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Post by mattintheprem on Mar 31, 2015 13:09:04 GMT
Coach at the mighty Hyde with a UEFA B licence now according their website linkwas Manager at Mossley a few years back as well. I saw him about 10 years ago at Knutsford Services, wouldn't have recognised him apart from his car sporting large "Ally Pickering Soccer School" logo's. There will never be a shortage of business in the UK to teach full backs of limited talent how to tackle badly, hoof the ball up the line or, if things get hairy, just wang it into touch........oh & of course how to look easy on the eye, especially for the ladies, as you will be the closest player to the crowd most of the time.....
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2015 13:13:35 GMT
For sheer ineptitude during the 97-98 season, look no further.
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Post by Gods on Mar 31, 2015 13:16:27 GMT
For anyone under 35 here is the perma-tanned fullback in one of the voluminous home shirts that were 'de rigeur' in the late 90's I must admit I still really like this shirt. You must have a fair set of arms on you then
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Post by onionman on Mar 31, 2015 13:26:52 GMT
Probably a bit harsh to be fair. Wolly's had a few good games and a few stinkers, but I genuinely can't remember Steven Tweed ever having a good game. He had the odd decent run out, but Larus Sigurdsson is the only reason we didn't get tonked every week. He made Tweed look far better than he was in reality. I actually think Sigurdsson is under-appreciated on this forum. He was a very good defender for us and he made some of them shite around him look better than they really were. All good points. I just think Wollsheid looks a bit like him,similar frame. I'm probably being utterley wrong in comparing him to Tweed (bloody hope so). Larus was a fantastic defender,no footballer though (although he won player of the year at Albion playing midfield). Real shame that Lou left & the whole thing fell apart in 1997 Pickering,Wallace & to a lesser extent Kavanagh all let their standards slip after looing ok/good 96-97 To my mind any manager needs a tough side to them (Hughes has this). Macari clearly took no nonsense Chic Bates however was clearly a soft touch. Wallace was brilliant in 95/96 but I thought he was terrible apart from that. With hindsight I think we underestimated how much Gleghorn was making him look good.
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Post by albundy on Mar 31, 2015 13:37:01 GMT
Pickering just used to belt the ball aimlessly upfield. He told me to fwck off once when I shouted whoosh on the umpteempth time of booting it away
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Post by nik80 on Mar 31, 2015 14:23:08 GMT
At one point last night I was thinking about ex players who I liked but don't hear of anymore n he was one, cracking full back I thought, what are your opinions? Ha-ha, very good Nearly had me goin g there
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Post by vintagestein on Mar 31, 2015 15:10:03 GMT
Tweed's shining moment was getting away with that blatant handball on the line against Vale. Not forgetting Kav's "death lunge" - a straight red card even in those days!. Back to Ally Pickering....I used to really like him during the last season at the Vic - he was the 1st footballer with coloured (red) boots, so i, being 14, thought he was the nuts. I even had the red Asics boots for my birthday - now I loath the fact you never see a black pair on a single player during any Premier League weekend - must be my age! 1st season at the Brit - Pickering, like seemingly every other play was absolutely useless (with the exception of Thorne and Kav) Christ how I cried after the Birmingham game and said to my mate i was not wasting any more money down there - i brought a season ticket in 1998-1999 and had one ever since oh well! Look how far we have come - dreamland.
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Post by roosterscomb on Mar 31, 2015 21:47:00 GMT
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Post by Sergeant Muttley on Mar 31, 2015 21:48:46 GMT
Always remember the cnut coming back to the Brit with Burnley and scoring an absolute screamer
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Post by sheikhmomo on Mar 31, 2015 22:02:51 GMT
Didn't he score a late winner on the run in to that morbid season (Portsmouth?) that helped give us the foolish shred of hope and frivolous shot at dignity, prior to the Man City annihilation?
For that act alone he should have his knackers put in a blender!
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Post by Sergeant Muttley on Mar 31, 2015 22:04:31 GMT
Didn't he score a late winner on the run in to that morbid season (Portsmouth?) that helped give us the foolish shred of hope and frivolous shot at dignity, prior to the Man City annihilation? For that act alone he should have his knackers put in a blender! Thought Lightbourne got the winner against Portsmouth mate? Just checked mate he got the equaliser
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Post by sheikhmomo on Mar 31, 2015 22:07:52 GMT
Didn't he score a late winner on the run in to that morbid season (Portsmouth?) that helped give us the foolish shred of hope and frivolous shot at dignity, prior to the Man City annihilation? For that act alone he should have his knackers put in a blender! Thought Lightbourne got the winner against Portsmouth mate? Yeah not sure of the game mate but fairly sure wee Ally notched late in one game to deliver that most wounding blow of all. False hope.
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Post by shipshape on Mar 31, 2015 22:08:36 GMT
Didn't he score a late winner on the run in to that morbid season (Portsmouth?) that helped give us the foolish shred of hope and frivolous shot at dignity, prior to the Man City annihilation? For that act alone he should have his knackers put in a blender! Yeah. We went to Crewe next and put in an abject performance in a 2-0 defeat. Remember shouting at Pickering to bang in another like he did v Pompey. The optimism of youth that was. He was typical of some of the wasters we had around that time.
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Post by Sergeant Muttley on Mar 31, 2015 22:09:20 GMT
Thought Lightbourne got the winner against Portsmouth mate? Yeah not sure of the game mate but fairly sure wee Ally notched late in one game to deliver that most wounding blow of all. False hope. Just edited my original post mate because he got the equaliser
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Post by k on Mar 31, 2015 22:56:59 GMT
Pickering was like Cafu compared to our other full-back during this inauspicious period of our history. I give you Bryan "so left footed he corkscrewed himself into the ground" Small.
To say Bryan prefered to use his left peg than his right is an understatement. He preferred to use his left peg rather than head it!
Honourable dog-shite mentions to Paul Halsgrove, Stephen Tweed, O'Neil Donaldson, Stephen Woods, Tony Scully, Kofi Nyamah.
I think I'll have a lie down nurse...!
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Post by PotterLog on Apr 1, 2015 2:02:45 GMT
Threads like these really do make you appreciate what we have now.
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Post by metalhead on Apr 1, 2015 13:15:49 GMT
Pickering was like Cafu compared to our other full-back during this inauspicious period of our history. I give you Bryan "so left footed he corkscrewed himself into the ground" Small. To say Bryan prefered to use his left peg than his right is an understatement. He preferred to use his left peg rather than head it! Honourable dog-shite mentions to Paul Halsgrove, Stephen Tweed, O'Neil Donaldson, Stephen Woods, Tony Scully, Kofi Nyamah. I think I'll have a lie down nurse...! Disco Dancing Bryan. I've never seen a professional footballer with such dreadful close control. If people think Diouf's touch is bad, they never saw Disco Dancing Bryan. I'm trying to think of a time that he was ever in control of the ball, and I'm actually struggling. In Small's defence, he actually had a half decent left peg which is probably why he wouldn't use anything else. I always figured his inability to head was more down to his lack of height. He was a pretty small guy, although not tiny so perhaps I give him too much credit. He was complete shite though, there's no doubt there. O'Neill Donaldson was a barrel of laughs. A gangly gormless striker with the touch of a pedophile and a total inability to win the ball in the air, which considering he was shit on the floor didn't give him with many options. Kofi Nyamah is still playing funnily enough. Read an article about him. Playing very very low level now. Like, not even Stafford Rangers level... more like The Red Lion lol. Another absolute no-hoper to add to the rest. That said, someone said above that Kav's levels dipped after Little left, but I have to disagree. Always thought Kav was terrific until he left which is why it hurt so much when he did! Forgot about Tony Scully lol.... One you've forgotten.... David Oldfield. I was lucky to meet David and he was a nice guy but shame about his talent, or lack of. He really was the definition of mediocrity. A bang average midfielder with no creativity, no flair, and pretty poor passing range. He always wanted the ball yet had no idea what to do with it. Incredibly, there is footage of a very young David Oldfield taking the piss out of Man Utd in Citeh's 5-1 win back in the early 90's. Never came close to doing anything like that for Stoke. In the midst of the shit, we did have some talent though, a young Kav, Thorney, Larus, Kevin Keen. I've always felt we had enough to stay up, but I don't believe Bates got anywhere near the best out of those 4 players. To be fair, nor did Little. Having gone down, we should have been straight back up but Little had absolutely no idea how to set us up to defend. We conceded goals for fun in the second half of that season and that Wycome game where the ball came off the refs bollocks into the path of Sean Devine who pretty much ended any chance we had of getting in the playoffs was just the icing on a pretty shit cake.
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Post by onionman on Apr 1, 2015 14:25:41 GMT
Funnily enough, some of these players didn't actually seem so terribly bad at the time.
I think that's partly because our decline was so painfully slow, each new signing was only a little bit worse than the last one. Ally Pickering for example, only replaced the marginally more capable Ian Clarkson.
It's also partly because they were playing alongside fellow crap players, and often against fellow crap players. So someone like Pickering didn't stand out like a sore thumb alongside the likes of Tweed, Whittle and Lightbourne.
However, even with these two factors taken into account, there was one man who still somehow succeeded in standing out, a man who was noticeably less capable than all his other incapable teammates, the worst of a very bad bunch.
I give you Jason Kavanagh. The sorest of thumbs on the most severely deformed hand.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2015 17:53:45 GMT
Paul Stewart, Marco Gabbiadini, O'Neil Donaldson, Paul Connor, Gerry McMahon, Henrik Risom - and don't even get me started on Jim Smet.
They were all shit.
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Post by onionman on Apr 1, 2015 18:36:53 GMT
Paul Stewart, Marco Gabbiadini, O'Neil Donaldson, Paul Connor, Gerry McMahon, Henrik Risom - and don't even get me started on Jim Smet. They were all shit. I wouldn't put Paul Connor in that rock bottom group of crap players.
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l3stokie
Lads'n'Dads
Technique
Posts: 62
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Post by l3stokie on Apr 1, 2015 19:56:21 GMT
No me neither. Connor, at the time was fairly promising. Less so can be said about the dream team double swoop of Lee Collins and Ben Petty from Aston Villa.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2015 19:58:21 GMT
Paul Stewart, Marco Gabbiadini, O'Neil Donaldson, Paul Connor, Gerry McMahon, Henrik Risom - and don't even get me started on Jim Smet. They were all shit. I wouldn't put Paul Connor in that rock bottom group of crap players. Maybe the utter shitness and time elapsed has warped my memory.
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Post by davejohnno1 on Apr 1, 2015 20:08:40 GMT
I wouldn't put Paul Connor in that rock bottom group of crap players. Maybe the utter shitness and time elapsed has warped my memory. Paul Connor never got enough stick for his miss in the play offs at Gillingham. Had he scored, 9 man Stoke City would have overcome all the odds to reach the play off final. Edit - ally Pickering was shite. Absolutely shite.
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sting
Youth Player
Posts: 354
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Post by sting on Apr 1, 2015 20:52:42 GMT
I give you Jorge Sobiech.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2015 21:00:49 GMT
Gerry McMahon. What a complete and utter fanny he was. And he was shit.
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Post by sammychungsdugout on Apr 1, 2015 21:09:16 GMT
Pickering was like Cafu compared to our other full-back during this inauspicious period of our history. I give you Bryan "so left footed he corkscrewed himself into the ground" Small. To say Bryan prefered to use his left peg than his right is an understatement. He preferred to use his left peg rather than head it! Honourable dog-shite mentions to Paul Halsgrove, Stephen Tweed, O'Neil Donaldson, Stephen Woods, Tony Scully, Kofi Nyamah. I think I'll have a lie down nurse...! Stephen Woods is by far the worst player I've ever seen in the Stoke first team in Forty years.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2015 21:10:59 GMT
John Clark. Fucking hell, there have been hundreds down the years.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2015 21:24:40 GMT
I refuse to acknowledge the Brian Little season. The company car he left on the car park whilst he sneaked away like the cowardly shite hawk that he was should have been fenced off and left as a reminder how bad things were back then......
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Post by swampySCFC on Apr 1, 2015 21:36:03 GMT
Christ we are getting above our selves are we not. these players were our stars at the time.
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Post by metalhead on Apr 1, 2015 23:28:29 GMT
I disagree with Gerry McMahon. Definitely had the raw talent to be half decent, too busy shagging around and concentrating on his perm to fulfil his potential.
You wonder if he arrived today as a youngster and had someone a bit stronger than Chic Bates calling the shots whether he would actually amount to something. Maybe not, but he showed a bit of potential under Lou.
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