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jonthefox

The "do they mean us?" thread

By jonthefox, in Leicester City Forum

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brucey

brucey

Posted
Posted (edited)
6 minutes ago, glenny_fox said:

Anyone care to post the article? As you need to login to read it. 

 

He got abuse as he was just trying to be cocky and claim the glory for himself whereas Waghorns was just an amazing save from the keeper, but at least he put the team first before his personal glory. 

Yann Kermorgant: people say the French are arrogant but we invite team-mates to dinner

Reading’s Yann Kermorgant explains to Alyson Rudd how he was left isolated after missing a penalty in the play-offs for Leicester

 

Reading reached Monday’s Sky Bet Championship play-off final thanks to a penalty scored by Yann Kermorgant. That the French striker was labelled a spot-kick hero against Fulham is a little ironic. At the start of his career in English football, Kermorgant found himself blamed for Leicester City’s play-off agony. The prevailing view was that an arrogant foreigner had tried to show off in a penalty shoot-out. There is even a song about the moment he tried and failed to chip the goalkeeper.

The truth is that it is the English who can be arrogant and that Kermorgant’s treatment at Leicester led directly to their defeat by Cardiff City in the semi-finals of the play-offs seven years ago.

Frozen out by his team-mates, the pressure on Kermorgant was close to unbearable. He knew that if he missed his penalty he would be the fall guy. As he stepped up, his legs were shaking. A season of unhappiness was about to get worse.

“You normally should not be that scared beforehand but all the players were not my friend,” he says. “Normally it is, ‘You win together, you lose together,’ but this situation was completely different.

“It was a penalty shoot-out after a season in which I had not been given a chance. I’d not been involved, been left out of everything, I was really on my own, didn’t speak English
well, never been invited to anything. I was completely on my own and when the penalty shoot-out arrived I had been on for five minutes of extra time. Only three players stepped forward to take the penalties and some players who had the bigger mouths didn’t want to take one because they were scared to miss. The manager knew as a striker I had the ability to score but I wasn’t confident and I knew that if I missed the defeat would be all on my shoulders.

“In that situation it is easy to give all the responsibility to Yann the Frenchman because he [Nigel Pearson] didn’t like me really. But I had to take it and when I went to take the pen my leg was shaking. I was thinking, ‘If I miss, I’m dead.’ ”

In A Song for Yann Kermorgant by Dave Henson, there is the line: “Confidence is one thing but you took it too far, did someone tell you, you were Eric Cantona?”

However, Kermorgant, 35, is keen to dispel the myth he was trying to recklessly show off.

He had seen David Marshall dive for the previous penalties and decided “to make it simple, just chip in the middle but the problem was that my chip was not very good because my legs were not relaxed. It’s all about confidence, the decision was not bad but it was all about execution.”

Martyn Waghorn also missed in the shoot-out but no one wrote a song about him.

“The next penalty [Waghorn’s] was missed as well and this part has been forgotten and they put everything on my shoulders rather than looking at why we hadn’t played well.”

Kermorgant is not pious, indeed he expresses impressed astonishment that the cult song was completed the night of the play-off defeat and, yes, he has listened to it and decided not to be offended. “It’s banter and he did it well to be fair,” he smiles.

There is a deeper reason for explaining what really happened that evening in Wales. Kermorgant was so appalled by the isolation he felt both at Leicester and then when he signed for Bournemouth in 2014 that he has gone out of his way to ensure that new players at Reading are made to feel welcome.

“Sometimes people say the French are arrogant but that’s funny because in France when we sign foreigners we always invite them to dinner, make sure they are fine, make sure they are not sat alone in their hotel.

“In England, they let you down completely. Even at Bournemouth I stayed at the hotel for a month during the World Cup, that’s a good occasion to invite a new guy to watch the game with a barbecue or pizza but I sat on my own and nobody invited me to anything.”

There then evolves, he says, the ridiculous situation where a player who is alone and struggling with a new language is given ten minutes perhaps at the end of a game and is expected to shine and if he can’t shine then is dismissed as a lazy foreigner.

Determined not to let the same fate befall others, when Joseph Mendes was signed from Le Havre last summer, his compatriot made him welcome.

“I’ve done everything I could to make him involved and happy, even about what he has to do on the pitch. He is really involved and all the lads like him. I know he is ready and if I am injured or not in good form he can be ready.”

Where his team-mates at Leicester had seen him as a threat, Kermorgant is promoting the cause of a striker who could steal his place.

The daft part is that Kermorgant is definitely worth having over for a pizza. When he was 14 his parents were told he might die. He endured chemotherapy for leukaemia but the treatment damaged his knee cartilage and he spent a year in a wheelchair being told that he would never again play football. He was far more upset at the news about not playing sport than he was about imminent death.

“Of course that has affected my mentality, the way I see life, but it is also about your education and your parents,” he says.

Kermorgant was ridiculed for failing to score past Cardiff’s Marshall with a Panenka in the 2010 semi-finals

Kermorgant enjoys every minute he plays “because it might not have happened.”

A few weeks ago he said this coming season would probably be his last. He would like to spend more time with his parents who made sure he was “spoilt by love” after his recovery but not indulged. His parents, who will be at Wembley on Monday, still wanted him to know he had to work for rewards in life. He is grateful for that because a career in football requires hard graft.

Reports that he wants to work in banking are false. Instead he would quite like to buy some flats and rent them out. He misses the beauty of Vannes, his home town in Brittany.

It will be worth looking closely at his face as he walks out at Wembley because Kermorgant has taken the rather unusual step of making sure that moment matters. He has, over his career, refused all invitations to watch games at Wembley wanting to be certain that his first taste of the place would come when he was playing there and the play-off final is as big an occasion as he could hope for.

“This year, the FA Cup is between Arsenal and Chelsea and both teams are used to playing a big game, they will not be impressed by Wembley because they have been there before and at the end of it, it’s a trophy for one but the other one will still be in the Premier League.

“For us it is different, it is life-changing for most of the players, it might be their only chance to get into the Premier League. If you miss the chance it might be your last one.”

Asked to sum himself up in one word, he plumps for determined, which sounds about right given that last summer he told the club physio he wanted to have the best season of his career and he did just that, scoring more goals, 19 in the league, than ever before while encouraging team-mates to do the same.

Edited by brucey
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Stadt

Stadt

Posted
Posted

I soon forgot about the chip and was never too angry but that article has pissed me off a bit, blaming the other players and staff for ****ing up a chip, no you branleur the responsibility is entirely yours, if you're nervous and decide to put it down the middle then blast it.

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Mark_w

Mark_w

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, brucey said:

Martyn Waghorn also missed in the shoot-out but no one wrote a song about him.

Don't get angry Mark, we've won the Premier League.

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TheUltimateWinner

TheUltimateWinner

Posted
Posted

Isn't there a saying that goes something like if you think everyone else is the problem then maybe you're the problem?

 

Pearson gave him chances in sub appearances, but was kept out by a good strike force at the time. Just take responsibility by saying you shouldn't have chipped it! 

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ajthefox

ajthefox

Posted
Posted
4 hours ago, sylofox said:

Waghorn took an honest penalty and missed. Kermo went for a glory trick shot and fvcked it up. You would not see a smoker player in a world finals trying to come off three cushions to pot the black would you.

It was a very good save from he keeper in fairness. And the other thing is that Waggy was in bits afterwards, you could see what it meant to him.

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Xen

Xen

Posted
Posted
2 hours ago, ajthefox said:

It was a very good save from he keeper in fairness. And the other thing is that Waggy was in bits afterwards, you could see what it meant to him.

Not to mention, Kermorgant was a seasoned pro and aside from the obvious, there was no additional pressure on him at the time. Waggy was a 20 year old lad who knew that if he missed the penalty it was all over. 

 

From what I remember hearing at the time, Kermorgant had been smashing every penalty into the bottom corner - successfully - in training, then decided to change his style in the one moment that mattered. 

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The Doctor

The Doctor

Posted
Posted (edited)
12 hours ago, Tiny earl said:

If you read the article he's obviously still troubled by the incident and the song and as he said 

Waghorn missed a penalty and no one wrote a song about him!

 

That he's still troubled by it doesn't mean anyone is still persecuting him as you claim, most just don't give a shit about him.

 

yeah, waghorn missed a penalty, I'd even say his penalty was fairly poor (good height for the keeper and not right in the side netting. The sort you save if you go the right way), but he didn't try anything fancy, and was under far more pressure than kermorgant (he had to score to keep us in it - his was score or bust). I can sympathise with putting it down the middle, but that doesn't necessitate a chip.

Edited by The Doctor
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ALC Fox

ALC Fox

Posted
Posted (edited)

People on Twitter reacting like Carragher's comedy is reminiscent of Peter Kay or something.

 

I find it boring, old news and completely unprovoked (how long ago was their 'spat'?).

 

Hardly next-level bantz was it.

Edited by ALC Fox
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Brooksy

Brooksy

Posted
Posted
10 minutes ago, ALC Fox said:

People on Twitter reacting like Carragher's comedy is reminiscent of Peter Kay or something.

 

I find it boring, old news and completely unprovoked (how long ago was their 'spat'?).

 

Hardly next-level bantz was it.

I imagine the LAD Bible have already published an article about it titled 'Carragher absolutely owns Danny Simpson with tweet' 

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davieG

davieG

Posted
Posted
6 minutes ago, Brooksy said:

I imagine the LAD Bible have already published an article about it titled 'Carragher absolutely owns Danny Simpson with tweet' 

 

 

Not far off

 

https://www.joe.co.uk/sport/jamie-carragher-restarts-rivalry-with-danny-simpson-out-of-bloody-nowhere-127476

 

Carragher has proven himself a master troller and, whatever Simpson's response, we think it's safe to say that it's not going to be better than the stellar effort above from the Reds fan favourite.

Check.

Bloody.

Mate.

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Corky

Corky

Posted
Posted

The momentum had been lost by the Waghorn penalty, the miss seemed to stun everyone and Cardiff took the lead. Yes, Waghorn missed too but the tie was in their control, I think, maybe not totally through the scoreline but it gave them such a lift.

 

Hopefully Simpson will leave this alone, the argument was months ago and I thought people were moving on from the Ranieri stuff now. If it gets him retweets then so be it, Simpson doesn't need to rise to it.

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Ted Maul

Ted Maul

Posted
Posted
39 minutes ago, ALC Fox said:

People on Twitter reacting like Carragher's comedy is reminiscent of Peter Kay or something.

 

I find it boring, old news and completely unprovoked (how long ago was their 'spat'?).

 

Hardly next-level bantz was it.

Hilarious though, wasn't it? Leicester are snakes and that was great comedy, I've been led to believe.

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