However good bayo was for us the fact is as soon as we were no longer reliant on him we have got promoted.
He was a good player for the cobblers but made us one dimensional.
Only now without him have we progressed as a team.
Sad but true.
It should never be forgotten that in hindsight he was the polish on a shiny turd.
Top player/fans favourite but failed to get us promoted(albeit singlehandedly).
Il never forget his time at ntfc but can't help thinking that it's now been tarnished by the club improving for his absence.
Mind you when the club was on its arse he showed that he really cared for us by auctioning his shirt etc.
Arguments about his legacy aside he was a TOP,TOP bloke as well as a decent player and we were lucky to have him at the time!
I am sorry Shoemaker, as on occasions you do talk some sense
(And you already know I have an empathy for your situation) ...but almost everything you typed above is complete and utter rubbish and I can only suspect you may have been drinking?!!
"he was the polish on a shiny turd.." ...... 75 goals in just over 140 starts (and I suspect even more assists than that) represents a 1 in 2 strike rate over several seasons. This is far and away the best striking I have seen since the mid eighties when I started watching the Cobs...... I don't hear of many folks calling Alan Shearer or Gary Lineker "polish on shiny turds", and they had similar strike rates?!?!?
"He was a good player for the cobblers but made us one dimensional." .... Bayo didn't make us one dimensional.....Aidy short-arse Boothroyd flippin did!!?!?? His insistence on playing the 37 year old Clive Platt upfront alongside Bayo, or more crucially, the absence of ANY pacy, nippy, mobile players around Bayo to run beyond him and around him, and to complement his superb hold up play but undoubted lack of pace, and Boothroyds style of hoofing long diagonal balls up to Bayo, all stopped us playing any decent, counter attacking football. Bayo had the best first touch of any Cobblers striker I have seen, and when the ball was played in to him to feet, or to chest height or below, he retained the ball 99% of the time and developed the play superbly.
When Stuart Gray and Ian Sampson were manager, they both played a more mixed style of play, with a smattering of more speedy, nippy and mobile players, which brought the best out of the team, and out of Bayo.
How ludicrous to state that the success of Chris Wilders team of 2016 reflects badly in any way whatsoever on Bayo?!?! Every single one of the players we have now, Chris Wilder has brought in. It has nothing to do with Bayo whatsoever?!?
Do you not think that if you transplanted a Bayo of 5-6 years ago into this current team, he would find it nigh on impossible to score
less than 30 goals in the season?!?
"as soon as we were no longer reliant on him we have got promoted." HAHAHAHA!!!
Oh, so being a great player is now a negative?!? And I think you will find that it took slightly more than simply "getting rid" of Bayo for us to get promoted this season?!?!?!
Maybe you also think Bayo was responsible for our failure under Gary Johnson?!?
The biggest single reason we have just won the league is Chris Wilder.
He has recruited players that fit his system and style of play and he has managed them and motivated them and coached them into the team they are now.
It isn't Bayo's fault that we have won the league now?!?
By your reckoning......If Alexis Sanchez leaves Arsenal at the end of this season, and they sack Arsene Wenger and replace him with Diego Simeone, and he replaces the entire squad with his own players over the next 2-3 years and then Arsenal go on to win the Premier league, does that make it purely Alexis Sanchez's fault that they didn't win the league when he was there??!?! Does that make him a rubbish player?!? What happens to a team several years after a player has left, and managers have been changed, has absolutely NOTHING to do with how good a player he was when he was there.
Bayo left several years ago after being told at Xmas by DC that he "would never play for the club again, so he might aswell look for another club and leave before the transfer window shut" - AB had (allegedly) asked DC to tell Bayo this, since he didn't have the minerals to tell him himself....an interview with Bayo was posted on youtube explaining this, several months after he was released by AB)
And all this despite Bayo being top scorer in the league at Xmas with (I think?) 17 goals or so?
Not surprisingly, Bayo seemed to stop scoring then, and I think he only scored another 1 goal until the end of the season, despite getting us into the play offs and getting somewhere near back to his best in the last few matches he played.
To be dropped in the play off final, despite almost single handedly dragging your team mates there, and to be replaced by someone who was 37 and with a torn calf muscle, and who was by his own admission "only 30% fit" (Platt) and who hadn't run, trained, or kicked a ball in 8 weeks, must have absolutely shattered Bayo.
Being such a proud man, that must have really, really hurt, like a kick in the nuts.
He knew AB disliked him from the start, and after all he had been told to leave at Xmas.....so he knew the Play off final was going to be his last Cobblers match.
The Bradford players were buoyed hugely by the team news, the Cobblers players looked confused and bewildered even during the warm up, as to why their manager seemed to be trying to sabotage their one and only hope of getting promoted, and 25,000 Cobblers fans gasped in unison as the teams were announced, when they realised that their day out, their optimism, and the hundreds of pounds on tickets had been totally wasted before a ball had even been kicked.....
I will shut up now.