Thetownend.com

I just got Paolo Di Canio's Autobiography from 2000 today, and it is a very interesting read.

In the chapter about Sheffield Wednesday he mentions Danny Wilson in quite a negative way. Di Canio were signed by Sheff Wed when Ron Atkinson was manager, but didn't care much for the new manager Wilson.

I quote from the book:

"Danny Wilson, fresh from relegation at Barnsley, was our new boss. He was considered a rising young star among managers, but I could tell right away he lacked something. When I first met him, he sort of skulked up to me with his tail between his legs and introduced himself."

"You could tell it was a total learning experience for him and in many ways he wasn't sure what he was doing. One day he came up to me to talk about the plans for the new season: Listen Paolo, I know we're having a difficult time getting new players in, but don't worry. I'm on to a very good one if all goes according to plan. Really, I replied. That's Excellent Danny, who's coming. - Simon Donnelly, he grinned. The sad fact is that he wasn't taking the mickey, he was truly exicted. What kind of man thinks Simon Donnelly is going to be the saviour of Sheffield Wednesday?"

"He was an absoulte nobody to me"

"If you run through the squads player for player Sheff Wed were no worse than Southampton, Bradford, Wimbledon (...) But with Wilson, there was nothing. No personality, no guidance, no real strength"

Not Danny Wilson's greatest fan, as you can see!

 :I'm a complete mofleakin Deak

Paolo Di Canio's Red and White Army!!

Sums up last season

I reckon malpas said that to lee peacock when we signed casal ;)

Interesting :hmmm:

I have his book right here and will start reading it tomorrow.

I learnt my lesson after reading Dennis Wizes autobiography - won't be making that mistake again!

So Wise's book was not very good I take it?

And that means Di Canio's book won't be very good? :hmmm:

Think JFW meant she read Wise's book then he promptly fucked off.

I see.......what would I do without you Leef? ::)

I just thought I would get it to see if it would throw any light on his right wing 'leanings'.

Ha i found out yesterday that Capello voted for the fascists once and when in spain claimed that the former spanish dictator whats his name had done lots of good for spain.

Nothing to do with this thread just bored so put anywhere

Franco.

Thank fuck! A reason to boycott watching England games!

 :D

only the home ones though

I just don't really like reading! :)

Back to NR's original post, personally couldn't give a monkey's what PDC thinks/thought of Wilson, can't see what relevance it has.

However can heartily recommend his autobiography, working my way through it at the moment and he's certainly an interesting character.

Damn right.  Plastic w*nkers.

I looked for the book on Amazon but it looks like it is out of print, I suppose have to look at jumble sales (do people still have them these days ?) and such like for a copy

Anyone tell me who the publishers are I may contact them see if they have old dusty copy lying around they want to donate  :D

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/PAOLO-DI-CANIO-AUTOBIOGRAPHY-/200614693112?pt=Non_Fiction&hash=item2eb59148f8

Wilson did have a softly spoken approach to management, and it wasnt everyone's cup of tea. But when it did click it produced great football.

Was also open to abuse by players who decided not to pull their weight.

I got his book for about £2 second hand on Play.com.


It's a good read but I can't help thinking he bigs up his career in Italy before he came to Britain a bit too much. I don't remember ever hearing of him until he went to Celtic for £800K. Yet acording to his autobiography he gives the impression he was a god at Lazio who was screwed over by the chairman, helped rebuild Napoli after the Maradonna era, led Juventus to European glory and then helped AC win the Scudetto. When really I think he was a bit part player in Italy who probably never suited the style of game over there.

He's played for 3 of the most high profile Italian managers in Italy in Lippi, Trappattoni and Capello. 2 of which he fell out with.

Would be nice to hear his views post 2000 to include all his West Ham career and going back to Lazio and all that.
Also he's stuff with the Ultras does have the feel of slight fiction. He does come across as a truely passionate guy who always gave it his all, even in training. Just seems he doesn't like to be told what to do either -so he probably is ideal as a manager as I can't see him taking sh1t from players or agents.

I think that Di Canio's own opinion that he was the man at the heart of all the success was probably one explaination why he got moved on so much early on in his career.

Random Di Canio goal - 5 minutes in.

Nice gold boots and pointing to the invisible name!

Oops -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stvR12lJ7tg

I think it's always interesting to get a different perspective on things and personally, I am still very interested to know exactly what the hell went wrong last season. This gives us a possible clue as to one of the many contributing factors.  "No personality, no guidance, no real strength". It's one man's subjective opinion but it's no less interesting nonetheless.

I agree, before he came to Britain, my memory of him is being something of a 'bit part' player. No arguments with what he did for Celtic, Wendys and West Ham though.

I see what you mean, it is interesting to look at opinions that may give clues as to what rent wrong towards the end of DW's time. I just meant for me at the moment I would rather look forwards. We're in the early days under a new Chairman, new manager, and (hopefully) soon new players and until we see what shape next season's side will take that's where my focus will be.

Sold Greer. Sold Austin.

Simple really in my opinion.

We were shit before Austin left.

....and?

Selling him still contributed hugely to our downfall.

Agree,even another ten goals bagged by him probably would have saved us.

It's not just about Greer and Austin is it?

Of course it didn't help, but it went much much deeper than that. Only one other team in the league had Greer yet we still managed to finish bottom.

Had we kept Greer and Austin we would probably still have had a shite season, although we may well have stayed up. We were warned about Wilson being a one season wonder, how right those warnings turned out to be.

But...His shoulder injury ruled him out for the rest of the season for Burnley. We cashed in at the right time, i think anyhow.

And he's a prick.

Just watch the Blades

They'll have a great season next season, only to bottle it at the end and fucking up in the play-offs because Wilson's got no bottle.

The next season they'll have a shocker 'cos again Wilson has no bottle to lift the team.

Know what you are saying nochee.

Just felt we could have cashed in on him more to be honest,if he had stayed untill the end of season and fired in another dozen goals in the process,we probably would have stayed up...and his transfer fee would have went up.
We shall never know bud.

And what if we had lost Greer some other way, like a serious injury.

A manager should be able to compensate in that situation to at least some degree by finding a replacement.

What Wilson demonstrated was that he was incompetent at finding the right player to fill the gap despite him having the resources to do so. He didn't have to get it exactly tight, just a bit right but he couldn't even do that.

The strange thing for me is that when wilson came in and the play off season he seemed to be able to find the right players to do the job, what went so wrong last season is anyones guess.

Trouble is when players have little respect for their manager and the manager isn't strong enough to overcome that then it doesn't matter who you bring in - those players will continue to rule the dressing room.

With PDC I think there will be little doubt as to who rules the dressing room...

He got lucky.

Which is evidenced by the fact he could not repeat it, not even close. He got lucky with Greer who at the time we got him, was a crock rotting away in Doncaster reserves. Greer could have easily been another Frampton or any other of the loan failures.

sorry but i disagree. DW wasn't lucky he just had the right mix of players and had them working as a unit. Austin was non league, paynter was on the verge of the 1st team due to not being prolific. Cuthbert was an unknown as was Ferry. It can't be luck finding all these players surely.

He tried to strengthen with Prutton as i don't think STFC believed we'd get Caddis and Ferry yet that back fired big time as Prutton was shit. Why he never played Ferry instead could do with his weakness in the dressing room that PDC speaks of.

Cuthbert, Ferry and Caddis were the result of Fitton's work on creating relationships.

Austin was also thanks to Fitton. Paynter was already here.

Still, he managed to destroy Cuthbert and just not play Ferry.

so really it's Fittons fault for getting involved with 1st team affairs?!

Paynter was already here, but doubled his best season's goals tally in the one full season he played under Wilson.

Playing devil's advocate a bit here, but don't think its fair to imply Wilson never did anything good.

Who takes the credit for bringing in Danny Ward then ? McGovern also had a good season.

For being behind getting 3 of our best players?

the chairman will always have the final say, so it's unfair to say DW had nothing to do with us signing them.

DW indentified the targets and Fitton did the rest.

The same person who had more misses than hits with loans

Wilson didn't know how to put a squad together. He just went through as many players as possible hoping to find one that fit. Look at how many left-backs we got through.....

He's obviously good at getting a good squad to play well, but he is incompetent at putting a good squad together.

I think it's the other way around.

so you honestly believe DW did nothing at STFC

I've already said that he is clearly very good at getting a good squad team to play well.

*Edited to correct myself

Wilson did a great job when he first came in. He got some decent players in on loan and we escaped relegation. Having then lost Cox he then built a team that in March were in the top two and that came within 90 minutes of automatic promotion in a league which included Leeds, Norwich, Millwall etc. People seem to forget this.

Last season he made mistakes, bought too many left backs, we we're short at the CH. But ultimately selling Greer and then Austin when we did are the reasons we went down.

I'm with DV on this one.

Plenty of copies here: http://bit.ly/jQnkYc

In which case he was clearly so heavily reliant on two players that he was useless without them

Have you moved to Bangkok Norway Red?

I love it that whenever DW appears to have done something good then it was lucky and anything bad was his fault. Ok then.

Again

I have quite clearly stated he was very good at getting a good team to play well.

I am giving the man credit where it's due. I am also pointing out his faults, or does a man who managed to fail in such epic proportions not have any faults.

He obviously does, as do most managers especially at this level. In the end he died on his sword.

Pretty much saying the play off season was lucky is pushing things a bit far though which is why quite a few are aguing with you i think.

Fucking internet keeps dying.

What I am objecting to is people saying we got relegated because we sold Greer and Austin.

For me that is way two dimensional. For starters, we were shit even before Austin left. If the absence of two players made such a difference to the manager that we went from promotion candidates to relegation fodder, then that leaves a lot to be said about the manager.

Again what if, for example, Greer got injured with us and was out for the season and we went down as a result. Would people still be as sympathetic?

Whilst we were shit before Austin left - when you've got a goal scorer you've always got a chance. The season Wilson arrived we were floating around near the relegation zone but with Simon Cox in our team we always knew we'd score goals. He did, we did and we finished 15th. Sure we got some alot of 2-2 and 4-3 and what not as we couldnt defend but we always knew we had goals in us. Austin was similar in the fact he always looked likely to pop up and score. No matter how good/bad/ugly/ your team is selling your top scorer is never a good idea.

If Greer had got injured then that would have been down to bad luck. You cant predict injury and the club/manager have no say in whether a player gets a long term injury. Worlds apart from actively agreeing to sell him to another club.

I think people are looking for too many detailed reasons.

Ask yourself this - do you think we would have stayed up if we'd kept Greer and Austin for the season?

I've already said that we probably would have stayed up

But under no circumstances should we have gone down due to the absence of two players, one of which didn't leave until January.

Wilson fucked up monumentally

Hows about this:.........

We went down because Greer and Austin were sold AND Wilson fucked up.

Nice compromise mate  :D

It had some impact.

It killed this thread dead Fred

Thank fuck for that.

Yes. Because football really is as simple as that. Thank fuck for you Divina. You're one smart mother fucker. ::)

Yes, yes it is.

Its difficult to quantify the effect those 2 sales had on the rest of the squad.

Pretty big I rekon. Especially Austin. You can imagine most of them looking at Dossevi up front on his own and thinking, we're fucked.

fucking hell.this is now the site for dragging old shit on and on and on.

we lost key players which were the reason we were at the right end of the table the previous year.we then lost the key player that despite playing in a terrible side,was scoring enough goals to keep us up.he left and we couldn't score enough.the defence and midfield was as shit as it was all season.
players wanted to go,the chairman wanted players to go,wilson brought in the wrong players.3 key reasons.shared blame.

Just let go arriba. Move on. ;)

On another note, I don't know if anyone else had heard about this, but I read somewhere that Di Canio was a Faschist. Anyone know anything about that?  :hmmm:

Don't you mean fashist?

Greer was a lot more than just a individual player. He was the voice of the back four the previous season. He was the team captain. Cuthbert (a young, inexperienced) centre half was miles better alongside Greer than he ever was next to Morrison.

It's not easy to find a quality centre half, Brighton had to come and offer Greer a 3 year deal and a substantial transfer fee for him. It's never easy to find a replacement. Why didn't we offer him a new two year deal in the June? If we did he wouldn't have gone. Intead we told Greer he had to wait until October..

It doesn't matter what Greer was, we were still far too heavily reliant on him. Our relegation would surely confirm that.

People keep on forgetting that lots of others teams managed to do OK on a fraction of the resources we had and without Greer. Even a reasonable replacement would have done, we couldn't even manage that.

Besides

I've already suggested we went down because we sold Greer and Austin AND Wilson fucked up. It seems that many seem to want to absolve Wilson of all responsibility.

Of course Wilson is to blame aswell. The board is also. The player too. It's a collective fuckup.

We went into the new season far too confident and naive.

It's the same in any team. If you lose key players, it messes up the balance of the team, it's like a snowball effect, once you sart conceding goals, you keep conceding. When your can't score a fucking goal, you can't buy a goal from anywhere. All about confidence. When the rot started to set in Wilson failed to halt it.

It could have been prevented.

 

Not a lot a manager can do when all his better players are sold on a regular basis,when we got to Wembley that was a platform to invest in the team and kick on,alas we did what countless past Swindon managers have had to contend with in the past,sell,sell.....oh and sell.
Yes we brought a few loanees in and the odd signing like Benjon :cry:
Fact is you can huff and puff about what the reasons are but to me it is blatantly obvious.

So now we start the snowball rolling again,find a gem of a manager,a few star players,they will be gone in a flash and we all will be scratching our heads thinking...............derrr whats happened :D

Wilson's major fuck ups last season we're not adequately replacing Greer and Austin - which wouldnt have been an issue if we hadnt of sold Greer and Austin.

See

Any chance to defend a manager who was largely responsible for quite possibly the worst season in our history.

There were 24 teams in league 1, 20 of which were not relegated.

Only one of those teams had Gordon Greer and none had Austin. Many had little or no money to spend. But still we managed to finish rock bottom and even managed to finish below a team that was given a 10 point deduction...........

But still, some still refuse to accept that manager had anything to do with it.

But we did.

And I still don't understand how people expected us to keep Austin.

Its quite simple really.

When a club, in this case Burnley come in with a bid - we turn around and get this, say no.

Do you genuinely believe it's that black and white?

Then the player gets pissed off, potentially disrupts the dressing room (not that it was ever seemingly 'collective' anyway) hands in a transfer request and we sell him anyway to keep harmony.

How do you know what was going on at the club? I would have loved to have kept Austin, but perhaps it just wasn't viable?

Austin wanted out due to the huge wages and singing on fee he got. Nobody in that situation would have stayed here.

But according to DV, and others, we were supposed to simply refuse any transfer and force the player to stay against his own will.

There was fuck all the board could do really. Holding on to a player who wants out and with a decent offer on the table wouldn't happen.

Do you think Austin would have made a fuss about wanting to leave if we were challenging for promotion? He eventually would have gone but my point is, if we defended better in the earlier games of the season (with the amount of goals we were scoring) we wouldn't have been 16th or 17th when Austin decided to leave.

We sold players at the wrong time.

Which the club would have been within their rights to do.

I wonder if austin has managed to spend the six figure signing on fee he got yet?

I heard he flushed it all down the toilet..... (when the police knocked on his door)

I'll get my coat.