Which are our best five players at the moment?

I don't think he meant to be taken literally but Freeman said the following after Saturday's game -

"It's no good having 40 players and 35 of them are no good. During the week, I'm understanding who wants to push on with their careers."

He continued: "We've got to look at the squad and see if it's the squad depth that we need, or whether it's the quality."

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So it got me thinking who are our current best five players - indeed do we even have five decent ones, after all players like Petrov never even made the bench on Saturday.

Holden as been out for 18 months, Lee only made it as a sub, etc, etc.

Surely Knight and Kevin Davies are not amongst our current best five players - are they?

What do you think?

From what I have seen this season I would say Eagles, Spearing, Warnock, Mavies and KDavies.

It's no wonder we are having a bad season having to rely on 2 loan players, a slow forward that is now clearly past his prime and a midfielder who has been out of form for a while.

Zat Knight has been our best player under Freedman.

At the moment - Mavies
Eagles
Warnock
Spearing
SKD

On ability - Holden
Chungy
Petrov
Mavies
Sordell

WhiteBic wrote:From what I have seen this season I would say Eagles, Spearing, Warnock, Mavies and KDavies.

I tend to agree but Petrov hasn't put a foot wrong this season.

Our best five players are playing in the prem for other clubs.

They were deemed not good enough for us.

Please don't say Nolan is one of them.

Or Matt Taylor, vaz te, joey o brien...

The only one we should have kept hold of was al habsi.

I'd have Vaz Te, Nolan, Matt Taylor & Joey O'Brien back.

Biggest mistake in our history was not matching big samsambitions and giving him cash to spend, then subsequently appointing Gary Megson and giving him about 40 million. We'd have won the prem by now of we kept allardyce.

Vaz Te was absolute garbage for us, a few spurts here and there but largely a complete flop. No one would have kept him at the time.

Nolan had 2 years, yes YEARS of abysmal form for us and was rightly sold IMO.

Al Habsi you could argue is a mistake, he's performed very well for Wigan in the main and looks a bargain. Certainly better than Bogdan but he was sold to fund outfield purchases as he was one of the few "saleable assets"

Matt Taylor was an undervalued player, universally hated by most Bolton players because of his inconsistency but a hard worker, still not someone i would have kept.

and Joey O well, come on, who was saying keep him at the time, always injured and looked to be finished. Sam took a punt and he's done ok but hardly someone to rip up the league.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:Vaz Te was absolute garbage for us, a few spurts here and there but largely a complete flop. No one would have kept him at the time.

He is amazing at this level and gets tons of goals. If we get him on loan from January to May, the promotion race is back on.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:Nolan had 2 years, yes YEARS of abysmal form for us and was rightly sold IMO.

Messi would play shit if Gary Megson was giving his team talks.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:Matt Taylor was an undervalued player, universally hated by most Bolton players because of his inconsistency but a hard worker, still not someone i would have kept.

You could argue we need him the least as we have similer players in his position.

Hipster_Nebula wrote:and Joey O well, come on, who was saying keep him at the time, always injured and looked to be finished. Sam took a punt and he's done ok but hardly someone to rip up the league.

I was gutted when he left. Always rated him. He was unlucky with injuries, yes, but kept fit, he'd be better than any of our current full backs (bar Sam Ricketts perhaps).

Holden, Moir, Lofthouse, Hassell, Langton.

Vaz Te "amazing" at this level is debatable, seemed to do well with Barnsley and West Ham but i still don't rate him to be a consistant performer. He played in Scotland and was really poor.

Is he playing for West Ham at the moment? Can't remember him scoring for a while.

Nolans bad form was going on well before Megson, he was dire. I like him though top guy and a decent pro.

I think you'd be amongst a small group who would have gambled on Joey O considering his abysmal injury record.

Didn't Vaz Te break his collar bone or something the other week?

I'm not sure BDP i was genuine in that question hadn't heard his name for a bit.

I was also genuine with my question HN.

You were right a 3 month injury absence

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On current form I would be happy to see Nolan, Vaz Te, Taylor and JOB back in the squad, but of course it's all history now.

Nolan did go through a long bad patch and I was OK with him being sold at the time. Vaz Te never looked good enough for the Prem. I was sorry to see JOB go but didn't expect him to make a full recovery.

With hindsight these and a couple of other decisions (letting Al Habsi go and not selling SKD last season) have hurt us, but not as much as having three crap managers in succession after a real manager able to motivate players and get results. Let's hope Dougie can too.