Mark Viduka. What could have been..

Wee *

 

and the fact that he spat in another player's face.

that is when i lost all respect for him and wanted him out of our club immediately

 

Aye, I would say that's pretty much down to himself as well.

 

That's simply because they know which way their careers went.

I'm sure if you were to ask the same question to Celtic fans back in 1999, more of them would have had Viduka down for achieving the greater of the two.

 

If you stop them in the street and say if Mark Viduka applied himself when he was with us, do you think he would have been up there with Larsson for Celtic, It think most people that actually saw him play for us would say maybe.

 

Hmmm not sure on that one, we believed we had the best strike force in Europe, if Larsson didn't break his leg and we weren't playing 4 central midfielders on top of each other

It's actually a ridiculous thing to say but scoring the amount he did in Barnes team is one of the biggest achievements I've saw in a Celtic team.

 

He could have though. Your forgetting how good a naturally gifted and technical player Viduka was, he had world class ability on the ball. Berbatov, Ibrahimovic and the Original Ronaldo are the kind of players id have compared him with only he had less mobility than Ibrahimovic, was more lazy than Berbatov and more overweight than Ronaldo lol

As it turned out he only reached Bellamy, Keane, Sutton level.

In his first season with Leeds he scored 9 goals against Real Madrid, Liverpool, Lazio, Man Utd and Chelsea who were all quality teams at the time.

 

Ended up a * wee rat. Canny mind who we were playing but i mind at parkhead, he scored and immediately turned to give the "get it up ye" sign to the Celtic fans, * gimp.

 

Some of the football played under Barnes was absolutely world class. Just unfortunate that in all honesty he was a tactical abomination of a manager.

I genuinely believe that when Larsson and Viduka were playing together, Viduka proved to be the better of the two. Larsson was a fantastic player for us, but it wasn't until he came back from the leg break and then revitalised himself in the early O'Neill team that he moved on to a different stratosphere.

Again, you just have to look at Viduka's impact and scoring exploits for Leeds to see his quality as a player. Had he the right attitude, he would have went to the top. - a player with the scoring capability of Batistuta, andthe power and strength of say Vieri was an extremely scary thought.

 

Yes he did indeed.

 

Great talent, but * of a man. Sure he did an interview around 6 months ago when he said he regretted the way things ended at Celtic.

 

You're probably right there, Larsson came back better than ever to that and that was testement to his mental strength and commitment and that is what truly seperated the two players.

It was by the end of Barnes tenure that we were all over the place, before Larsson's leg break it looked very promising. It mirrored Tony Mowbray's bright start. If you look at Barnes team, it was a monumental effort to be just that much of a failure though.

 

It looked as promising early on even after Larsson got injured (I still to this day blame Vidar Riseth for it ) - here's one of the early games AB (after break), with Larsson's replacement - Ian Wright:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QvoMcU2ILM"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QvoMcU2ILM[/ame]

 

* me I forgot about the Ian Wright debacle, what an anti-climax that was

 

Its no suprise that Barnes team played so good a football when you consider we had the likes of Viduka, Moravcik, Berkovic, Petrov, Burley, Weighorst, Larsson etc

We probably pumped more teams in his first half a season than we have at any other times since the 60s or 70s.

We scored 4+ goals in 10 of his first 25 games. Compared to this season for example we've only done it 2 times out of 23 games. And Barnes games included two 6's and a 7.

 

I'd rate the three amigos over him honestly.

Especially Cadete.

But you're right. He could have been immense for us. He had at least 5 years left of his prime years ahead of him when he left us.

 

Wasn't it?

I remembered hearing at school we were signing Ian Wright - * delighted :smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002::smiley-laughing002:

 

Real shame about him, him and Henrik at the top of their game for a while, under MON, would have been mouth watering. Still, had things been different, we may not have ended up with Sutton/Hartson. I wouldn't change a thing.

 

Mark was probably one of the most immense Celtic strikers of recent times.
He had all the talent and abilities in the world that struck terror into opposing defenses. Unfortunately his time at Celtic coincided with immense personal problems and circumstances, still Mark was and still is a Celtic man through and through, and he will always be one of my favorite Celtic players of all times.

One thing was for sure, he wasn't going to be * about by no mark John Barnes.

 

Probably more than that, he was not long 24. Was probably up until 32 he was stil at his best.