How good was matthew le tisser

Le King

grenache wrote: »

Le Tiss had a very lazy style about him, i think that often gave people the impression that he was a lazy player, but i don't think so. I would put him just below Bergkamp, Cantona, Zola and Henry in the list of Premiership all-time greats.

Lazy is lazy, your just splittin' hairs.

Le Tissier was a class act. Not exactly the model footballer with his fitness, diet and physique issues, but he had that natural footballing ability that made him great without being the idealistic stature for a footballer.

Peyton Manning

jesus_thats_gre wrote: »

Where are most of the lads that used to post here?

Sorely missed given recent developments

LowOdour

A true footballing hero of mine....loved his skill and ability.

Remember his first or second cap for england, when he took a 30 volley which just missed the top corner. Always thought that if it had gone in then he may have being recognised outside england for the the skilful player he was

dfx-

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

And they are right. His lack of ambition was not necessarily in his decision to stay at the club he loved; it was in his decision to avoid being the best player he could be for the club he loved. He should have been fitter, he should have worked harder, he should have applied himself more all the way through a season.

People forget the stretches where he was in and out of the team over training issues and poor form. A mercurial talent, capable of some of the most breathtaking moments ever witnessed in the Premiership. But one who could go missing for games in a row, and created compensatory tactical issues for the team around him due to his immobility and general disinterest in defending.

Give me the Roy Keane type players every ****ing day of the week.

Great post. A 90s version of a YouTube player.

Wasn't there one manager - Alan Ball...Lawrie McMenamie who refused to play him for a succession of games because of fitness and/or not being 'mentally ready'/having the right attitude to play?

kryogen

Could have and should have been one of the greats of the premiership

I concur with everything Llyod said though, so no need for me to repeat it!

Xavi6

dfx- wrote: »

Great post. A 90s version of a YouTube player.

Wasn't there one manager - Alan Ball...Lawrie McMenamie who refused to play him for a succession of games because of fitness and/or not being 'mentally ready'/having the right attitude to play?

Alan Ball also got us relegated, sold our best young players and left us up shit creek for the start of the following season so I wouldn't take many of his managerial decisions seriously.

therokerroar

Xavi6 wrote: »

Alan Ball also got us relegated, sold our best young players and left us up shit creek for the start of the following season so I wouldn't take many of his managerial decisions seriously.

McMenamie actually did the same with us too. I'd be of the same opinion you have of Ball with regards to McMenamie.

DazMarz

Definitely. I always remembered watching him playing in the Prem as a kid, back from the mid-1990's, and always thinking, ''He's so good... WTF is he doing playing for Southampton?!''

Yes, he was loyal to his boyhood club, but he was a player who could so easily have lined out for Manchester United, could so easily have been part of the 1998/99 Treble winning side.

To do this, he would have had to have been brutal, abandoning Southampton in favour of glory. How often did his goals, often match-winners, keep them alive and in the Prem? Almost every single time. Had he left Southampton before 2002 (when he retired after playing with them since 1986), they would most certainly have fallen much sooner than they did. Le Tissier was their own personal Stay Of Execution.

For his loyalty he should be lauded, yes. But for his loyalty, he robbed the world of a talent that, at a club like Manchester United, would have been nurtured, grown and hewn into something awe-inspiring. If he could play so well for Southampton with problems in training and scoffing kebabs and so on... Imagine with the training at Man U and a manager like Fergie and all the best nutritional diets and so on... Frightening.

It was not so much a lack of ambition on his part, it was a loyalty to a club, something that is not seen so often nowadays and deserves our praise; so few are loyal to clubs anymore.

Was Matt Le Tissier good enough to compete with the best? Yes, if he had taken the chance, he would have been. Was he cold, driven and brutal enough to turn his back on a floundering team that needed him so badly? No he was not, and this is why he could not break into the true upper echelons of English Football.

A real shame.

Boggles

Himself and Ian Wright were an absolute joy to watch, 2 legends and still 2 of my favourite footballers outside of United.

So much so I remember purchasing both their compilations on VHS.

Great times, great characters, great goals.

Davidth88

I always thought he was a wonderful player .

I think he liked being the ' big fish in a small pond '.

segadreamcast

Great player - his biography is actually fairly interesting too, far moreso than the usual player-written diatribes... a fair bit of actual insight.

marwelie

Great player, apermanent fixture in my fantasy football side.

the problem was the longer he stayed at Southampton the better he looked.

As has been said earlier he liked being a big fish in a little pond.

The only reason he didnt get more than 8 caps for England was that he had no ambition to better himself, he didn't try hard enough and Glenn Hoddle didnt like him!

GavRedKing

Would love to have seen how good he would have been with players of a better standard. Still all things considered he was a great player and part of the reason the Saints stayed in the EPL for his time there.

Blazer

I was lucky to start following soccer when Le Tissier came to the fore..
Absolutely a fabulous footballer and I was livid when he turned Newcastle down in 1995.
But I admire his loyalty to his hometown. Shearer was the same and yet both get slated for lack of ambition by people who haven't a fúcking clue about soccer.
His goals even today are an absolute joy to watch.
The only player I seen even close to him (in those years) was Stan Collymore.
Absolutely gifted and to see it thrown away was heartbreaking.

keano_afc

Great player, saw him first when he came on against Arsenal as a sub in 1986. Looked a player straight from the off.

His goal against Blackburn in 1994 is one of my all time favourites.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn3OtbMmaC4

[/QUOTE]

A Primal Nut

He scored some serious goals in his day....maybe not the most consistent but the kind of big impact player Real Madrid should have signed haha

aidan24326

Helix wrote: »

decent player, never wouldve cut it at a bigger club though

A 'decent' player? Nonsense. This guy was pure genius, easily one of the most effortlessly gifted players I've ever seen (and I'm old enough to remember quite a few).

Yes he could appear lazy, yes he was inconsistent, yes he won't win any awards for ambition, but by god he had magic in his boots. Alongside Gazza as the two most gifted English players of the last 20 years. I've no doubt he could have been a star at any level and with any club, whether he was right to stay with Southampton I'm not sure, you could argue that one both ways.

But he didn't need to be chasing around and clocking up half marathons in a game, that's what you have workhorses for, he could win you a game with one moment of brilliance and players like that are a rare commodity. In the last 15 years or so of the Prem League, only Henry, Bergkamp and Cantona had that same flash of genius.

LuckyLloyd

aidan24326 wrote: »

A 'decent' player? Nonsense. This guy was pure genius, easily one of the most effortlessly gifted players I've ever seen (and I'm old enough to remember quite a few).

Yes he could appear lazy, yes he was inconsistent, yes he won't win any awards for ambition, but by god he had magic in his boots. Alongside Gazza as the two most gifted English players of the last 20 years. I've no doubt he could have been a star at any level and with any club, whether he was right to stay with Southampton I'm not sure, you could argue that one both ways.

But he didn't need to be chasing around and clocking up half marathons in a game, that's what you have workhorses for, he could win you a game with one moment of brilliance and players like that are a rare commodity. In the last 15 years or so of the Prem League, only Henry, Bergkamp and Cantona had that same flash of genius.

Model professionals, who maximized every drop of talent they had. And Cantona (whose mental game was not perfect) was a player who couldn't produce at the higher levels of CL and International football.

A Primal Nut

A Primal Nut wrote: »

He scored some serious goals in his day....maybe not the most consistent but the kind of big impact player Real Madrid should have signed haha

Not consistant?

Didn't he score over 10 league goals in 9 or 10 seasons and over 20 league goals in 3 or 4 of those.

How consistant do you want for a midfielder?

aidan24326

LuckyLloyd wrote: »

Model professionals, who maximized every drop of talent they had. And Cantona (whose mental game was not perfect) was a player who couldn't produce at the higher levels of CL and International football.

I believe Cantona fell foul of the management in France and wasn't picked for ages, so that more or less screwed up his international career. And back then United weren't the force in Europe that they are now.

As for Le Tissier, look I take your point about him perhaps not being the model pro in certain ways. All I'm saying is that he was gifted and a joy to watch, and it's players like him that make us actually want to watch the game. For all that he's effective at what he does, does anyone look forward to watching Claude Makelele play? No. Did they used to look forward to watching Matthew Le Tissier play? You bet.

pickarooney

He wouldn't have lasted 6 months at a team like Manchester United and well he knew it. Southampton had to indulge his lackadaisical attitude but a team with ambitions of greatness and a serious work ethic would not have.

I think it's great that he played with Southampton rather than getting lost in the reserves of a title contender - we'd never have seen his glory moments otherwise.

Krusader

Didn't he nearly sign for Utd

nullzero

Le Tissier was an amazing player.
He was a natural, it's a pity he never plied his trade at the very top where his talent belonged.
Even just thinking of his goals excites me, he was the real deal. Hard to imagine ever seeing players like him again. Football is very different now and doesn't seem to have the time for players like Le Tissier, which is a pity.

flahavaj

He should've challenged himself at the highest level where he'd be expected to produce qulaity on a consistent, week in week out basis. IMO he chose the easy option staying at Southampton where he was God no matter what he did, and expectations were much lower. He did some sensational stuff don't get me wrong but it annoys me to see talented people fail to reach their potential or even show any interest in doing so.

Slash/ED

CHD wrote: »

Raw talent that never pushed itself. What could have been.

This basically. Naturally he was one of the most gifted players to ever play the game, 'wasted' his talent for the most part though, not so much for staying at Southampton but for being constantly out of shape and not applying himself. As far as natural talent goes, not many even in the history of the game could be said to have had more, he was a natural genius. Sure a player like Keane would be way way better to have in your team obviously, but Le Tiss was a player I'd pay to watch and despite his flaws it's people like him that make football the sport it is for me.