Stephen Ireland

[JUAN PABLO]

lets stop talking about SI until Hughes buys him .

He might come on this thread for a read  .

[edgysatsuma89]

Roger the alien

[Fasth56]

Conversely, that some seem to overlook his, couldn't give a toss attitude, his lack of application, his wasting of the ability that he undoubtedly has, his unwillingness to impose himself on games which he could and should have done, could be classed as the epitome of what is wrong with some of our fans.
His pipe and his car and his multitude of grandmothers merely demonstrate that on a personal level, he is a twat. His having been taking the piss out of the club pretty much since his arrival (and indeed since shortly before his arrival - as he clearly didn't want to come here) demonstrates that he is a waster of the highest order, to be filed alongside Curcic and Alpay.

Wow how many unqualified presumptions can one person put in one post! Can you provide any evidence of his 'couldn't give a toss attitude', that his relative lack of success in what has been a recently unsuccessful team was down to 'his lack of application' rather than just playing in some rather poor sides. Can you prove he's really gone on the pitch and said 'I could impose myself on this game, but i'm unwilling to'!? How exactly has he 'taken the piss out of the club pretty much since he came'? And before he came? He didn't want to leave Man City, but that didn't mean that when he knew he had to, he didn't want to come to us.

So a picture of him smoking a sheisha, and his taste of car and house furnishings show on a personal level he's a twat, good psychology there, where does his massive amount of work towards charity fit in there?

To me it would appear that you haven't taken the facts and come to the conclusion he's a twat from them, you've presumed he's a twat and so this has coloured your interpretation of the facts, none of which are borne out with any evidence.

People wonder why footballers supposedly don't show loyalty to clubs and fans, well posts like yours are probably a good example of why.

My unqualified opinion about him as a person is of little consequence. The fact that he has done nothing since he arrived to prove wrong any of my unqualified opinions of him as a footballer forms my low opinion of him. You may consider that he has been unlucky/unfortunate or whatever you think the reason is. I don't agree. However your opinion is obviously more qualified than mine so maybe I should just defer to you.

I don't feel responsible for any footballer's lack of loyalty as that isn't down to me and I'm sure if you asked him or any of them, he/they wouldn't care either way what I thought but no doubt you're the kind of fan that players appreciate rather more than I am.

In essence whatever any of us think on here is of little consequence. I'm not even a massive fan of Ireland but i do however prefer to judge a player based upon the presentable facts and try to understand the wider context of those facts rather than to presume things that have no grounding. Essentially you've just accused him of a load of things that you don't have one iota of evidence for and said guilty until proven innocent in your eyes. Fair enough, that's maybe the way you like to roll, i'll just stick to judging him on what we know, as yeh, no doubt, players, and people in general, like to be judged on the facts rather than stuff that people have just made up.

I don't think he has made it up, if you take each example singularly there is a case for each and every one of them.

Taking the piss since he came, when I go to work I put in 8 hours of graft, I could wander round the site clutching a piece of paper and wile away the time chatting to various people, take an extended lunch and piss off early but that would be taking the piss. It would appear that Stephen Ireland has failed to put in the necessary graft to achieve at Aston Villa and therefore falls into the second category. I doubt if you would get more than a handful of people who would say any different.

His lack of application, the one defining moment that sums up Stphen Ireland was his gutless performance against Bradford where a 36year old journey ran the show and Ireland appeared not to give a toss. He had the chance to be a leader on the park to a bunch of kids and could have led them and provided the focal point we desperately need.

His maternal issues, I think all that needs to be said about this is that he not only used the made up death of a grandmother once, he then repeated it.

His choice of car or furnishings just confirm everything people think about the majority of modern footballers.

Lastly his charity work, I would not belittle anyone who carries out charity work, however as a footballer he has an inordinate amount of spare time and dare I say it cash. I would think as a percentage of income the ordinary working man contributes as much to charitable causes as the stars on £80,000 a week.

[Dribbler]

Last one before we bore each other to death.
I am judging my opinion of him as a player on what I saw when I have seen him play and Ive seen nothing to change my negative opinion of him. I can't see inside his head but he looks to me like he's a coaster who doesn't give a toss. I may be right, I may be wrong but that's my opinion and I can take it or leave it whether you disagree with me.
As for facts. there are very few facts on which to base a positive or negative opinion of him. It's all about opinion and perception. Mine's different to yours but I'm sure we can agree to disagree. It doesn't make my opinion any more or less valid than yours and it doesn't make either of us a better fan than the other.

Yep i agree wholeheartedly.

[Dribbler]

I don't think he has made it up, if you take each example singularly there is a case for each and every one of them.

Taking the piss since he came, when I go to work I put in 8 hours of graft, I could wander round the site clutching a piece of paper and wile away the time chatting to various people, take an extended lunch and piss off early but that would be taking the piss. It would appear that Stephen Ireland has failed to put in the necessary graft to achieve at Aston Villa and therefore falls into the second category. I doubt if you would get more than a handful of people who would say any different.

His lack of application, the one defining moment that sums up Stephen Ireland was his gutless performance against Bradford where a 36year old journey ran the show and Ireland appeared not to give a toss. He had the chance to be a leader on the park to a bunch of kids and could have led them and provided the focal point we desperately need.

His maternal issues, I think all that needs to be said about this is that he not only used the made up death of a grandmother once, he then repeated it.

His choice of car or furnishings just confirm everything people think about the majority of modern footballers.

Lastly his charity work, I would not belittle anyone who carries out charity work, however as a footballer he has an inordinate amount of spare time and dare I say it cash. I would think as a percentage of income the ordinary working man contributes as much to charitable causes as the stars on £80,000 a week.

Well as said earlier, i think most people would agree that he's not been a success and we have all of the observable facts of that from the many games we've seen over the last few years. The contentious point of course is what the cause of that lack of success was. Some people would seem to contend it's a lack of application, taking the piss, laziness etc., however my point was and is that there's no real evidence for that.

There are a lot of reasons why a player might not be a success at a club, and there are a lot of good players that aren't a success for various reasons other than their lack of commitment. People go on about his undoubted talent, but again, really that was only seen for one season at Man City whilst Hughes was there. There are a lot of one season wonders in football and i don't think that all of those one season wonders failed ultimately in their careers because of a lack of application. Maybe they've just not been at the right clubs, with the right managers, support and the right team and quality of players around them. Maybe they just weren't really good enough, and some players only look good when a team plays a certain way or is built around them.

As for Villa since Ireland's arrival, we've been a mess and a i think a lot of good players would struggle to look good with the quality of players they've had around them and some of the bizarre formations and tactics we've used across the various managers.

[supertom]

Didn't Houllier directly (in public) question his application in training? It never ever seemed like he really wanted to be here either. I think Bradford really hammered that home for a lot of people. Everyone was awful, but while our side was dying on it's arse in desperation, Ireland wasn't exactly putting too much effort in.

[Rudy65]

Didn't Houllier directly (in public) question his application in training? It never ever seemed like he really wanted to be here either. I think Bradford really hammered that home for a lot of people. Everyone was awful, but while our side was dying on it's arse in desperation, Ireland wasn't exactly putting too much effort in.

Total waster. Anyone who defends him has never seen him player regularly for us

[OzVilla]

Ireland was at best a one season wonder (and his form tapered off a bit that year also) - so similar to the likes J Lloyd Samuel in that respect.

Wasn't he the first player than Mancini showed the door too after he had a chance to take stock of the squad he'd inherited, and it's not like he needed to sell either as Citeh still needed to build a squad and have ample cover.

We got him more for the fact that Citeh wanted shot of him as much as the player fitted our plan (we had no manager) or the player wanted to join (said before signing he didn't want to leave Citeh).

[Hillbilly]

Free at last?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/aston-villa/10561690/Aston-Villa-make-Stephen-Irelands-loan-move-to-Stoke-City-permanent.html

And good riddance - overrated waster imo.

Agreed.  He is the epitome of what has been wrong at the club over the last few years.

Which is what exactly? I would say that responses like this are the epitome of what is wrong with some of the clubs fans over the last few years.

The signing of Ireland never really worked out for us and it's probably a good example of why you shouldn't sign players when you don't have a manager but i really don't get a lot of the vitriol that has been thrown his way by some fans.

Yes he's undoubtedly a talented player and he's never really been able to realise the full potential of that talent, but i think it's rubbish to say he never put in the effort either on or off the pitch. On the pitch he's had to play for several disjointed managers in a variety of poor squads with dodgy tactics, and i think you could see his frustration with that sometimes, yet he always put in a shift. After some games i would see some fans saying he'd been lazy, yet I'd seen him often tracking back and making important tackles on the edge of our area after running the full length of the pitch. Even when he won player of the season people would denigrate it and say 'well yeh, just goes to show how poor the rest of the squad was'. Well if that's the case then surely the rest of the squad deserved more criticism than him, but of course he was always the easy fall guy.

Off the pitch he has always been one of the players that puts in a hell of a lot of time to charity too and has been a good ambassador for the club in that way, and despite the way he's been treated, has never spoken out about it.

But lets forget about all that, lets focus on the faux dead granny incident, the dodgy pink range rover and the rather dodgy pictures of his house, or him with a sheisha. Yes i think we can all agree he's a bit of a numpty in that regard, but i'm not sure he deserves a lot of the criticism he's had.

That said, I'm glad he's gone, it will free up a significant amount of wages for us and if anyone can get the best out of him, it will be Hughes, who despite him being so poor for Stoke this season according to some, has wanted to sign him permanently.

Conversely, that some seem to overlook his, couldn't give a toss attitude, his lack of application, his wasting of the ability that he undoubtedly has, his unwillingness to impose himself on games which he could and should have done, could be classed as the epitome of what is wrong with some of our fans.
His pipe and his car and his multitude of grandmothers merely demonstrate that on a personal level, he is a twat. His having been taking the piss out of the club pretty much since his arrival (and indeed since shortly before his arrival - as he clearly didn't want to come here) demonstrates that he is a waster of the highest order, to be filed alongside Curcic and Alpay.

Curcic yes, Alpay not so much. Regardless of the abysmal end of his Villa career, we got a couple of pretty good years out of him first.

[SoccerHQ]

I must admit with the squad we had I thought he'd fit in really well here.

Even with milner gone we still had a solid defensive midfield partnership of NRC and Petrov and good wide men like Downing and Young.

Instead we messed about with Young playing in the hole and Ireland's first few games were in a central two before he drifted out of favour as soon as Houllier came in.

What I'm trying to say is we had a much better team then in terms of set up and ability for a 10 to come in then than we do know.

[Ads]

He may have hjad the ability, but his attitude was appalling.

[Tom_Mc9?]

http://www.avfc.co.uk/page/NewsDetail/0,,10265~3620424,00.html

Villa fans across the country weep.

[pauliewalnuts]

I'm going to miss that guy with his slouching around and holding both hands out, imploringly, when failing to get on the end of passes.

Still, that seems to be one of KEA's specialities, too, so all is not lost.

[Tom_Mc9?]

Ireland had the ability but not the heart or effort. Karim tries hard, but not the ability. I'd take KEA over Ireland every time.

[Toronto Villa]

adios Stevie. Loads of talent most of it wasted.