What's 100% anyway?

By Jr
February 25 2005

Players have to give 100% for Millwall, but what exactly is this magic figure? If a player looks lazy, does that mean he is? Should all players play with their hearts, or do you need some who play with their heads? Seems at Millwall, the heart always rules the head. But is that a good thing?

Ever since PC games like Championship Manager, fans have felt they're better managers than the current incumbent of the hot seat.

Everyone picks a more balanced side than Sven for England, for example.

At Millwall, we've hounded out McGhee only to watch him succeed at Brighton.

We've done the same with players.

Dion Dublin was described as a "donkey" in a fanzine, but then finished Villa's top scorer the following season.

Kevin Davies was booed mercilessly and accused of only scoring "tap-ins" and look at him now!

Some accused him of not giving 100%, but I saw all of Davies' performances for Millwall and he gave it his all in my opinion (although it may not have looked like it).

Of course, in truth, I prefered the likes of Marc Bircham when he was with us, and was gutted when he left for QPR.

Bircham was more Millwall than Davies could ever be. But I think Davies plays with his head and not his heart, and you need a combination of types to be a successful team at any level.

Then there was Kinet. He bottled out of challenges but conned our crowd by making token runs to track back when he'd lost his man. McGhee seemed to think Kinet was a joke defensively (quite rightly in my opinion), as did a prominent radio summariser. Yet our fans loved him. I liked Kinet, to be honest, for his crossing ability, but I couldn't say he gave 100%. Yet, most of the fans presumably would say he did give his all.

One thing I do know is we as fans have to give 100% backing if we want to get the best out of our team. We did that against Stoke and, of course, we lost. But we just have to face the fact our team are not quite good enough.

I really don't think it's lack of effort, I mean, would you dare to give our fans anything less than 100% if you were out there? Exactly. I thought not!

But if you were a "thinking man's player", maybe you wouldn't run through brick walls like a blue-backsided fly. If you were a creative player (like Tessem), you couldn't be expected to go in for crunching tackles like a Livermore.

All I'm saying is it's hard to tell who's giving 100%. Some players are getting injections before games to play, risking their future health to turn out for us. Then they can get abuse, if they don't chase every thing that moves like a greyhound at the now defunct Catford dog track.

It makes a nonsense of this 100% thing. Only the players themselves know if they're giving 100%. The manager might have a clue, if he understands how his players tick and watches them carefully in training etc.

But sorry, we as fans, don't have a clue whether the players are giving it everything. Well, not unless we're mind-readers anyway.

I haven't seen too many crystal balls at the Den, judging by the fact that "players who gave 100%" like Ryan and Nethercott are struggling in the basement, while "ones that didn't" like Davies flourish in the Premiership.

Maybe we should just focus on what we're good at: supporting the team!