Quote Originally Posted by the other bob wilson View Post
Callum Robinson has been a good Championship player for a decade and for some of that time, he wasn’t a bad Premier League one either He’s played just short of forty games for Ireland and is scoring at a rate of one in every four which isn’t bad - I’m not aware of any reputation he had for trouble marking as well.

Robinson was a good player until he came to Cardiff and, apart from showing he was a crap penalty taker, wasnt doing too badly last season before the injury which ended it for him.

He’s had a poor season this time around though no doubt about that and I don’t think he’s been putting the effort in either (again, I’m unaware of this being a criticism of him in the past). Supporters tend not to take the possibility of off field issues into account when judging players, so let’s include the possibility that there may be non footballing reasons for the fact that he’s barely made an impact this season, but there’s an elephant in the room which has to be mentioned - we have a manager that criticised him in public in the autumn, has rowed with him during matches, spoken vaguely of injuries and illness to Robinson that kept him out of the first team picture for months and now he’s dropped him for disciplinary reasons.

Maybe Robinson deserves the treatment he’s received from Erol Bulut, but I can’t help thinking he wouldn’t be appearing in this thread if we had a different manager.
Great point about the off field activities that players could be involved in?
I wonder how much clubs put into looking after their assets?
There’s always stories around over players who find themselves in financial difficulties because of gambling addictions etc
Wether it’s Gambling, excessive alcohol, drugs, laughing gas chasing other blokes wife’s there are lots of temptations for a lot of players, with a lethal combination of too much time and lots of money at an early age
It’s easy to see how some get involved in some of the things listed.
I doubt too many agents are particularly interested in these things, probably more interested in helping move the players on, on a regular basis?

I don’t know what the answer is, but in an industry that spends millions of pounds annually on new assets, I’d have a team of people who are experts in all sorts of fields from sports psychology to financial expertise at the club to help minimise these problems if it was my money involved!!!!

I guess doing a bit of due diligence on a player before signing him would help beforehand

For me Madine has to be the biggest waste of time and money in recent years