Kieran Lee - Should we have kept him?

[Inspector Lestrade 23,125]

Do we know how well he's playing?  Do the fans rate him?

[The Wall 2,487]

He was brilliant for us. Still annoys me that Dave Jones had one of the best midfielders in the division right under his nose and totally overlooked him.

Probably time to move on though

[hirstyboywonder 13,932]

13 minutes ago, SallyCinnamon said:

What sort of club are we that we keep having to cling on to players of the past. What state are we in that we can’t look forward and find the new versions of said players.

This includes Bannan, Hutchinson, Westwood, Lees too. All need moving on imo. 

 

The sort of club that ended last season with a 12 point deduction going into this season so not many worth their salt were entertaining the thought of signing for us? 

[Sticky Micky 8,686]

Fantastic player for us 

If it wasn't for injuries he'd have been a premier league player with out a doubt. 

Best player we've had since Premier league days. 

 

Was the right time to move on for him and the club. 

 

Just sad that covid robbed us the chance to thank him at the end of last season 

[Dutch McLovin 3,091]

30 minutes ago, parajack said:

NO........how much longer are people going to want to keep  aging,alleged injury prone players!!!!  We need to find the next younger,fitter KL and bring them on....

Your right. But the thing is we didn’t. We kept Pelupessy play Bannan in a two and had to bring back Hutch. Luongo is injured more than he plays Hunt no where near and Shaw jumped ship.

 

Releasing him was the right move but not replacing him wasn’t which makes releasing him the wrong move. Would have made a difference for us this season.

 

Hes not the only one mind you Nuhiu who we have needed to upgrade on for years would have been a massive upgrade on all our forwards. 
 

This is the mess Garry Monk left us in. Sent us backwards for years. 

[Drewswfc 2,963]

8 minutes ago, Dutch McLovin said:

Your right. But the thing is we didn’t. We kept Pelupessy play Bannan in a two and had to bring back Hutch. Luongo is injured more than he plays Hunt no where near and Shaw jumped ship.

 

Releasing him was the right move but not replacing him wasn’t which makes releasing him the wrong move. Would have made a difference for us this season.

 

Hes not the only one mind you Nuhiu who we have needed to upgrade on for years would have been a massive upgrade on all our forwards. 
 

This is the mess Garry Monk left us in. Sent us backwards for years. 

Bang on the money this post... If KL was on the pitch for us we wouldn't hoof it half as much

[Lord Snooty 55,484]

5 minutes ago, Inspector Lestrade said:

Do we know how well he's playing?  Do the fans rate him?

 

“He brings final third quality and legs to the team – and that might seem strange for a 32-year-old but if you look at his data he is running more than 12k a game, which is Championship/Premier League standard, and what we want from our midfield players. He is another calm head, someone who has been there and done it. And he will bring that quality to us and give us a different option.  Kieran is able to do the other side of the game too really helps our two centre backs and helps the team function.

Ian Evatt, Bolton Manager

 

"Kieran Lee finished tonight's game  with a 97 per cent pass success rate.

And 44 of his 67 passes went forward... in case you think he was just playing it safe. 

Marc Iles, Chief Sports Writer Bolton News

[Mike Hunt 8,797]

Yes , said it at the time and even more so now , he would have been invaluable to bring on to hold a game , he would not start every game but Joey or KL tough choice 

[Lucas Joao's Tooth 359]

Personally thought he should have got another year, if we had him for 15 games this season he'd have been worth a contract and anything more would have been a bonus.

Nuhiu another example, it was the right time for him to leave but did we adequately replace him? I don't think so.

Kieran Lee is exactly the type of player we've missed this season someone to break the lines.

It's easy to sit there and say about nostalgia etc being a factor but for me the biggest factor is we needed bodies it was evident that we struggled to bring players in with the signing of Kachunga.

i rather have carried a few extra players like Lee and Nuhiu who would've took reduced terms to stay and to offer us something different than sit there struggling to bring bodies in after we let them go.

People can talk about bringing through the youngsters and finding the next Kieran Lee etc all they want but at the end of the day look at our position and ask yourselves did we improve the squad this summer and did we adequately replace the outgoing players.

[Colin Dobson 196]

6 wins in a row for Bolton & Lee must be helping with that. The likelihood is that we’ll see if “he still got it” before too long. I mentioned a couple of months ago Bolton might make the play-offs; on current form make that automatic promotion! It’s a tricky one because I can see both sides of the argument but the way things have turned out this season we should have kept him & then asked him to stay again for yet another season for our 4th stint in League One! Loved the guy - heartbreaking that injury so debilitated him.

[matthefish2002 13,610]

We cant keep resigning players who have a poor injury record and over 30 because they were good 5 years ago.

 

 

[Kagoshimaowl 3,528]

Instead of Pelupessy, yes. Generally...he’ll no!

[CourteenerOwl 254]

Look forward to playing Bolton next season and Lee outclassing Pelupessy who no doubt will sign a new deal.

 

 

[shezzas left peg 2,999]

As someone else mentioned K Lee was probably my favourite player since the 90's. 

That said it was time to move on both for us and him and hope he does well and enjoys his football at Bolton. 

 

Didn't we get him from somewhere like Chester? Can't remember off hand. 

Let's hope Big Daz knows someone younger, similar in the lower tier and cheap who could possibly step up like Lee did. 

[Inspector Lestrade 23,125]

4 minutes ago, matthefish2002 said:

We cant keep resigning players who have a poor injury record and over 30 because they were good 5 years ago.

 

 

 

How many times have we done it?

[Lord Snooty 55,484]

5 minutes ago, shezzas left peg said:

As someone else mentioned K Lee was probably my favourite player since the 90's. 

That said it was time to move on both for us and him and hope he does well and enjoys his football at Bolton. 

 

Didn't we get him from somewhere like Chester? Can't remember off hand. 

Let's hope Big Daz knows someone younger, similar in the lower tier and cheap who could possibly step up like Lee did. 

 

Oldham.

For less than £200k

 

Remarkable what bargains you can find when you have different eyes looking...

[FreshOwl 11,480]

No

 

Best player in the division , yeah in L2

 

And he’s played 7 games 

[HIGHERSTATE 5,461]

Just for the last 5 minutes vs Rovrum?

 

Hell why not eh

[WhiteOwl91 3,697]

44 minutes ago, SallyCinnamon said:

What sort of club are we that we keep having to cling on to players of the past. What state are we in that we can’t look forward and find the new versions of said players.

This includes Bannan, Hutchinson, Westwood, Lees too. All need moving on imo. 

We all know we should be recruiting new versions (or hoped to be new versions) of those players. 

The problem is, we released Lee and didn't even remotely do that. And my fear is, we move on the above players, and don't do that yet again. 

 

We should have moved Lee on and replaced him with someone younger with potential. We didn't, so if we weren't going to, we may as well have kept him. 

We should only move on the above if we have any plan about properly and adequately replacing them.

 

At least since 1 week ago, I hope Darren Moore might prove a big part to play in ensuring we learn from previous mistakes (Fletcher, Lee etc..) and do just that. 

[hirstyboywonder 13,932]

4 minutes ago, shezzas left peg said:

As someone else mentioned K Lee was probably my favourite player since the 90's. 

That said it was time to move on both for us and him and hope he does well and enjoys his football at Bolton. 

 

Didn't we get him from somewhere like Chester? Can't remember off hand. 

Let's hope Big Daz knows someone younger, similar in the lower tier and cheap who could possibly step up like Lee did. 

 

We signed him on a free from Oldham when his contract expired, he was developing a decent reputation and was highly regarded at that level & was a product of Man Utd's academy.

 

Finding young, hungry players of a similar ilk to what he was at the time is definitely a route we should be looking at now. Whether he would have made a positive impact this season who knows. 

 

With his fitness record it was difficult to justify whether it would have been worth giving him a new contract but then as fans we didn't know the exact nature of the financial position and that we were likely to be ht with a big points penalty. If we knew at the time that we would be left with Bannan, Shaw, Hunt, Dele Bashiru, Pelupessy, Luongo and Brown to pick from in midfield then we might have wanted to still have Lee as an option.

There were signs last season that something wasn't right with Luongo's fitness and Brown's career has never pointed towards him being an ever-present.