Gérald Cid, centre back extraordinaire. During his six months at The Reebok he made a  solid seven appearances bagging a total of no goals. He was even nicknamed ‘The Hapless Gérald Cid,’ because he was so, well… Rubbish.

Anyway, I always knew he returned to France to play for Nice, but after some world-class procrastination on Wikipedia earlier, I discovered that Cid retired at the end of the 2009/10 season.

Gérald is now 29, which means he retired at the ‘peak’ of his career at just 27-years-old. Now, I cannot find anything to say that injury hindered his illustrious* career, (which somehow included no international appearances, not even at youth level!) So, we here at Voice of Bolton have concluded that there is only one possible reason for him to retire.

When leaving Bolton, Cid supposedly stated that he didn’t like the English game because ‘the forwards do not tackle defenders in France.’ It seems to me that by 2010, French strikers had adapted to how us Brits played the game and started to get stuck in, much to Gérald Cid’s disappointment.

So despite his raw* defensive talent, the evolution of the beautiful game was too much for this Bolton legend*.

*Any reference to Gérald Cid being a talented player is exaggerated and should not be taken on face value.