Brede Hangeland's Laziest XI teammates

https://www.google.com/amp/amp.hitc.com/en-gb/2017/09/11/brede-hangeland-says-mousa-dembele-has-a-dodgy-knee/

Quite a bit of Fulham on there, not surprisingly, given how long he played for us. I am surprised by a couple of the names.

Adebayor, Berbatov, Zamora
Ruiz, Dembele, Bullard, Zaha
Hagen, Grygera, Baird
Hennessey

 

This is pretty great. Not at all surprised to see Bullard or Zamora on this list. And Berbatov has a claim to the title of laziest ever. I guess Ruiz thought he was too good for us and just didn't care?

 

I thought it was pretty interesting. There's a link in the article to the BBC radio show where they had this discussion. Darren Fletcher and Jermaine Jenas are the hosts and were joined by Brede and Lescott. They talk about several guys on Brede's list and other players the others have played with as well. If you want to listen it starts around the 1:36:00 mark and runs 8-10 minutes.

 

Was reading the line-up and kept w/the 'I can see that' thinking, until I came to Baird. He wasn't ever good enough to be lazy was he? Always thought he was a grinder.

 

some of those folks named busted their "A" on match day - I think this reads into the training ground as well as match day

 

Gym work was one of the considerations and Brede said that's why Dembele and Bob were on there. Said Dembele has a bad hip but is a physical specimen naturally and Bob had 2 bad hips and they all joked about how he always had ice packs strapped to both hips.

Jenas mentioned Brede played with Adebayor late in his career, but at Spurs he was a hard worker.

They also talked about great players who just did their thing in training but always showed up on match day and produced so you didn't care. Shearer and Tevez were 2 they mentioned in that group.

Baird was the biggest surprise for me, for the reason Joe gave. He wasn't discussed on air.

Based on physique, I'm guessing Ruiz was a gym thing. That said, he's always looked far more active for Costa Rica than I ever saw him at FFC. Berbatov's a smoker and Bullard's drinking reputation precedes him, so no surprise on either of those.

 

An interesting list, to be sure. I always thought Ruiz was too soft for English football. Everything written here jives with that observation. I think he thrives in international football for that very reason. Berbatov's not a shocker. I'm curious about Hennessey. Is that Wayne, the goalkeeper? How do you measure keeper effort?