GREATEST EVER....Transfer Disasters

[J. James]

From the original list it is the obnoxious Wise for me, just because he was... Well Dennis Wise, cant put the words i want to post cos I'd be banned.

[don_danbury]

ricardo didnt cost anything did he? i'd have several other players ahead of him that were worse

[frakenfox]

As far as I can make out, Diabaté was an 'inspired' purchase, a punt if you prefer, that didn't pay off. I wouldn't go much further than that. The photo of him, blue dyed dreds, pulling a wheelie on an mtb made me smile though.

 

 

Edited 27 April 2022 by frakenfox

[foxfanazer]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

2004/5 must be one of the worst for recruitment

 

Danny Tiatto            Free    01.07.2004
Gareth Williams            £500,000    01.07.2004
Dion Dublin            Free    01.07.2004
Jason Wilcox            Free    01.07.2004
Kevin Pressman            Free    14.07.2004
David Connolly            £500,000    20.07.2004
Martin Keown            Free    20.07.2004
Nathan Blake            Free    30.07.2004
Joey Guðjónsson            Free    01.08.2004
Chris Makin            Free    02.08.2004
Scott Gemmill            Free    05.08.2004
Kevin Harper            On loan    08.09.2004
Stuart Taylor            On loan    18.11.2004
Mark de Vries            Unknown    06.01.2005
Alan Maybury            Unknown    06.01.2005
Lars Hirschfeld            Unknown    29.01.2005
Stephen Hughes            £100,000    31.01.2005
Patrick McCarthy            £100,000    03.03.2005
Darren Kenton            On loan    03.03.2005
Stefan Moore            On loan    11.03.2005
Patrick Kisnorbo            Unknown    27.04.2005
Paul Henderson            Free    26.05.2005
Momo Sylla            Free    01.06.2005
Robert Douglas       Free        06.06.2005  

I just threw up in my mouth

[The Horse's Mouth]

Diabate wasn't really worse than Gray tbh

[Sampson]

4 minutes ago, foxfanazer said:

I just threw up in my mouth

Tbf we sold David Connolly for like £3mil so probably made a profit on all those players from that alone.

 

Shows how bleak that 2004-08 side was though. We used to overhaul the entire squad every season

[Guest StevieLynex]

Worst of all time:

 

Swap deal involving Jim Melrose and Tommy English

 

Also worth a mention:

 

Ahmed Musa

Graham Fenton

Harry Kane 

Mark Grew

Ron-Robert Zieler

Lammie Robertson

Alan Waddle

Gregor Stevens

 

Edited 27 April 2022 by StevieLynex

[Dorkingfox]

14 minutes ago, J. James said:

From the original list it is the obnoxious Wise for me, just because he was... Well Dennis Wise, cant put the words i want to post cos I'd be banned.

He was a total a hole

[Sampson]

Graham Fenton is a really good shout actually.
 

Was one of our biggest and most hyped signings ever at the time and came with great pedigree as Blackburn’s sub striker behind Shearer and Sutton in their title winning side (and scored a few goals that season), who we were all super excited about. But he was absolutely bloody useless.

 

Think he was either our record signing or 2nd biggest ever signing after Matt Elliott at the time? Can’t remember whether we signed him before or after Elliott.

 

I think he only got like 2 or 3 goals in about 50 odd games.

 

Definitely O’Neill’s worst ever signing at any rate.

Edited 27 April 2022 by Sampson

[sylofox]

I fail to see why Denis the Cvnt is not top of everyone's list.

 

That horrible little sh1t nearly lost us our club.

 

That's a damn sight more than all the transfer fees added together from all the other players we care to name.

 

For me it's not a list only one cvnt on it.

[Monk]

So many to choose from but it has to be Kalac for me. 

[SouthStandUpperTier]

Just checked Slimani's stats while at LCFC,

 

0.46 goals per 90 mins

0.29 assists per 90 mins

 

That's really actually pretty good. Obviously the signing didn't work out overall, but he wasn't a bad player by any means. He was just the wrong fit for the way our squad was developing.

[Vacamion]

 

The goalies getting mentioned in this thread 

 

Kalac

Ricardo

Ron Robert Zieler

 

You can probably add Rab Douglas and Jimmy "Casino" Neilsen.

 

Thank goodness for Kasper Schmeichel and Danny Ward.

 

 

[Supergray22]

Some transfers were bad but turn out ok in the end like Musa and then there are the really disastrous ones that leave you angry for years afterwards which are few and far between fortunately. The little twat tops the list. Dennis. 

[Lineker's Left Foot]

Swapping Jimmy Quinn for Mick Kennedy …erm why??

[Golden Fox]

1 hour ago, davieG said:

2004/5 must be one of the worst for recruitment

 

Danny Tiatto            Free    01.07.2004
Gareth Williams            £500,000    01.07.2004
Dion Dublin            Free    01.07.2004
Jason Wilcox            Free    01.07.2004
Kevin Pressman            Free    14.07.2004
David Connolly            £500,000    20.07.2004
Martin Keown            Free    20.07.2004
Nathan Blake            Free    30.07.2004
Joey Guðjónsson            Free    01.08.2004
Chris Makin            Free    02.08.2004
Scott Gemmill            Free    05.08.2004
Kevin Harper            On loan    08.09.2004
Stuart Taylor            On loan    18.11.2004
Mark de Vries            Unknown    06.01.2005
Alan Maybury            Unknown    06.01.2005
Lars Hirschfeld            Unknown    29.01.2005
Stephen Hughes            £100,000    31.01.2005
Patrick McCarthy            £100,000    03.03.2005
Darren Kenton            On loan    03.03.2005
Stefan Moore            On loan    11.03.2005
Patrick Kisnorbo            Unknown    27.04.2005
Paul Henderson            Free    26.05.2005
Momo Sylla            Free    01.06.2005
Robert Douglas       Free        06.06.2005  

Fair to say we couldn't afford much at the time, so it was bargain basement shopping. Total cost there is £1.2m. We sold Connolly to Wigan for £3 million (if Wikipedia can be trusted, it was £2m, rising to £3 million if they stayed in the Premiership, which they did) & McCarthy to Charlton for £650k.

Granted we had to pay wages while they were here, but a profit of around £2.5m reflected relatively good business by the club at the time: not sure its fair to class this as a disaster.

 

(Added to this, when you see the likes of Dublin having his contract mutually cancelled & then going on to have 70 appearances at a higher level (as Norwich were at the time) and becoming a bit of a fan favourite there, it probably says more about our management of the players than the recruitment of them in the first place).

[Scotch]

1 hour ago, SouthStandUpperTier said:

I think he means the Goalkeeper from the early 2010s (who was awful).

Fair play. My bad @stevejpos 

 

Sorry for jumping the gun and accusing you of being on the gear. 

[The Horse's Mouth]

Funny to think kelechi would've been top of the charts had it not been for last season 

[davieG]

6 minutes ago, Golden Fox said:

Fair to say we couldn't afford much at the time, so it was bargain basement shopping. Total cost there is £1.2m. We sold Connolly to Wigan for £3 million (if Wikipedia can be trusted, it was £2m, rising to £3 million if they stayed in the Premiership, which they did) & McCarthy to Charlton for £650k.

Granted we had to pay wages while they were here, but a profit of around £2.5m reflected relatively good business by the club at the time: not sure its fair to class this as a disaster.

 

(Added to this, when you see the likes of Dublin having his contract mutually cancelled & then going on to have 70 appearances at a higher level (as Norwich were at the time) and becoming a bit of a fan favourite there, it probably says more about our management of the players than the recruitment of them in the first place).

You're correct we didn't have a pot to piss, I wasn't suggesting it was a disaster as much as a terrible year for recruitment, As for Dublin, like Keown he was never interested in putting himself out for us he was all arms and mouth with very little effort.

[Sampson]

9 minutes ago, davieG said:

You're correct we didn't have a pot to piss, I wasn't suggesting it was a disaster as much as a terrible year for recruitment, As for Dublin, like Keown he was never interested in putting himself out for us he was all arms and mouth with very little effort.

I thought Dublin did alright for us at the time as a converted centre back. I think many of us expected him to be another Les Ferdinand, after Ferdinand was great for us an an old man, which he wasn’t, but he still did ok. Certainly unfair to mention him in the same breath as someone like Keown who was just here for a final payday.

Edited 27 April 2022 by Sampson

[davieG]

2 minutes ago, Sampson said:

I thought Dublin did alright for us at the time as a converted centre back. I think many of us expected him to be another Les Ferdinand, after Ferdinand was great for us an an old man, which he wasn’t, but he still did ok. Certainly unfair to mention him in the same breath as someone like Keown who was just here for a final payday.

Well we all see what we see and for me he always looked like he didn't give a xzxx and wasn't prepared to go the extra yard and was just here for the payday.

 

 

[Golden Fox]

1 minute ago, davieG said:

Well we all see what we see and for me he always looked like he didn't give a xzxx and wasn't prepared to go the extra yard and was just here for the payday.

 

 

Why do you think that was & why do you think changed when he went to Norwich & had a new lease of life? You'd have thought that if he would have put that extra effort in anywhere, it would have been with his hometown club.

 

Personally - I think it just all caught up with us as a club that year: the relegation from the Premier League the year before was painful as it felt we had a much better team than the results we got, and the whole La Manga incident was a stain. I don't think Adams had fully recovered mentally from it, and it was just a crap environment to walk into and the club was on a slide. There were also a lot of new players coming in (and as you say, not a good window from a quality perspective). Ironically, its likely Dublin just never quite felt at home in that situation, but the first few months of that season set the table for the relegation to tier 3 - even if it took 3 more years.

[Rain King]

19 minutes ago, Sampson said:

I thought Dublin did alright for us at the time as a converted centre back. I think many of us expected him to be another Les Ferdinand, after Ferdinand was great for us an an old man, which he wasn’t, but he still did ok. Certainly unfair to mention him in the same breath as someone like Keown who was just here for a final payday.

I thought he was abysmal for us. Offered nothing and was as bad in defence as he was up front.

[SouthStandUpperTier]

The 5th round cup winner at Charlton is enough to keep Dublin off the list imho.

[dmayne7]

1 hour ago, Sampson said:

Akinbiyi was the biggest transfer of the Taylor era, but we didn't spunk our entire budget on him - I think we spent about £15mil that season overall, so he was only around 1/3rd of the season budget. We overpaid for Akinbiyi for sure, 1 non-penalty goal in 4 is hardly the end of the world though. Slimani was also our record signing and a much relatively bigger one too and had an even worse record than Akinbiyi, while also being the marquee signing of our Champions League income.

 

There were much worse signings from that Peter Taylor in that season alone though. Matt Jones cost £3mil under Taylor as well and was far worse value for money. Trevor Benjamin cost £1.6mil. Gary Rowett was an ok player, but we overpaid quite a lot for him at £3mil. Lee Marshall £600k, Richard Cresswell £750k etc.

 

I think it's harsh to put the entirety of Taylor's disastrous spending on the Akinbiyi signing, the signings around him were just as bad if not worse.

I agree that it's not fair to pin it all on him but that was massive money for us at the time and he had to replace Heskey which he didn't do.

 

Obviously Slimani didn't work out but whilst he was our record signing, it was a much less significant investment compared to what Akinbiyi was at the time, as silly as that may sound when just looking at the money. Slimani was brought in to improve the squad, not replace a player so the fact that it didn't work out, didn't have anywhere near the impact Akinbiyi's relative failure did. If we'd splashed £30m on Slimani and got relegated then I'd view it as a much more disastrous transfer though we'd have still had the money to survive and not go into administration as a result of that.

 

As I said, Akinbiyi wasn't a terrible player but he was symbolic of everything that was wrong with us. A club that was on the cusp of breaking into the very top of the league built on astute and bargain signings, to one that was in freefall, splashing the cash on division 1 players. 

 

On a pure footballing level you could argue that the signings were fairly similar in terms of success but when you bring in the wider context, it's hard to look past Akinbiyi as one of, if not the worst (not his fault).

 

Also worth saying that Taylor's overspending wasn't the only reason we went into to admin but if he'd kept that team together and recruited even vaguely well, there's no way we'd have gone down.