Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Villa Memories => Topic started by: kippaxvilla2 on February 03, 2017, 11:32:54 AM
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Bosko Balaban.
Charles N'Zogbia
Gabby Agbonlahor
Joleon Lescott
Micah Richards
Ross McCaramac
Libor Kozak
Ally Cissokho
Jordan Veretout
Carlos Gil
The Danish bloke
Jean II Makoun
Darren Bent (in the latter years of the Bomb Squad)
Stephen Ireland
Shay Given
Any others - how many millions in there do we reckon....
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Don't forget the compensation to every manager since at least DOL.
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Habib Beye
Sylla
Tonev
Luna
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Stan Collymore
Sasa Curcic
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Sidwell
collins
warnock
dunne
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Luke Young
Nicky Shorey
Gary Cahill (!)
Steve Sidwell
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For the most part I thought Young and Collins were fine and we actually got money back when we sold them. Although Young was typical MON, sign him for £6m a year after he was available for £2.5m.
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If we want to continue the theme.
Cascarino
Penrice
Fashanu
Alan Thompson
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Ivo Stas
David Unsworth
Both Djembas
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Tommy Craig
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Sidwell
collins
warnock
dunne
On the Sky coverage of the Huddersfield v Brighton game last night the co commentator (think it was Higgingbottom) said Sidwell had been a great servant to all the clubs he's played for as he had chalked up 500 league games.
Errr, I don't think so.
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For me, McCormack is our worst ever signing.
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Daveeeed Ginola
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Joey Gudjohnsen
Neal Cooper
vlackav Drobny
Grant Holt
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For me, McCormack is our worst ever signing.
Worse than N'Zogbia? Worse than Balaban? Worse than even Ireland?
When we put it like that there have been some perversely fabulous candidates.
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For me, McCormack is our worst ever signing.
It's odd though. In the summer a friend who goes to see Fulham with his kids as it's the club that is closest to where he lives was telling me that we'd bought 'the best player in the Championship' and how gutted they were that he was leaving. He was hard-working, skillful, creative, goal scoring.......it's a recurrent theme on here but what happens when these guys come to us!
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They come to Villa, thinking it is one giant party and a massive payday and simply stop caring or trying.
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Alpay
Garib (might not be spelt correctly but a Gregory signing all the same)
Re. Cascarino how the hell did we miss Sheringham ?
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Darren Bent should never be on that list. He repaid his transfer and then some by keeping us up.
And of that list the highest fee paid is McCormack. I would hate to see what Chelsea/Arsenal/Liverpool/Man U/Man City's equivalent list would look like
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For me, McCormack is our worst ever signing.
Worse than N'Zogbia? Worse than Balaban? Worse than even Ireland?
When we put it like that there have been some perversely fabulous candidates.
McCormack may come back next season and do the business ... far too early to write him off yet.
Now Charles and Ireland ..... they really were a waste of funds.
As was Emile the falling-over man.
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TV I loved Bent and still do. It's Lambert I blame for the lost money there as he bombed him out so unnecessarily.
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Mathieu Berson
Didier Agathe
Tony Moon
Simon Dawkins
Aleksandar Tonev
Jermaine Jenas
Najwan Ghrayib
Phil Bardsley
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Ivo Stas
Worth every penny..!!!
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Ivo Stas
Worth every penny..!!!
Yes now that you are finally contributing as a prolific H&V poster.
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What a depressing thread.
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What a depressing thread.
Because no other club has ever bought a bad player.
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Emile Heskey
(If that bloke can play for England, then you know what? I can as well)
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Mathieu Berson
Didier Agathe
Tony Moon
Simon Dawkins
Aleksandar Tonev
Jermaine Jenas
Najwan Ghrayib
Phil Bardsley
Unless I'm missing some subtle humour in your posts, but the majority of the suggestions you've posted on this thread have either been short term free transfers (ie Agathe) or loan deals, so not really in the same class as a heskey or n'zogbia.
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Mathieu Berson
Didier Agathe
Tony Moon
Simon Dawkins
Aleksandar Tonev
Jermaine Jenas
Najwan Ghrayib
Phil Bardsley
Unless I'm missing some subtle humour in your posts, but the majority of the suggestions you've posted on this thread have either been short term free transfers (ie Agathe) or loan deals, so not really in the same class as a heskey or n'zogbia.
Regardless of them not being in the same class as N'Zogbia surely they weren't very good and cost us money.
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It is wasted, but that's life. I haven't seen any stats to say we are any worse than anyone else for that type of thing. In any case, for every three crap players the low fees we paid for the likes of Platt, McGrath, Yorke, Benteke etc should balance out in the end.
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For the most part I thought Young and Collins were fine and we actually got money back when we sold them. Although Young was typical MON, sign him for £6m a year after he was available for £2.5m.
From memory i think we lost 3.5 million on collins
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If you just want to deal in balance sheet worth Ashley Westwood is one of the best signings we ever made.
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Milan Baros
The goalie in trousers whose name escapes me.
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He was on loan from a second tier team. I doubt that we "wasted millions" on him.
He's unfairly maligned anyway, he was pretty reasonable for us apart from one cock-up in his final appearance.
Eta: I can't remember his name either! He was Hungarian, I think.
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I think you would find it difficult to find a club with a worse record of dodgy transfers.
Leeds under Risdale, Citeh had some shockers, I think we win for consistency.
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I'd argue against Bent, I know we lost a lot when he left, but I think we would have gone down if we hadn't signed him.
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K Riley was the trousered goalie. Probably Irish.
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Emile Heskey
(If that bloke can play for England, then you know what? I can as well)
Can't agree with that one, Heskey was a very good player, it wasn't his fault that we needed a goal scoring forward not one that was excellent at holding up the ball and bringing team mates into the game...it was Quittys fault that he could see the requirement and took his usual lazy option signing.
Heskey nowadays would be excellent in this England side with likes of Alli, Lallana & Sterling bombing through and needing a player who holds it up, controls the ball, passes it properly and brings them into play....unfortunately we have Sturridge who thinks he's a superstar
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Joey Gudjohnsen
A three month loan period that cost us the thin end of bugger all?
Has this just turned into "write down a load of players wot Villa signed"
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I'm too lazy to do the comparisons but whilst agreeing that we've wasted a shit load of money on some terrible signings I would imagine Liverpool would stack up pretty high on the turd table.
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The wasted fees on players are grand (well they aren't, but...)
We must shirley lead the way in management pay-off's though.
Since O'Neill's departure, we've effectively been paying two managers per year.
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beye must be one of our worst financial transfers surely. not a huge fee but paying him 40k and he hardly ever played when mon suddenly decided he was going to play cuellar at rb all season.
at least with some of the others we got some games out of them, beye must've played less than 10?!
(apologies for lack of capitals as laptop is knackered so temporarily been loaned a chromebook and no idea where the caps lock on it is!)
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Milan Baros
The goalie in trousers whose name escapes me.
Gabor Kiraly was the trousered goalie. We had him on loan, I think from Palace and he hardly got a game.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
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Joey Gudjohnsen
A three month loan period that cost us the thin end of bugger all?
Has this just turned into "write down a load of players wot Villa signed"
No it's a list of players I remembered who we'd signed and turned out to be pretty awful. Regardless of how much we payed them or payed for them it's wasted money. If you want to look at totals it might not amount to a lot but it's still poor decisions costing us money.
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beye must be one of our worst financial transfers surely. not a huge fee but paying him 40k and he hardly ever played when mon suddenly decided he was going to play cuellar at rb all season.
at least with some of the others we got some games out of them, beye must've played less than 10?!
(apologies for lack of capitals as laptop is knackered so temporarily been loaned a chromebook and no idea where the caps lock on it is!)
And, again, Habib was the Barvcodes' player of the year the previous season. So, he probably goes down as a victim of MON's legendary man-management capabilities.
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joey g wasn't too bad in the early games...didn't he score a great free kick at boro?
03/03/03 was a little bit too much for him though and he wasn't seen much after that.
edit: he made more impact here than michael bradley did anyway. now that was i thought a really good signing and he played one cup game and that was it and then went and had a good career in italy.
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What a depressing thread.
Because no other club has ever bought a bad player.
Well, quite.
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Colin Gibson was pretty rubbish. The first one not Gibbo. Did not cost millions but back then you could get five pints, see the game, fish supper, go to the pictures and have a jolly time in Steelhouse Lane and get change out of a ten bob note. It's all relative.
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Isn't this just a list of signings we've made? All sides sign players that don't work out.
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For me, McCormack is our worst ever signing.
You obviously didn't see Bosko Balaban play? Or not in his situation!
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Bent more than paid us back and lots of these weren't massive wastes of money.
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Habib Beye anybody?
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Tommy Craig
This....not sure what £275,000 would be equivalent to now...he was shite
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Guy Whittingham. Liked him but it obviously didn't work out.
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He's already had a brief mention but I was terribly excited about the signing of Sasa Curcic. Oh well.
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It is wasted, but that's life. I haven't seen any stats to say we are any worse than anyone else for that type of thing. In any case, for every three crap players the low fees we paid for the likes of Platt, McGrath, Yorke, Benteke etc should balance out in the end.
Bloody right it's life. I bought two tins of paint last week to decorate a room. I only used one and now I can't find the damn receipt.
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The thread came about as a result of a conversation with by SHA supporting very best mate (okay okay). We both just started reeling off names of complete wastes of money. In their case, they were mostly shit has beens that cost them money but only in their small time context. My list started and just kept going on and on and all were costing us millions. It really is scandalous - I was referring mostly to the modern Lerner era in particular. I never implied we were the only club who have wasted money. However, I only care about our club and when you look at the figures, it really is quite astonishing and frightening. And bought particularly into light given that once again, we have replaced almost an entire starting 11 within 6 months of the last wholesale recruitment.
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Warren Aspinall, Bosco, Gary Penrice, John Fashanu, Marlon Harewood, Curtis Davies, Zat Knight, Steve Sidwell, Gollini, Nigel Callaghan, Stan Collymore.
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How the hell is this Villa memories - it is still happening now.
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Pretty sure we made a profit on Knight so he doesn't belong on the list.
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Insomnia takes some beating.
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https://www.thenpl.co.uk/liversedge-land-ross-mccormack-77187
Consett play them at home early November. Comments from the stand will involve advice on security gates and legovers for the elderly.
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habib baye has to be one of the biggest wastes of money ever , 1 we didnt need him and 2 50k a week for 4 years , what the fuck was martin oneil thinking !!
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https://www.thenpl.co.uk/liversedge-land-ross-mccormack-77187
Consett play them at home early November. Comments from the stand will involve advice on security gates and legovers for the elderly.
He won’t be there by November, couple of pre season friendlies for publicity and he’ll disappear like he did at Aldershot
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Didn't Bruce pay £9m for Scott Hogan?
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Emile Heskey
(If that bloke can play for England, then you know what? I can as well)
Nobody disses Emile.
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Didn't Bruce pay £9m for Scott Hogan?
At least it said on the internet that he'd scored goals. At the very least he was industrious enough to fake the Wiki page.
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Horrifyingly, you may not be far off the mark, Monty.
It was clear that Bruce had little idea how to bring the best out of Hogan or coach a team to give him the chances he needed. Presumably he was regarded as a goalscorer as the numbers showed he could score goals (for half of that season, at least).
Kodjia was the same, in my view, but Jimmy D did his own thing in wondrous ways and found the net regularly.
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Kodjia was pretty good for us and top scorer one season. Quite often stuck him on the wing, rather than directly up front too.
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Coutinho
Ings
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I won't have Kodjia as wasted millions. He was an excellent buy for where we were, and IIRC we were all falling over ourselves when Cote d'Ivore got knocked out of the ACN early so we could have him back. We just outgrew him.
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I won't have Kodjia as wasted millions. He was an excellent buy for where we were, and IIRC we were all falling over ourselves when Cote d'Ivore got knocked out of the ACN early so we could have him back. We just outgrew him.
Yep, agreed.
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Kodjia was never the same after the injury, something we seem to say about a fair few of our strikers. Before that though he was very good for us.
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Kodjia, for me, was one of those great Championship players you hear about when you're struggling in the Prem and you think, "it's okay, at least when we go down we'll be able to have a player like that who'd score thirty goals, easy". Except we signed McCormack first.
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Kodjia was more than decent and knew where the net was.
MON signing Habib Baye as bad as it was pales into insignificance compared to letting Cahill leave.
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The one which hacks me off most was Heskey, I think. Yes, it was a small fee, but what a waste of an opportunity, buying the ultimate support striker at the turn of 08-09. Heskey cost peanuts, but it could be argued signing him might have cost us millions in CL qualification.
But this is a thread on wasted millions, not who you thought we should or shouldn't have signed.
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Even worse, co, the signing of Heskey meant that we started playing with two up top, weakening the five-man midfield that won us seven Prem League away games on the bounce!
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I will never forgive MON for a number of things. One of which is inexplicably starting Heskey over Carew in the League Cup Final.
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The one which hacks me off most was Heskey, I think. Yes, it was a small fee, but what a waste of an opportunity, buying the ultimate support striker at the turn of 08-09. Heskey cost peanuts, but it could be argued signing him might have cost us millions in CL qualification.
But this is a thread on wasted millions, not who you thought we should or shouldn't have signed.
Heskey was one which was doubly annoying - annoying because of who we DID sign, doubly so because of who we didn't.
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I will never forgive MON for a number of things. One of which is inexplicably starting Heskey over Carew in the League Cup Final.
He wasted an immense amount of money.
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Buying two back fours in successive summers. And then playing players out of position.
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David James out. (Played in the premier league another ten years).
37 yr old Peter Schmeichel in. (gave us One season).
Cheers John. Great business.
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Buying two back fours in successive summers. And then playing players out of position.
He did love playing players at RB that were better elsewhere. Mellberg, Cuellar and Craig Gardner.
As an aside, my phone just tried to autocorrect Cuellar to Cellardyke....
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Well, in light of this evening's news on Wesley signing for Sturk, are we all in broad agreement that millions were wasted, or does it go down in the 'we'll never know' file?
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Probably the former for me, though the nature of his terrible injury means there's an element of the latter as well.
The real irony is that until the minute when he was put out of the game, it was his best-ever performance for us.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
Strange one Carson. O'Neil played him in almost every game then sent him back to Liverpool.
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Who was that centre forward Lambert bought from the lower leagues. So far put of his depth it was embarrassing.
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Would that be Jordan Bowery? Cost the vast amout of half a mil IIRC.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
Strange one Carson. O'Neil played him in almost every game then sent him back to Liverpool.
I think Liverpool wanted a ridiculous fee for him which, strangely for him, O'Neill refused to pay.
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Carson must be a good trainer as he doesn't really play often enough to stay fit.
At least he'll have plenty of time to polish his medals.
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Would that be Jordan Bowery? Cost the vast amout of half a mil IIRC.
That's him.
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Ings is a good shout but at least we got 15 million back. Don't hear much of him now. I expect he'll be back at Southampton soon for about 5 million.
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I don't think Ings deserves to be on the list, to be fair. We bought him in a bit of a panic, didn't quite know how to use him, he scored a few, then we got a decent fee back.
He didn't let us down, unlike some of the wankers mentioned.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
Strange one Carson. O'Neil played him in almost every game then sent him back to Liverpool.
I think Liverpool wanted a ridiculous fee for him which, strangely for him, O'Neill refused to pay.
According to Carson himself, MON told him at the end of the loan spell he wanted a more experienced keeper.
Which is why we signed 57 year old Brad Friedel.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
Strange one Carson. O'Neil played him in almost every game then sent him back to Liverpool.
I think Liverpool wanted a ridiculous fee for him which, strangely for him, O'Neill refused to pay.
According to Carson himself, MON told him at the end of the loan spell he wanted a more experienced keeper.
Which is why we signed 57 year old Brad Friedel.
On a 35 year contract.
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Yeah, but he can do yoga.
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I seem to recall us approaching Liverpool to see about making Carson's move permanent. Apparently, we were quoted a fee of £9m.
A short while later, SC went to the Albion. The fee? £3m.
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There's sure some undeserved names put forward on this thread. For me, all of O'Neill's signings that he hardly played (Beye, Sidwell etc) are worthy nominations but the clear winner in terms of initial transfer fee, outlay in wages, complete lack of productivity on the pitch and negligible sale recuperation has got to be Ross McCormack.
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Did we ever receive any money for N'zogbia or did his contract expire? He was another waste of time, space and money.
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N'Zogbia left as a free agent and when he came to sign for a French club his medical detected a heart problem which forced him to retire.
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N'Zogbia left as a free agent and when he came to sign for a French club his medical detected a heart problem which forced him to retire.
I did not know that, thanks. I hope he's well.
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Did we ever receive any money for N'zogbia or did his contract expire? He was another waste of time, space and money.
If nothing else he did score a match winning free kick at the Holte End against West Ham that effectively kept us up one season.
And he did have a rather flamboyant taste in suits.
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kiraly wasn't that bad imo....just had that awful error in his last game that everyone remembers. he came in at short notice when sorensen and taylor were injured.
carson was worse.
Strange one Carson. O'Neil played him in almost every game then sent him back to Liverpool.
I think Liverpool wanted a ridiculous fee for him which, strangely for him, O'Neill refused to pay.
Yes Liverpool wanted about 10m.
Carson started off o.k but then made that infamous error V Croatia and he was shaky after that.
Friedel then became available for 3m and we also signed Guzan the same summer so there was no need for Carson and he never played regularly for a top 6 prem club so can't say O'Neill got that recruitment issue wrong for once.
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N'Zogbia left as a free agent and when he came to sign for a French club his medical detected a heart problem which forced him to retire.
I did not know that, thanks. I hope he's well.
He did an interview with the Athletic a few years back.
Strange character. Based on his on field attitude you'd think he'd be a bit of a Collymore type but seems he was always giving the young players tips for cleaning boots and also available for advice.
Never came close to replacing Young so that was one of the reasons we rapidly declined from top 6 so quickly.
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Shouldn't have tried to sign him in the first place, imo.
He (or his agent) tried to blackmail Small Heath over more money when they wanted to sign him when McLeish was there.
I do wonder what he would have been like under a good manager, like the one we've got now.
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Know someone who used to teach N’Zogbia piano when he was here. Said he was a nice guy but that he knew the fans didn’t like him and that he was very sensitive.
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I liked him.
Well I hated him less than Stephen Ireland anyway.
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I never disliked n'Zogbia, I just thought he was the wrong player signed for the wrong reasons and not remotely what we needed at the time. It looks like chicken feed now but at the time he was a massive investment from us into a player who'd only looked worth that in a team that was built almost entirely to give him the chance to add a 'little bit of magic'.
That entire window is probably the worst I can think of for us. Given signed on a 5 year contract he was never going to see out as a premier league level player, N'Zog signed for double what he should've bene because McLeish wanted wanted to 'get his man' after missing out on him the year before and Hutton signed as the only remotely decent deal of the window but coming in to replace Young, Young, Downing, Friedel, Carew and Reo-Coker who had all been pretty much regulars over the last couple of years.
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There is one redeeming feature about N’Zogbia. He turned the noses down and something wants to tell me that he didn’t think it was a step up from Wigan.
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It wasn't !
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Yes that summer pretty well marked the end of the Lerner project in respect of him having any meaningful ambition. We completely dismantled the last of the O'Neill team, and in losing Downing and Young, they HAD to get another top flight winger in. N'Zogbia had finished the season well for Wigan, which unfortunately for us elevated his profile temporarily, and we massively overpaid for him.
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Yes, on both wages and transfer fee!
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AND length of contract (five years!), I should have said.
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Until the end of my days I will never see a worse player in a Villa shirt than Richards. Bad players are quickly forgotten but we now have to endure this waste of space every Saturday night. Incredibly.
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Until the end of my days I will never see a worse player in a Villa shirt than Richards. Bad players are quickly forgotten but we now have to endure this waste of space every Saturday night. Incredibly.
Totally agree. He was brought in to be a leader on and off pitch and bring degree of professionalism and winning mentality.
He is an utter disgrace. The fact he can do that grinning clown ‘..Ang On. And On a Meeenite. Can Aye Jiiust Say…..’
Total wanker. Sorry a bad un for us
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At least he was able to play for us under Sherwood, though I recall a comment on here that his performance was like a Labrador chasing around after a balloon!
Once Garde came in, his agreed fitness regime was torn up, according to Richards, and the injuries soon mounted up.
Oh, the joys of signing perma-crocks!!