We don't have to tell him what he has to do because he is a professional and we want him to deliver on track first.

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Bob Owens of Southington, Connecticut, contends Petraeus is simply doing what soldiers do: "Asking the general if he can win is like asking a professional athlete if he wants the ball in a critical point in the game, " Owens wrote.

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"Unless the senator is a physician, ethicist or other informed professional, he should step aside and let the medical professionals determine what is best in individual cases, " Dorothy West wrote in a letter to the editor of the Athens Banner-Herald, Hudgens' hometown paper.

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Muamba is taking specialist medical advice ahead of what he hopes to be a return to the rigors of the professional game.

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Interestingly, a big part of his approach involved something that is not at all exclusive to being a renowned professional fund manager: He invested in what he knew.

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When he emerged, some predicted he would become the best player in the world, which is what tends to happen when you make your professional debut at age 16 and your England debut a year later.

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