Is that sarcasm mate? Lichaj could be best described as a (fairly) solid but unspectacular type, and as for Irvine my abiding memory of him would be seeing him with his head in hands looking to the skies for divine intervention, and never receiving any! Irvine might be a decent bloke with dodgy hair, but from a footballing point of view he never did it for me, especially in the latter half of last season when he was running his contract down. Nope, on reflection McCann never got the support from certain players last season, that is becoming more and more evident, but not once can I recall him throwing any of them under the bus in his post match interviews, and that must have been sorely tempting tbf!
Was that when he was moved to right back? Sadly he wasn’t the only one to down tools he just didn’t hide it as well as most of the others
I felt he flattered to deceive even when playing 'well'. Didn't have the physical stature to impose himself. You could see he could pass, had some pace and was young, but I never really felt convinced by him as a championship midfielder. Played better at RB than CM after lockdown I thought - but that wasn't saying much. Wasn't at all fussed when we sold him and wouldn't have been with Jordi after that second half of the season either.
Lichaj, Irvine, Stewart, Toral, Kingsley - really did any of them justify their contracts/fees? They all knew they were off in the summer and couldn't give a fook after the playoffs went in January. That said, we still could have eeked out the points for survival with a bit of nous and bottle from the manager, whether he dropped all of the above or not. I'd have backed just about any side in league 1 to get a dozen points over half a championship season. Thankfully, the players have largely bought into McCann's leadership this year and that's made a hell of a difference.
Stewart and Irvine still without a club apparently I wonder if there’s a lot of players in the same boat? Clubs not willing to pay for players, smaller squads maybe? Shame for stewart at least he agreed to play the season out
Says it all. Fact Stewart worked out at something like 40k per game and now he can't get a deal shows the stunning ineptitude of Darnborough's early recruitment. That and Kingsley obviously.
I'm not making anything fit. Did he justify £40,000 a game and has anyone else taken a punt? Can he do a job for someone? Probably, but not on the money we gave him for the contribution he's likely to make.
I don't think either of them were bad players, both had very good games for us at times, Stewart even more so. I'm very surprised Kev hasn't picked up a club, I'd have thought Luton would have snapped him up after he ran rings round them (and scored the funniest goal ever against them).
Clearly both Stewart and Irvine would have clubs if they were prepared to drop down for less money. I suspect they'd still be with us if they were prepared to do that though. Point is, were they worth the money? Were they good business? Can make more of a case for Irvine in terms of contribution than Stewart but we didn't get value for either. Not blaming them as players. Blaming shoddy recruitment.
I don't think they'd be with us as they wouldn't accept the cut we would demand them to make. That's if we even bothered to offer them deals.
Yet both are still sat on their arses without clubs.... Nobody's offered them better clearly. Whether we made formal offers or not, the fact they are currently redundant alludes to the fact they over-value themselves. Says it all.
The number of times Lopes DS was MOTM before Christmas. He was without doubt the one player everyone was saying exactly what we are saying about Josh Emmanuelle now. I don't know that he downed tools and agree with CR that when you're an aspiring midfielder who had been scouted by a USA team, who is asked to play out of position in a team with no soul, no leadership on and off the field, that couldn't defend and couldn't score would have been enough for anyone to think WTF.
Irvine played 112 games for us having previously played for Burton Albion, Ross County and Kilmarnock. I think we got plenty of mileage out of him and under Adkins he was one of our most consistent players. We will never know exactly why the end of last season happened, but it was probably a mixture of not being offered a contract (feeling unvalued) and the general negative atmosphere around the club. I don't think Irvine has to drop down, he'll get a club in the Championship. Ditto Stewart.
They're clearly knocking down the door. Yeah, if they're prepared to play for less than they want, they may well bench warm in the championship but they'd have had clubs by now if they were hot property.