Yes please!

"I've got that game on DVD somewhere. You or I could have played in defence for Ajax that night -- they were absolutely rampant."

Neat piece of deliberate-point-avoiding there, HB.

I've seen that documentary about Barca when Laporte came in. Edgar Davids' performances really saved their bacon.

I've sent you a PM, Bombanero.

Neat piece of deliberate-point-avoiding there, HB.

I'm not avoiding any point.

You're holding up one game from 1995, where Ajax were so much on top they could have had Muffin the Mule playing at left-back and still won, as evidence that Bogarde was a good player.

You're refusing to face the fact that he was an absolute fucking turkey at every single other club that he played for. This guy has won polls as Milan's worst ever foreign signing. He was a dud.

Total utter and complete bollocks.

He was very solid at the back, and as a re-trained winger he was one of the fastest wingbacks I have ever seen.

Sorry, what's bollocks? That he died a death at Milan, and then at Barcelona, and then at Chelsea? Did I imagine it all?

And who cares if he was fast. Pace is no use if you can't do the other stuff competently. Dwain Chambers is fast but I wouldn't want him in my team.

Unlike you I saw him play week in week-out at Ajax and he was a fine player.

Dunno who appointed you OTF's sole arbiter of football quality.

In slightly related news, Sparta are now safe after a 4-2 home thumping of Heerenveen who were 2-0 up at half-time.

Uitstekend!

HB - I wouldn't mind a look at that doc.

Zeker uitstekend. Maar met Sander Westerveld in het doel wat kun hun mis gaan?

Seriously though, Sparta have got some decent players for a change. Charles Dissels I like, Youri Rose, Daryl Roberts too, and that Yugoslav whose name I can never remember Planjljljlovic - or something. Good team easily worth of their lower mid-table place.

If you beat AZ next sunday, you'll finish the season just 3 points behind them. I wonder what odds you would have got against that last august?

Dunno who appointed you OTF's sole arbiter of football quality.

Nobody did, but I know a shit player when I see one.

EIM, there'll be a PM for you in a second.

me tooo

I wouldn't worry about H.B., he doesn't think that Roy Keane is good enough to merit a place in an All-time Irish XI.

Bogarde wasn't brilliant, but he certainly wasn't "shit". He was a more than decent player who could do a job in a team if used properly.

Incredibly, Ajax can still win the league. This realisation, however, will soon dawn on the players and they will return to pants soiling mode under the weight of the possibility, however hypothetical it might be.

Cheers HB.

It's not uncommon for a deeply average player to find himself in a good team and be lauded merely through his association with the success of those around him, those who are basically carrying him.

I can draw something of an analogy with someone we have been talking about a lot recently, Dirk Kuyt. Now of course I'm not comparing current Liverpool with 90s Ajax, however because Liverpool are doing ok at the moment, I have noticed that Kuyt has started to get some positive write ups in newspapers and on here despite remaining pretty much as awful as he has been all season and playing a sort of horrible emasculated role that required nothing more than lungpower.

And I'm afraid Winston Bogarde is Dirk Kuyt to me, a player who got seriously found out once he left the familiar confines of the Ajax set up.

Now of course there are plenty of great players who transfer clubs and don't always make a success of things for a variety of different reasons. Veron at Man United is a good example here, however if you look at the entirety of his career then you see that he was successful at the great majority of his clubs. That's a decent indicator of his talent. Bogarde on the other hand could not have had a worse career post Ajax if he had deliberately tried to fuck it all up - though I do realise that trying is not part of the Bogarde lexicon. He was an embarrassment in every sense and that's how his career will rightly be remembered.

Talking about Frank De Boer's pace misses the point of him. His yards came in his head, seeing stuff before others. His problem was with his physical decline through injury which made him tentative in physical encounters, as a result he was weak and easy to shrug off the ball.

"I do realise that trying is not part of the Bogarde lexicon."

???