Mellor Respect On Saturday?

[memory man]

I hope he is given supreme indifference.

Booing a former player, any player really, is always counter productive but an ovation for such a largely awful player for us would send the wrong message. I reserve my applause for legends and/or 100%'ers, Kelvin Mellor was neither of those for me.

As for "one of our own", that's just laughable.

Normally I comprehensively agreed with and enjoyed your posts. For that reason it is very difficult to comprehensively disagree with you, but on this occasion I think your reference to him not being a 100%er is well wide of the mark and completely unfair. On ten or so occasions I saw the lad live I saw him have some scintillating games (3-0 over Pompey at home perhaps the best example) and I saw him have some poor ones. On those poor days the one thing I could never accuse him of was hiding or not trying. Annoying yes, and at times unbelievably useless too, but I think Johndelve and IJN have it exactly right.

 

[up the line]

Mellor was hit or miss but certainly did not deserve the grief that he got, not whilst other players were apparently immune from critisism last season regardless of any mistakes they made. He was better going forward than defending and potentially could give Sawyer a torrid afternoon.

 

[Monkey Nuts]

Someone give Mellor some applause from me please. I thought he was good for us.

 

[Josh Pope]

Good player for about 85 minutes a game. His regular mistakes didn't warrant keeping him ultimately which is a shame, though I think there's a very good right back in there if you can keep his head in the right place. I always thought it was so obvious that the guy was a confidence player who needed 'arm-round-the-shoulder' management on and off the pitch. I never booed him while he played for us as I didn't believe it was the right approach to getting the best out of the guy.

He worked hard for us and I do believe he did his absolute best for the club, for his efforts I think a light round of applause for the guy is a nice respectful way to go about it. Booing him I don't understand, not least because doing it now he plays for someone else is more likely to spur him on that put him off.

 

[Knarf Reprah]

I liked what he did for us, if I was going, which unfortunately I am now not, I would have warmly applauded when his name was read out.

A Pilgrim which I more often than not enjoyed watching.

I think he'd have done well in this side with a back three and Kelvin as a wingback.
He wasn't and never will be a back four full back

 

[nick_PASTIE]

The error I remember was one in a home again against York where he gave away a free kick in the last minute with a terrible tackle- York then score in a manner not dissimilar to AFC's first at Wembley. We had controlled the game and it felt like a kick in the teeth. Remember him getting in great attacking positions often but then "freezing" either not to cross (possibly due to lack of men in the box) or becoming very shot shy. His stand out performance j saw was the home v Pompey under Sheridan when he showed all his potential in the first half and completely ripped their left side players.

A decent player, L2 standard, not the best but not the worst, and having seen Miller I think I would prefer Kelvin- if well managed and improving positional and decision making sense Kelvin could become a very good L2/L1 player IMO.