Why so much resentment towards Ashton?

It's a fact of the modern game that players use mid-sized clubs to further their careers, just as (say) people like us use certain jobs as a stop-gap while we attempt to do what we really want with our lives.

Everyone has done well out of the Ashton deal.

Dean has another chance to play in the Premiership - where he palpably proved he belonged last season with 7 (very good) goals in 16 matches for a team that was really struggling to score before his arrival.

The club have made a tidy profit on a player that did have some genuine injury problems, and it gives Worthington one last chance to save his reputation. If he does spend the money well, and we finish this season very strongly, he may get another season even if we don't make the play-offs - then if he spends wisely in the summer we may make it in 2006-7 (I don't have much faith in this happening, but it's possible).

Our young strikers will have learned from playing with Ashton.

And Ashton's attitude really hasn't been that bad. He signed a new contract over the summer which guaranteed as big a fee as the club wanted to charge, he never once publicly said he wanted to leave, and I don't think his work-rate has been as poor as has been made out - as Pardew said, no striker has had more shots on target in the Championship this season.

I don't see Ashton as a Canary legend - I would if we'd stayed up at Fulham, especially if he'd scored, but it didn't happen. I always thought he looked streets ahead of our other players, and would move on if we failed to establish himself, but I don't think he's been as lazy or as uncommitted as people make out.

Rather, he's justifiably disappointed at where the club has gone since relegation, in terms of its playing style and level of ambition, stuck it out for as long as he could, and has then taken a decent offer. If you had a job that you genuinely enjoyed and that enjoyment was being sucked out of it by poor management, you'd want to move on, too.

From what Worthington has been saying, the club clearly DID want to sell him - hence the constant statements like "We don't have any decent offers on the table" and "He can leave if the price is right" - Ashton's behaviour has not been unreasonable at any point and I see no more reason to resent him than we should Bellamy, Fox, Sutton or Eadie.

I don't agree with this knee-jerk re-judgement of Ashton as a lazy, slow, uncommitted and over-rated striker - he very nearly saved our Premiership season, was key to our greatest, most satisfying victory since Bayern Munich and has been our most talented player since Bellamy.

Posted By: Ottosson Foxtrot, Jan 24, 14:48:20