only took set pieces from the middle or right. Reid did make a few bad passes in the 2nd half but the game was over at that stage.

It was a very strange game - West Brom had all the possession for the 1st 20 mins but they didn't create much. Then Sunderland scored, West Brom dropped their heads, conceded a second straight after and that was pretty much game, set and match.

[Noelys Guitar]

Very poor stuff from Reid today. Had a go at Sbragia when he was substituted.

[Scram]

Very poor stuff from Reid today. Had a go at Sbragia when he was substituted.

He can't have much argument now! they scored 3 after he went off.

ps. I'm a Sunderland fan since Keane left

[seanfhear]

Very poor stuff from Reid today. Had a go at Sbragia when he was substituted.

Jeez what an idiot.Trap may have been right all along.

[Noelys Guitar]

Jeez what an idiot.Trap may have been right all along.

Indulgent stuff from Reid today. Very poor game and rightly substituted. His dead ball play was very poor. Corner kicks not getting beyond the first defender. Sent two free kicks directly into the keepers hands.

[co. down green]

Very poor stuff from Reid today. Had a go at Sbragia when he was substituted.

Maybe it was as much frustration at his own poor performance but certainly lacking the professionalism he mentioned during the week.

"The manager's left and what a response we've had over the last couple of weeks, which shows our professionalism and will to win."

[irishfan86]

Definitely not his best game, but that's the kind of player Reid is.

He'll always try the more incisive ball, and when it's not his day, he looks dire because of all the lost possession.

He's played very well for Sbragia so far, so I'm not certain that he'll lose his place for next game, but who knows?

Either way, if Sbragia's selections are anything to go by, the prediction myself and a few of us made that Reid is probably the only Irish player that will stick around seem to be looking fairly accurate.

[seanfhear]

Malbranque is a pretty similiar player to Reid with a bit more ability to beat a man.
It may turn out to be one of those situations where there is not room in the same team for them.

[irishfan86]

Malbranque is a pretty similiar player to Reid with a bit more ability to beat a man.
It may turn out to be one of those situations where there is not room in the same team for them.

They've done well by thrashing West Brom and Hull with both of them starting on either side, so I'm sure they can be accommodated in the same team.

Sometimes I don't buy this "luxury player" B.S.

[Dr. Ogba]

Reid isn't even on the bench today. Doesn't look good but on the plus side it sounds like Sunderland are playing absolute rubbish...

[tetsujin1979]

Reid isn't even on the bench today.

out with a stomach bug according to Sunderland's site

[eirebhoy]

He was their motm in the previous game against Blackburn. The new man definitely rates him highly. I'd say their disagreement last week was down to Reid probably being told he'll get to finally play 90 minutes. Anyway, the new manager seems to be more of a friend to the players than a boss.

[irishfan86]

As Tets said, he missed the game with a bug.

Considering the performances of Murphy and Malbranque in the wide positions during his absence, I doubt he has anything to worry about.

[elroy]

Headline in the back page of the Herald (i dont buy the rag by the way, one of the lads beside me does) Reid "id pay to play for Ireland" or something along those lines. Im sure they ran this exact same story only a few months back. Rubbish journalism and newspaper.