Caldwell good enough?

He was the best defender at the club over the last six months of 2007-08, although, to be fair, this is no bold statement, but he sure put the * up me in the past.

In my opinion, he is a good defender at SPL level, especially now he is confident but, like McManus, he is found badly wanting at Champions League level.

Of course, real top class defenders are not going to plough their trade in Scotland, so you have to look at things realistically and ask is there anyone else better around at the moment?

At present, bar cheap foreign imports, I am struggling to think of a better option.

 

Well put. I really just feel that he had been such a whipping boy that there was a delay in general acknowledgment of just how well he was playing. IMO he had been playing well for 3 or 4 months since February but only started gettings some credit in the last few weeks.

 

Every team seems to have a whipping boy unfortunately.I was one of Caldwell's critics last season and I had to admit that he finished the season as one of our top performers.But as Paul said earlier,he desesrved criticism for some rank performances during the season.That is part and parcel of being at a big club.

It will be interesting to see if the latest"whipping boy"Lee Naylor will turn it around to the same extent.Will his critics give him some credit if he does?Some of the comments Ive read on here about Naylor have been as bad as anything Caldwell received.

 

thing about Naylor IMO is that he looks like he isnt taking care of himself. I expect all players on big modern wages to understand that good living is the trade off for the big money. There have been a few games where he looks hungover. I have heard allegations on the web (maybe even this site) that he has been on the raz before games. Could be rubbish but he does look wrecked in many games. The other thing is he was so consistantly excellent the season before that it makes you suspicious that the sudden change is down to lifestyle and attitude. Could be wrong. Caldwell always seemed to give 100%, so did Kenny Miller etc so even if they were flawed at times you couldnt blame them.

 

I have probably said the same things about Naylor.I have said to friends that he looks like a junkie!!!We have all heard rumours about Naylor and most of them are probably a lot of *.The bottom line is,if he is on the razz before games,surely its the managers job to kick his * out the team.

I would never question Naylor's commitment,some of his performances were shocking last season,no question,as were some of Caldwell's.He seems to have rehabilitated himself in the eyes of most supporters.I wonder if Naylor can do the same?

 

of course. all he needs to do is show his original form. He looked a good defender who tucked in well and saved Mick a few times (even in CL games) and he had a * of a cross on him. I think on that form only his lack of real strength and pretty modest pace woudl have held him back from a good EPL team. His original form easily made him the one of the best natural leftbacks in a decade or so - only Tosh and Mahe were close and they both were defensively more suspect (I suppose Mahe did have Laudrop to cope with - which he didnt).

 

At Hibernian Caldwell was the captain and a solid CB lets not forget he started his youth career with us but we pawned him off to Newcastle. I'm still a critic of Caldwell he is definetely not a right back, no way should he ever be deployed in this position, he's hopeless as a RB....the Benfica game and the other game that sticks out in my mind right now is against St. Mirren (yes i could name more but i'm drunk and it's late) last year when we won 1-0 with a a tradeemark Nakamura goal, Caldwell was an absolute donkey and he can't handle the pressure from bigger teams (obviously St. Mirren aren't a bigger team) he has just went AWOL far to often and has been exposed to easily also as soon as the fans get on his back his bottle crashes.

We do need another CB if only to push for a first team place and make both Mick and Gary work harder to secure thier first team place. Who do we have right now to challenge?!? JFK? forget it to injury prone O'dea? too what? inexperienced? young? expect more of a challenge from him this season hopefully, Balde? bosman'ed, get in a decent CB and the performance of our current two will increase, or at least they should.

Performances at the tail end of last season, well i'm sorry there's too many cons opposed to pro's for Gary Caldwell in my opinion, I couldn't care less who flames me for this but you know what I've pointed the finger to many times at Caldwell for lackadaisical perfomances at CB than anyone else the last two seasons.

I'm not convinced and I still think he's a *.

 

Caldwell isnt good enough.He is too slow,have a bad short pass.Good Tackling,air abilities,Long pass.For me he is average player.Mcmanus is

 

Too slow and he scores a lot own goals.

 

hmmmmm don't know for being at fault for a lot of own goals but he was responsible for the OG against Benfica and at fault for thier second goal that night.

But he just is a *.

 

I think Caldwell is okay. He does the job he's paid to do and like Tim says, his assists are priceless.

 

Centre Backs

Caldwell is the better of the two.

Need a replacement, Tamas.