Steed and Sidwell, A Case Study

I think Coleman has done the right thing in not playing him. Steed rejected a contract extension and has been a royal pain in the ass in negotiating personal terms with other clubs like Boro.

While it seems to be a lose-lose situation, this is one area I am proud of Cookie for making a stand. I do not want players who are not committed to the Black and White of Fulham and Steed clearly is not in my opinion.

I would love to see someone come in and sign Steed in the next week and a half to get this saga over with, but I am not sure it will happen.

Additionally, Steed is currently undergoing treatment for a groin injury which surely has put a team or two off in trying to sign him.

 

See if anyone wants him until August 31. No takers, cut him off and avoid the speculation by and disruption to the team, club and fans. He becomes a cancer if he is still with us after that.

 

While Sidwell has rejected a new contract, has he announced plans to leave on a free after the season like Steed has? If he did then I missed it (and blows my whole basis of argument that the two situations are different) but I was under the impression that Reading offered an extension, he rejected, and the two sides will continue talks again before his contract is up. Sidwell has said he is fully committed to Reading (for this season at least), but I question Steed's commitment to Fulham.

Steed made it well clear that he fully intends to leave once his contract is up. This hurts his marketability to potential clubs because most will be willing to wait on him until the contract is up since they know he's leaving. The other problem with Steed is he rejected the few clubs that did come asking about him because they didn't fulfill his personal requirements...kinda' like Sol Campbell and his wage demands. Fulham has done nothing to block a move for Steed, but Steed is screwing the club by announcing he wants to leave on a free and not accepting the transfers that are offered to him. Therefore, it's nice to keep him away from the first team that is committed to the club.

On the other hand, maybe it wouldn't be bad to play him until the January transfer window, let him showcase what he can do, and hopefully attract an offer from a club that Steed will actually agree to. If he's not gone after January then put him to work selling pies during matches or something.

 

Steed

Truth or Fiction? Steed to Hammers?

http://www.kumb.com/0506_story.php?id=11827

 

I have to say I agree with Heather here. There could be a million reason for wanting to leave a club. Almost no one plays for one club their whole career. To me as long as the player is committed to playing out his contract with %100 effort then I have no problem with him leaving when the contract is up. You should try and sell the player to cash in on him before he leaves but in the mean time he should play.

This whole business of "you sign a new contract even though you have a year or two left on the current one, or we'll let you rot in the reserves" is ridiculous. Why would a player decide to come to the club if he knows he'll eventually be put in that position.

Is it just me or does Fulham not treat its players with the respect it should? I mean forcing players into contracts, never giving young guys a go, releasing Leggy a week before the season. WTF is that? If your letting a guy go do it at the beginning of the summer so he has time to find a new team. Perhaps this is a factor in us not being able to attract new players.

 

Steed was offered a lucrative contract....he turned it down. Fulham does not have the luxury of letting players play out their contracts and letting them go on free Bosman transfers. If Steed is not going to sign a new deal, Fulham needs to make money off him leaving. It is a business decision, not a personnel decision.
Had this plan worked out the way it was supposd to, Steed would have signed elsewhere a few months ago and not gone on about his high wage demands. Steed was looking for weekly wages he was not worth and not only did Fulham not think he was worth those wages, but other potential clubs were as well.

I think Coleman took the right stance in telling Steed he was not going to play. Is he a good player, yes. But, one player does not come ahead of the team and Coleman is showing us this. I do not agree with a lot of the things Coleman does, but in this case, I back him 100% and this is one time I like Coleman's stubbornness.

As for Fulham treating players badly, that could be the case. However, I do not think I have enough knowledge of individual situations to make a knowledgable opinion on this matter. I do not think Fulham has turned off any potential new players by dealing with things the way they have the past few seasons. The onyl thing turning players off to Fulham is low wages and a lack of desire for the club to not just avoid relegation, but to go somewhere inside the top ten. Until those two things change, players will still be hard-pressed to join the club.

Also, contrary to what you might think Spencer, the idea of signing a contract extension 12-24 months before a contract is up is quite common practice. Most all clubs practice this method as once again it comes down to making money and making a good business decision for the club. After all, this is a business and for a business to succeed, one has to make money.

 

I'm not entirely on Cookie's side here, but to me the problem is that he was refusing transfers. Fulham found takers and Steed wasn't willing to go, so Chris Coleman told him he'd never play again in the hopes that it would wake Steed up and make him realize that if he's going to get a fat contract when the season's over he better start seriously considering these transfers that Fulham is agreeing to.

That being said, if the transfer window closed with Steed still on the team, you only diminish what you get in return for Steed if you don't play him until the January window. No one's paying top dollar in January for someone who's not in mid-season fitness.

 

I think this features the inevitable conflict between coach and player...

If the player, in his view, has put out 100% and the coach sees it different the seed has been planted..
Excellent example is the Bluejays' brouhaha last night in which the starting pitcher, having an eight run lead, surrendered five runs then refused to give up the ball when the manager went to the mound to replace him.

Whether you like it or not, the manager's job is to manage.. the team is not a democracy.

No player should be able to usurp the manager's job or any part of it... tho the line MIGHT get blurred IF a manager insists a player take the field after injury rehab, though the player thinks it's not quite time. THEN I side with the player.

 

Yeah but I can't help but wonder what's going on with John Gibbons (Blue Jay's manager...). First he and Shea Hillenbrand have a run-in that results in Hillenbrand seeing the door, and after that many media people speculated that Gibbons wasn't far behind him. Now Gibbons has another run-in with a player. And this isn't Ozzie Guillen who has the unwaivering support from his team, gets the most out of his players and has a World Series ring to prove it. The Blue Jays expected to compete in the AL East and they're not even close. I don't expect there will be too many tears shed in the Toronto clubhouse if Gibbons gets the axe this offseason.

But that's not what this was about at all. Sorry to take it completely off topic, just saying I don't think the parallel is entirely there.

 

Getting anything for Steed at this point would be a win.

 

I think Coleman is doing the right thing. Steed needs to realize that the club is what's most important to Coleman, hence the decision to ban Steed from the first team. In the long run Steed is paying for his greed because teams are not going to offer him anywhere near the wages he's demanding (that article says that West Ham are offering half), and if he rots in the reserves until January or the end of the season, his value will decrease even more and he'll get even less. His idiotic agent needs a big piece of humble pie and needs to realize that Steed is not a world class player and will not get 60,000 pounds a week. It reminds me of the Terrell Owens situation with his egotistic agent Drew Rosenhaus. That did Owens a lot of good with the Eagles that final year. Someone should tell that to Steed!!!

 

This is certainly a hot topic with everyone! My view is this:
Fulham needs to create a good working order to the flow of Fulham during their matches. Having someone who doesn't want to stay at Fulham in the lineup can only hurt the team chemistry. Coleman might be too harsh in not letting him play at all, but I certantly wouldn't start him. Keep him on the bench and add him when you need to.

Just my 2 cents.

 

Sorry, Heather... I didnt mean it as a four-footed analogy. Just a similar situation.

CC wouldnt back down, at any rate. And I'm not sure he should.

It would be nice if CC had as much guts, introspectively, as the Crew's Sigi Schmid and could wonder aloud if he wasnt the problem... but he doesnt, same as most managers.

I'd settle if CC would simply examine his training and coaching staffs, but that's another topic.