Our best eleven?

[Adrian]

Our best 11....
Roberts
Cole Matthews Connor Griffiths
Janney Broom Southam Rainford
Shipp Stein

Not doubting these players had heart but would they have survived this league ? Would that team have survived 9 yrs in Lg 2 ? And if they'd been on a run of bad form under Wayne Burnett or anyone else for that matter would nostalgia have kept you onside.

Mark Stein cut it at a higher level. 3 of them players for us in a team that did survive in this league. The likes of Connor and Matthews could have easily played at this level but chose their careers over football. No one team would survive 9 yrs in Lg 2. Several of those players were part of team under Garry Hill that was pretty rubbish for a while and they were never turned on because they had real character.

As you said yourself recently none of our current lot would get in ahead of the likes of Benson etc. With the likes of Cole, Matthews and Connor we'd concede significantly fewer goals from crosses and set pieces than we do now, but they were the sort of players that would throw themselves in the way of anything to prevent us conceding.

[Mark]

Cole and Matthews would boss this. They were a million miles better than anything we've had in the last couple of years.

[ARNU]

I dunno.I don't think its the case that our players aren't trying.Its a bit like saying who'd have won out of Tyson and Ali,we'll never know.All I would say is that those players largely didn't make it in lg2 and only one or two of them did play at that level consistently.Look at what we've currently got......

Cureton........Established championship player.
Hemmings.....43 appearances in lg 1 with walsall and 100 in Lg 2 with a few clubs.
Boucard........Bit of a journeyman but made over 70 lg 1 appearances
Cousins.........58 lg 1 appearances
Widdowson....100+ Lg2 appearances
Nosworthy......Established Championship player
Passley..........Lg 2 player
Connors.........Daggers only
Obileye.........Only played in Lg2 for Daggers
McClure........Lg 2 player
Obrien.........23 lg 1 appearances
Labadie........70 appearances Lg1
Chambers.....6 appearances for Leicester the rest non league and Lg 2
Hines..........Mostly championship,played for Daggers now more times than hes played anywhere else.
Doidge.........Just lg 2 with daggers
Richards......Championship Lg 1 and 2...probably one of our most successful players ??
Jones...........Daggers only
Yusuff..........Daggers only
Raymond.......Daggers only
Dikamona.....Daggers only
Justin Hoyte..Established Prem and championship player
Ferdinand....32 Championship appearances.....Not that Ive seen anything special from him.

Nostalgia warps the mind.
Id say todays squad have infinitely more league experience and would have ruined that Daggers team if success/level achieved of the players is anything to go by.

[Adrian]

I dunno.I don't think its the case that our players aren't trying.Its a bit like saying who'd have won out of Tyson and Ali,we'll never know.All I would say is that those players largely didn't make it in lg2 and only one or two of them did play at that level consistently.Look at what we've currently got......

Cureton........Established championship player.
Hemmings.....43 appearances in lg 1 with walsall and 100 in Lg 2 with a few clubs.
Boucard........Bit of a journeyman but made over 70 lg 1 appearances
Cousins.........58 lg 1 appearances
Widdowson....100+ Lg2 appearances
Nosworthy......Established Championship player
Passley..........Lg 2 player
Connors.........Daggers only
Obileye.........Only played in Lg2 for Daggers
McClure........Lg 2 player
Obrien.........23 lg 1 appearances
Labadie........70 appearances Lg1
Chambers.....6 appearances for Leicester the rest non league and Lg 2
Hines..........Mostly championship,played for Daggers now more times than hes played anywhere else.
Doidge.........Just lg 2 with daggers
Richards......Championship Lg 1 and 2...probably one of our most successful players ??
Jones...........Daggers only
Yusuff..........Daggers only
Raymond.......Daggers only
Dikamona.....Daggers only
Justin Hoyte..Established Prem and championship player
Ferdinand....32 Championship appearances.....Not that Ive seen anything special from him.

Nostalgia warps the mind.
Id say todays squad have infinitely more league experience and would have ruined that Daggers team if success/level achieved of the players is anything to go by.

Wow that's a ridiculous amount of effort even for your trolling.

[ARNU]

Admittedly I was a bit bored but on paper our current squad has far more league experience/pedigree than your team from the past,you don't like it but its true.

More nostalgia for you.....

Wagon wheels used to be bigger back then,a Mars bar was only 4 pence when I was a kid,35000 men used to work in Fords Dagenham and you could leave ya front door open and nobody would burgle you.

[Adrian]

Admittedly I was a bit bored but on paper our current squad has far more league experience/pedigree than your team from the past,you don't like it but its true.

More nostalgia for you.....

Wagon wheels used to be bigger back then,a Mars bar was only 4 pence when I was a kid,35000 men used to work in Fords Dagenham and you could leave ya front door open and nobody would burgle you.

I couldn't care.less about league experience and pedigree.
Some of the players mentioned faced much better players than ours do now and came out on top.

[ARNU]

Admittedly I was a bit bored but on paper our current squad has far more league experience/pedigree than your team from the past,you don't like it but its true.

More nostalgia for you.....

Wagon wheels used to be bigger back then,a Mars bar was only 4 pence when I was a kid,35000 men used to work in Fords Dagenham and you could leave ya front door open and nobody would burgle you.

I couldn't care.less about league experience and pedigree.
Some of the players mentioned faced much better players than ours do now and came out on top.

Yeah you would care if the stats favoured your argument.I presume Lg2 was harder to get into back then ?

Im not questioning the desire or the pride of those players,right now id like to see that spirit too.John Stills Lg 2 playoff final team would have killed this current lot although I doubt their pedigree was as good.

[Adrian]

Admittedly I was a bit bored but on paper our current squad has far more league experience/pedigree than your team from the past,you don't like it but its true.

More nostalgia for you.....

Wagon wheels used to be bigger back then,a Mars bar was only 4 pence when I was a kid,35000 men used to work in Fords Dagenham and you could leave ya front door open and nobody would burgle you.

I couldn't care.less about league experience and pedigree.
Some of the players mentioned faced much better players than ours do now and came out on top.

Yeah you would care if the stats favoured your argument.I presume Lg2 was harder to get into back then ?

Im not questioning the desire or the pride of those players,right now id like to see that spirit too.John Stills Lg 2 playoff final team would have killed this current lot although I doubt their pedigree was as good.

I saw the players mentioned first hand myself many times. It was their spirit that saw them beat better teams than ours currently is on many occasions. If hey came up against the likes of ours now they'd overwhelm them with the way they worked for each other and the way they went at teams.

[ARNU]

Im not looking to argue with you Adrian.(Unusual but true).Im sort of agreeing with you really.

What I think/know is missing and has been for the last 3 seasons is a spirit of "We're all in this together" a common cause.The players and management couldn't be further away from us as fans than they currently are right now.We've got fans wishing 10-nil defeats on us or relegation just to get WB out,well be carefull what you wish for is all I can say.I think its a bit unfair to lump all of this on Burnett alone.Im sure WB can keep us up but I think the spirit is forever gone.Maybe league football wasn't what you all envisaged,nobody expected this dire and miserable time but it was inevitable with so little cash and ambition for so many years.I reckon you need hungry ambitious players,not a bunch of couldn't give a toss journeymen.Maybe Wayne should go stand over Parsloes on a Sunday and start there.It may well mean relegation but until that spirit returns I don't think it really matters what WB does,many will always blame him when theres far more factors that should be taken into consideration.He'll do his 2 years and then go Im sure,we'll bump around the bottom for eternity without the finances whoever comes in.

[The Romford Dagger]

Im not looking to argue with you Adrian.(Unusual but true).Im sort of agreeing with you really.

What I think/know is missing and has been for the last 3 seasons is a spirit of "We're all in this together" a common cause.The players and management couldn't be further away from us as fans than they currently are right now.We've got fans wishing 10-nil defeats on us or relegation just to get WB out,well be carefull what you wish for is all I can say.I think its a bit unfair to lump all of this on Burnett alone.Im sure WB can keep us up but I think the spirit is forever gone.Maybe league football wasn't what you all envisaged,nobody expected this dire and miserable time but it was inevitable with so little cash and ambition for so many years.I reckon you need hungry ambitious players,not a bunch of couldn't give a toss journeymen.Maybe Wayne should go stand over Parsloes on a Sunday and start there.It may well mean relegation but until that spirit returns I don't think it really matters what WB does,many will always blame him when theres far more factors that should be taken into consideration.He'll do his 2 years and then go Im sure,we'll bump around the bottom for eternity without the finances whoever comes in.

The thing is people are annoyed arnu because it's wayne whos signed these players and his management team arguing with fans. Fans that will be at the club far longer than him.

The players signed are mostly journeyman that don't show the same fight and character to dig in and get a result. These players, for example kane ferdinand, signed by burnett contribute to the disconnect and are hardly doing anything to change that. As he signed these players, he will naturally get grief if they show minimal character on the pitch (for the main).

[Daggyjack]

I think that's the point.
The players "with more experience" are just that....players who are passed it and who clearly don't have the same fight for the shirt that the likes of Connor, Cole, Matthews and Broomy had.
The buck does not solely stop at the feet of WB but he signed these poor players, his tactics and substitutions are questionable at best and I have no doubt that the spirit, fight and no little skill of the team that I put out (regardless of league experience) would see Dagenham & Redbridge in a far better position that they are in today.
As Arnu said, perhaps WB should go back to picking up the likes of Benson, Griffiths and Mackail-Smith from non-league football....players that have the fight to succeed, you never know, perhaps the next manager will have the insight to try this route rather than go down the easy option of picking up past it players (JC excepted) who are grateful for a pay check from whichever club is foolish enough to sign them up.