The fall of Thomas Parkes

Threads like this do absolutely nothing to help. Heaven forbid he reads it. I think people forget sometimes that fans can ruin a player.

The fact that there has been no interest in him pretty much tells you everything you need to know. You would have thought that a 22 year-old, former England youth international playing the non-league football would have suitors but from what I can see there has been little or no interest in him. He needs to pull his finger out, frankly.

Yeah, this is getting a bit like 'nobody mention the war.'

Our team is pretty sh**. Lots of individuals have been playing sh**. These are facts.

If I were in the Rovers squad now, and I were feeling a bit delicate about what people might be saying about us, then I wouldn't go onto the forums to check.

If they need to go on the internet to have their confidence buoyed then they're in the wrong game.

I guess the frustrating thing is that we all think he is good enough. He needs to show it.

Guardian article 2009.

Some 10,000 boys are currently performing in top clubs' academies and centres of excellence, and uncalculated thousands more in development squads and "shadow" development squads, run because youth directors have to be sure no child is being missed. Green gives due credit to the system's merits: the clubs have invested abundantly and continue to spend an estimated £66m a year on staff and mostly excellent facilities. Some of the coaching is expert, many of the staff are highly professional and dedicated.

Huw Jennings, who resigned as the Premier League's head of youth development this year to run Fulham's academy, argues this has borne fruit: "The skill levels, ball mastery, balance and flexibility of our young players is better than ever," he claims.

Yet while parents give family life over to ferrying boys to training three nights a week and matches on Sundays against other professional clubs' academies many hours' travel away, the reality is that just 1% of the trainees will ultimately play football for a living.

Even the few who survive the annual cuts and make it to a "scholarship" at 16 are likely to fall away. Research tracking academy boys is itself difficult to find but it is accepted that only a minority of boys awarded "scholarships" remain in the professional game at 21. Of those who win the golden ticket of a proper, professional contract at 18, the vast majority, Green found, are also not playing professionally at 21.

So, in the grand scheme of things, Tom Parkes is doing pretty well to be earning a crust from football at all.

For some reason Parkes has decided he is a better footballer than he actually is.
Sadly there were traces of this towards the end of last season. i.e dribbling the ball out of defence and trying to beat people just outside our penalty area and playing "Holywood" passes square across the back line.
It appears now he has lost weight and is much fitter [that may be questionable] this habit has returned and is a far more frequent occurance.
Whether he has been encouraged to do this by our Manager with his wish to play attractive football is anyones' guess, but one things for sure, we will concede far more stupid goals in this league until he realises he is, who he is!