Bakke

[topbin]

Fuck me, Eirik Bakke's playing European football against Everton. And it's on the telly! Surprised the guy isn't crocked.

[thechubbyone]

Bakke in the UEFA Cup on channel 5. I fancy Bridges to bag a couple.

[gaz_lufc]

Come on Eirik beat them fucking shellsuit wearing car thieves!!

[Tonyeboah]

Fucker is playing quite well too. Had a goal disallowed just before half time

[The High Priest]

Looked quite fit and healthy, didn't he?

He'll always go down as one of my favourite Leeds players. Shame, though, that he never built on the promise of that first season when he nabbed eight goals. I still believe he was fucked by playing too much football.

[SimonB]

I have to admit to quite liking Bakke as a player for us, shame he was on too much money to stay with us in the championship.

[the flying pig]

[quote="The High Priest"]...
He [bakke]'ll always go down as one of my favourite Leeds players.../quote]

er, why?

i think that GW once accused me or someone else of being a "lover of mediocrity" or something similar on a leedschat.com thread a couple of years back...

and something similar springs to mind about anyone who claims bakke as a favourite player...

even at his best, he was alright, but surely not much more than that?

[The High Priest]

Remember him in his first game against Manchester United in, I think, 1999? Even scum fans were saying to me afterwards: you've got a player there.

Good engine, good athleticism, not bad in tight corners, an eye for goal - and he was wholehearted.

If you recall, he came to us that first season having played a full season of Norwegian football. So he ended up playing at least 15 successive months without a break.

If you look at some of our best players from that time, they were all overplayed: Kewell, McPhail, Bakke, Woodgate, Radebe. O'Leary NEVER rotated.

I remember us playing at Wimbledon (and losing 2-0) on the Sunday shortly after we'd played Lokomotiv Moscow, and saw Kewell run out looking almost dead.

O'Leary fucked up quite a few careers by overplaying youngsters. Kewell and McPhail's injuries (both achilles) were surely down to too many games, and Bakke too perhaps (albeit not helped by being a pisshead).

That's one reason, I believe, why so many of our best players of that era have gone on to have shite careers. O'Leary was a dinosaur in his team selection strategies. If they'd had a manager like Benitez or Ferguson, the likes of Kewell, McPhail, Bakke and Woodgate might be rather happier now.

[the flying pig]

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Remember him in his first game against Manchester United in, I think, 1999? Even scum fans were saying to me afterwards: you've got a player there.

Good engine, good athleticism, not bad in tight corners, an eye for goal - and he was wholehearted.

If you recall, he came to us that first season having played a full season of Norwegian football. So he ended up playing at least 15 successive months without a break.

If you look at some of our best players from that time, they were all overplayed: Kewell, McPhail, Bakke, Woodgate, Radebe. O'Leary NEVER rotated.

I remember us playing at Wimbledon (and losing 2-0) on the Sunday shortly after we'd played Lokomotiv Moscow, and saw Kewell run out looking almost dead.

O'Leary fucked up quite a few careers by overplaying youngsters. Kewell and McPhail's injuries (both achilles) were surely down to too many games, and Bakke too perhaps (albeit not helped by being a pisshead).

That's one reason, I believe, why so many of our best players of that era have gone on to have shite careers. O'Leary was a dinosaur in his team selection strategies. If they'd had a manager like Benitez or Ferguson, the likes of Kewell, McPhail, Bakke and Woodgate might be rather happier now.

on bakke, well, i don't know, i agree that, based on his 00/01 form, he looked like a good prospect [although we were maybe a bit generous on this front - he was 22/23 at the sign and, rather than signifying that he had the potential to improve his game tenfold, the fact that he'd been playing at a much lower standard up till then might just have meant that he wasn't up to all that much], and, at the time, was happy to have him in the squad.

but... his good performances and potential, for me, were far too fleeting for him ever to even come close to being one of my "favourite" leeds players like, you know, a shez or someone like that.

as i recall, his 'career' with us followed roughly the following trajectory:

1 - 99/00, bought supposedly as 'one for the future' but got a lot more games than we'd probably imagined due to batty and i guess hopkin being crocked... and did a fair lot better than one might have dared to hope. not really a top player yet but one to watch.

2 - 00/01, his second season, didn't do all that much for me really... he basically got a game when either bowyer on the right [to be fair, bakke was very poorly suited to that position] or batty/dacourt in the middle were unavailable, and for me was a weak link whenever he did [althuogh to be fair those three were amongst the handflu of real form players in their positions probably in europe].

01/02 - the start of his injuries? the only decent game i recall him playing was as an emergency centre back.

3 - 02/03 - venables tried him out as a 'holding' player, but he didn't really do much there for me. more injuries?

3 - 03/04 - lots and lots of injuries, hardly any football.

4 - 04/05 - a kind of much more injured version of 03/04

4 - 05/06 - similar to 03/04.

5 - 06/07 - a short, injury-plagued, spell followed by him being chucked out.


and he was earning good money throughout this entire period. i find it hard to remember him with any real fondness.

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What the fuck is all that shit ??

[The High Priest]

In 1999/00, our central midfield pairing for the bulk of that season was McPhail/Bakke after Batty got injured. They were absolutely terrific.

I think that both (but McPhail especially) were fucked over by successive managers.

[thechubbyone]

The problem with Bakke is that he looked pretty good when we first signed him, and people wrongly presumed he would continue to improve. A few nasty injures and a reservoir of beer can't have helped his cause much either to be fair. For me he's more on the Duberry and Johnson list of players that just ended up costing us a fortune to get rid of.

[Phil LUFC]

There was a time when I thought he was an important part of our midfield - if he didn't play, we didn't play. Injuries saw to that thought!

I'm refering to the start of the CL season, we started the season pretty poorly and were without most of our midfield, it was highlighted by his performance at home to 1860 munich (before he was sent off). Then he got injured and Dacourt started to dominate our midfield and from then on there was no way bakke (sorry).

That opinion is largely based on the previous season and what others have said but I'll remember him in that long list of players who might have been fantastic for us if it weren't for injuries.

[BFCWhite]

[quote="the flying pig"]
i think that GW once accused me or someone else of being a "lover of mediocrity" or something similar on a leedschat.com thread a couple of years back...

and something similar springs to mind about anyone who claims bakke as a favourite player...

even at his best, he was alright, but surely not much more than that?[/quote]

Surely that isn't the point though? A player does not have to be the most skillful in the side to be a favourite. Currently, I am quite a fan of Hughes, but that has much more to do with attitude and application rather than any skill.
Bakke can quite rightly be remembered fondly for me, because he played a big part in that exciting time He was a first team regular in a side which won many more games than it lost, playing some really good stuff. That time went sour for us all, him included, but you can't deny the role he played in us winning games.

[MG[SPAMBOT]]

If you look at some of our best players from that time, they were all overplayed: Kewell, McPhail, Bakke, Woodgate, Radebe. O'Leary NEVER rotated. O'Leary was a dinosaur in his team selection strategies

O'Leary was also poor at using Subsitutes, probably his biggest weakness

If we were Winning, leave em be, if we were Losing he still left em alone!

Even when the game was crying out for a change and something different

Only remember him once trying something different to change a game we were losing at ER, he stuck Duberry on to play CF[/quote]

That is one of the few criticism's of O'L that rings true, wasn't his strong suit and I recall being quite frustrated at the business end of 2001-02 with that. However (in retrospect) if Mac's only issue is use of subs as opposed to being a con man and liar (Venables), an unlucky dinosour (Reid), a meaningless figurehead (Gray), a deluded fool (Blackwell) or an hypocrite (Wise) then I can live with that.