Thetownend.com

https://soundcloud.com/lspod/172-tom-broadbent

Been waiting for him.

Just finished listening. Bit too frank at times? Likes a soft cheese?

Soft cheese>Edam. Still a weak choice though.

Not JUST a soft cheese, but a soft SPREADABLE cheese!

TBF I haven't listened yet but with your comment I am considering not bothering, scandalous behaviour!

Haven't listened yet, but what do you mean by too frank?  Surely that is what we want, no?

I spent a couple of hours with him at the Sponsors dinner, with Tans lurking in the background :D he seemed like an intelligent guy, we had a good chat and a great night.

He was a top bloke that night, bought us a pint too

Bit critical of Wellens - from his point of view. His so called ‘mental health’ problem was, in fact, that his partner had, unknowingly, had a stroke and was likely to have another so Wellens thought he wasn’t in the right frame of mind to play. Tom thought he was perfectly OK to play.

Without actually knowing Tom personally, I think his performances at the time suggested otherwise.

It would be great to see him at his best.

I would agree with you, hes obviously under a lot of personal stress and to be an athlete he needs to be at his peak physically and mentally, he didnt exactly "let the side down" but his performance levels were not as high as they were when he first signed.

His last couple showed that he seems to be getting back there agin now though.

Good luck to him, hes a decent player when his head is in the game.

Fair enough, a player that isn't playing is never going to be 100% happy, especially if the full story is not out there, but that was up to him to resolve.  I agree with FH's point though and Wellens or any other manager is not going to disclose what is happening in a personal environment so the mental health line was probably the right thing to say at the time.

I'll wait to hear the context..

Really shit for him (and his girlfriend) if she did have a stroke, one can understand why his head would not be in the game.

Who was it in here that was raging on about his girlfriend having left him or something?

Somebody on here was adamant that he was obviously suffering from depression and threw a wobbler when people suggested he didn’t have a clue about that

Bamboo I think.

I always assumed that it was just the normal curse of the TEF sponsorship that made his form go to shit, we really must get into the habit of sponsoring a youth teamer or someone who we don't need to play.

Thing is centre half is probably one of the most mentally taxing positions to play, so if his head was (entirely understandably) preoccupied elsewhere it was inevitable his performances would drop.

Or sponsor an Oxford player.

That's a bit harsh, killing some kid's career before they've even got started.

Yes it was me, and likely mentally his health did have a knock on effect. Wouldn't most if  someone close to them had had a stroke and there was a high likelihood of having another?! That is some level of mental stress to deal with whilst maintaining the concentration of an elite level sportsperson. How one's mental threshold handles it is all individual, Tom seemingly thought he was handling it fine but sometimes we need telling that we aren't doing as well as we think. Men especially.

I would say Wellens made the right call for both player and squad but I agree, I would love to see him at his best.