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Gazza

It’s really sad to see Gazza and the toll alcoholism has took on him. Kenny Samson cropped up in conversation recently too and Paul McGrath is another footballer who hit rock bottom.

it’s a little bit of a stretch to say Fergie would definitely have been better for him. There have been a few players with personal issues at United that have ultimately been bombed out and have their issues surface afterwards, rather than be rehabilitated.

I’d think it would have been just as possible that Fergie would have lost patience with him and sold him as he did with others.
 
I understand my position is somewhat controversial and it's easier to say the things I'm about to say when you're not talking about someone you actually know. So, just to be clear, I mean no disrespect whatsoever here.

No matter how much we love them, I think you have to accept that some people's stars burn brighter but shorter. Of course, we all wished there wouldn't be that self-destructive side to Gazza's personality but I'm not sure you could take away an element of somebody's personality without altering the whole. It goes without saying that drinking had nothing to do with Gascoigne's talent with a football but maybe the things that made him an addict also made him a fantastic player.

Not sure I'm making much sense but I've seen people (some of them were, I think, great artists) use drugs and alcohol in a way that was borderline suicidal. When they were forcefully taken off the product, either it didn't stick or they just became a shell of their former selves.

Again, I'm not saying what's happening to him is cool or that it's the price to pay for his talent. I really wish him to get over that some day, somehow. But I have to admit that I never wondered about what might have been. He is who he is and that's what he owes to all the good things that happened in his life... but also the bad things.
 
thfcsteff said:
Talking of Gazza purely as an alcoholic misses so much. Very sad. Miraculous he is still here in many ways. Happy he is.
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How different things might’ve been for Gazza if he hadn’t suffered so many season ending injuries; as for any professional footballer being unable to play the game he loves for months on end would be stressful, let alone a manic-depressive one.
 
Baleforce said:
I think he'd be in a different place now had Sir Alex gotten hold of him rather than El Tel.

(Not a knock against Venables, just that Fergie was great at protecting his players)
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Sorry but that is a fallacy.... At the time we signed Gascoigne Man Utd had one of the biggest, if not the biggest of all drinking cultures in the country.

Bryan Robson, Viv Anderson, Mark Hughes, Norman Whiteside, Paul McGrath..... Those blokes were serious drinkers not like the few pints of shandy lot that we had at Spurs.

Had Gascoigne joined Man Utd he would've been joining that drinking club and not only that but been under the microscope even more than he was at Spurs.
 
parklane1 said:
h
He would not have been out drinking every night down at El Tels bar for sure. Fergie was dead set about his players tinkling it up all the time that is why he got rid of Whiteside etc.
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He would've been in Man Utd's drinking club instead. Bryan Robson was the leader of that drinking club and he left Man Utd two years after Gazza left Spurs.
 
Finney Is Back said:
Sorry but that is a fallacy.... At the time we signed Gascoigne Man Utd had one of the biggest, if not the biggest of all drinking cultures in the country.

Bryan Robson, Viv Anderson, Mark Hughes, Norman Whiteside, Paul McGrath..... Those blokes were serious drinkers not like the few pints of shandy lot that we had at Spurs.

Had Gascoigne joined Man Utd he would've been joining that drinking club and not only that but been under the microscope even more than he was at Spurs.
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True, but they all predated him, SAF was successful at keeping the youngsters away from it.
 
Bullet said:
That's a good point, he beat up his wife didn't he? I'd forgotten about that
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You raise a really important fact, and one that puts a mirror to me and countless others I'd imagine.
He was, indeed, a wife-beater. Unforgivable, and regardless of whether it was something twinned with his alcoholism or mental health, it is a disgraceful side to his legacy, and ignoring it simply reinforces the hypocrite in all of us.
 
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