Veterans can sometimes be ideal, just what the team needs, but there can also come a time where they suddenly, almost overnight, lose the bit of pace and athleticism that makes them lose out in challenges and short sprints. McCall became a liability as he turned 39 in 2003/04, something which also happened to the likes of Wayne Allison, Craig Short, David Unsworth, Gary Speed, Richard Cresswell after originally doing well for us.
Many players like to make light hearted comments like "I never had much pace anyway" or "my game has never relied on pace". They are admitting that their fitness is deteriorating, but claiming it's not relevant, suggesting they could play on forever. It wasn't the lightening pace and athleticism that made the players mentioned do well for us, but they had enough to get by. For a while. At some stage that ends.
Those players mentioned all did well for us originally (I liked all of them, and Little too), but over the years we've also made numerous signings which have been largely disappointing because they'd already reached the point where their experience could no longer compensate for their lack of fitness, i.e. the likes of Ashley Ward, Geoff Horsfield, Ade Akinbiyie, Garry Flitcroft, Ian Rush, Paul Parker, Iffy Onoura, Jonathan Fortune, Andy Goram, James Harper, Lee Hendrie, James Beattie (2nd time), Sun Jihai, Alan Wright etc.
We'll have to see for how long Robson can keep going, but I'd certainly be concerned if we offered a long term contract after getting promoted.
