Richard Dunne

[The Left Side]

He'll be off to the MLS, he will have to avoid the North American diet though!

[Steve R]

He'll be off to the MLS, he will have to avoid the North American diet though!

More likely the NHS

[Greg N'Ash]

Good riddance. Trouble maker and a totally unprofessional "professional" footballer. Can't see him getting a gig after us, so hopefully MON will take him on as his new fitness coach.

[TheTimVilla]

I agree with all of that, Greg. Except the bit about MoN finding a job.

[Toronto Villa]

the club moved quickly to fire TSM last summer. I imagine they'll do likewise with players that they no longer want. Expect similar news to land on the doorstep of messrs Ireland, Hutton, Given that they'll need to find pastures new. We'll take a bath on the fees paid and might even have to subsidise the contracts when they go elsewhere, but the bottom line is none of these players will be at the club come August.

[Greg N'Ash]

I agree with all of that, Greg. Except the bit about MoN finding a job.

Stoke seems perfect for both a dinosaur manager and a lumbering past-it centre half with a weight problem.. I'll bet he applies at least.

[neo_Villan]

The only thing I will give Dunne is his performance at Smethwick just after he returned from his injury last season. The point we got that day effectively kept us up.

[ez]

Is that the last of O'Neil's high earners gone now?

[jeowje]

He'll be off to the MLS, he will have to avoid the North American diet though!

More likely the NHS

This made me laugh out loud for some reason!

[damon loves JT]

The trouble when talking about insurance - as I understand it - is that, now that his contract has expired, he has no value. So there is nothing to insure.

If he had, say, two years left to run, we could claim that he was still worth two years' salary.

I could be wrong.

[neo_Villan]

Is that the last of O'Neil's high earners gone now?

Yes. Though we are still lumbered with the post-MON high earners which just shows how poorly this club has been run.

[KevinGage]

Now in the torygraph. Dunne had one really good season on the back of being told to do one from Man City. After than it was all downhill

Wouldn't disagree with that. 

He had an incentive, a desire to prove Citeh wrong. 

After that he got comfortable.  Coming back to pre season training two stone overweight in 2010 was disgraceful. He should have been potted there and then, in all honesty.  But for the managerial shenanigans around that time, he might well have been.

[Eigentor]

Now in the torygraph. Dunne had one really good season on the back of being told to do one from Man City. After than it was all downhill

Wouldn't disagree with that. 

He had an incentive, a desire to prove Citeh wrong. 

After that he got comfortable.  Coming back to pre season training two stone overweight in 2010 was disgraceful. He should have been potted there and then, in all honesty.  But for the managerial shenanigans around that time, he might well have been.

Would like to add a bit of nuance to that: after being dropped by GH for being shit and over-weight, he actually came back a bit lighter and played better for the last half of the 2010/11 season.

[pauliewalnuts]

the club moved quickly to fire TSM last summer. I imagine they'll do likewise with players that they no longer want. Expect similar news to land on the doorstep of messrs Ireland, Hutton, Given that they'll need to find pastures new. We'll take a bath on the fees paid and might even have to subsidise the contracts when they go elsewhere, but the bottom line is none of these players will be at the club come August.

There's no playing hardball with footballers these days.

Certainly not with Dunne. His contract has expired. There's no tough action on behalf of the club, and what's more, even if we decided to do so, there are limits to what we can do.

I would imagine Warnock, for example, is entirely clear he has no future as he'd spent months training with the under 12s, but he's still quite capable of sitting on his arse kerchinging in his 50k a week till the end of his contract if he wanted to do so. If he decides he still wants to be at the club in August, he still will be.

Look at how we managed the likes of Makoun. Does he even play for us, in the legal sense? Is he a Villa player? He's not pulled on a Villa shirt for, what, two years, but most of that time he has been on our books.

The club can't act the tough guy here, no matter how much they want to. The amount of money we have pissed away on situations like this is just remarkable.

[KevinGage]

Seem to recall he was a regular under both Kevin Mac and GH.  It was only the incident with Sid at the health spar that led to him and Collins being dropped.

It's something we've done too much of, going back a number of years, in all honesty. 

Dion Dublin was a big player for us when he arrived in 1998.  But by 2001 he was clearly far less effective -and yet still got game time, in the hope that he might hit the same heights as before. 

JPA was outstanding in 2003/04.    Less so in 2004/05 and was still a regular in 2005/06, when he consistently looked a few yards off the pace.

Both of those were far better pro's than Dunne, but at other clubs -particularly clubs with designs of Europe and beyond- they'd have been ditched a long time before they actually were.  Either moved on, or at the very least dropped.  The latter two were obviously more popular with supporters that Fatboy (though Dion did get booed in a cup match when he had one miss too many IIRC).  But popularity and past reputation shouldn't really come into it.  We're talking about professional sport, after all.