Biggest Flops

A footballing Milli Vanilli, dreadlocks and all.
Excellent at rotating 360°, almost drilling down to Australasia and going nowhere on the pitch.
Hapless but mildly amusing.
Senior was just dreadful but Ellington and Gray share top spot for me.
Ellington was wretched but he didn't break Covid rules twice,nor play for *****.

 

My all time top 5:
Moralee
Ellington
Gray
Saurez
Vega

 

The most complete and accurate post on the topic I've read.

 

Merkel has to be one of the biggest reputed youth loan player flops we ve signed .

I guess juggling his football , homework and running Europes biggest country was too much for him .

 

Yes there was a lot of noise when we signed him and he contributed nothing.

 

Sent off on debut, I think?

 

Yes think so, came on asa sub, sent off, and that was about it wasn't it ? Like that guy from QPR, "Diakete" or similar who came on loan and was then sent off on his full debut ?

 

He was constantly looking to be sent off. Think it was against Boro, he lost the ball and the opportunity presented itself to dive in with two feet.

 

I think he did score a goal though

 

On Dean Whitehead, our assistant manager no less!

 

Dawson was only terrible for us, he's ok for anyone else.

 

Yes, he looked a solid no nonsense value for money signing at the time.

 

Had they done the sensible thing & sign another vaguely competent CB at the same time, Dawson would've performed better, I'm sure, & we'd have stayed up.

 

One of Foster's best mates wasn't he? We weren't a serious club then, what with him clowning around videoing everything, so I suppose Dawson performed accordingly.

 

I'm not seeing that. Sarr was involved one way or another with 50% of our goals. that's not failure.
Playing him in 5 or 6 positions, under 3 coaches in various systems and making him stay after he had the opportunity to go twice isn't really his fault.

We have had some real disasters.
Willis
Butler
Loach
Beadle

We use to have a KO routine where the CF kicked it back to the keeper. I kid you not, Peter Beadle managed to put that back pass out for a corner from the center spot! Honest​

Denton
Steve Leo Beleck
Tony Meola
Perpetuini
And of course Liam Henderson.

What we have today wouldn't even get on the bench in our worse team ever.

 

Maybe Dawson just hated us.

Closet Ltn fan?

 

Not sure how Loach is on your list of flops. He was even called up to the full England squad a couple of times.

Had a lot of faults much like Bachman, but we have had a lot worse keepers. He played well over 100 games for us and quite a lot for other clubs.

 

His fall from grace was spectacular though. So much promise, England squad call up, Spurs interested, but left us at approx age 24 for Ipswich (the club he supported) and played no more than 60 league games for them and 6 other clubs over the next 6 years before dropping down to non-league by the age of 30 when most keepers are reaching their peak. All very odd.

 

I think the general consensus across any post referencing Sarr is that none of it is his fault, I’m not sure anyone has said that. There is certainly no reference to that in the post you’ve quoted.

He was bought for the best part of £40m (when you factor everything in) with a view to being flipped for probably £70/80m, and the exact opposite happened.

Nome of that is his fault, and it doesn’t mean he didn’t perform well at times and comparatively better against others in the squad, but that was in the championship and he clearly never lived up to his actual price tag, he has to be considered a flop considering what we paid and what we ended up with, but again nobody is saying that’s his fault, or even that he was a bad player. He mostly performed like a £15m maybe £20m player, but that is nowhere near the £70/£80m player Gino would’ve hoped he’d turn into.

 

None of that is his fault - really?! The bloke was as half arsed as anyone last season, lacked effort and application and in a squad that was internally nicknamed "The Uncoachables" he was considered one of the laziest.

Certainly not all his fault but definitely not blameless.

 

It was partly his fault though. Most of the time, particularly in his last couple of years, he couldn't be arsed to put in a modicum of effort for us. Hopefully he is giving more to Marseille.

 

One big disappointment was Stuart Rimmer, I think signed from Chester after great goal scoring record at lower level. Another much heralded signing at the time Richard Hill also failed to deliver.

 

He got relegated with WBA in 2018, we then tried to sign him on the cheap, he'd had a mediocre season in the Championship as they failed to go straight back up, and then he came to us. Easy to say his good form with West Ham was a reversion to the mean, but he hadn't had a good season for a long time before he began to play like the second coming of Maldini

 

Yes I’d argue that Hill didn’t really get a chance. Not really Bassett’s type of player. He was gone within a month or two of signing, just a couple of appearances I think. We beat a number of other clubs to his signing IIRC.

 

Espen Baardsen wasn't great. Don't think he was our record signing when he joined but it was definitely a large fee for us at the time. Considering he retired at 25 after 'losing interest in the game' it wasn't really a surprise he was a let down. Definitely not the worst signing we've made though more just a player who everyone seems to have forgotten about and wasn't great.

 

I think he was GT's last signing, probably March 87, wasn't his fault. On a side note I saw on MOTD on Saturday that he's Eastleigh's manager, so if they win the replay will face Man Utd at home in the 4th round.

 

He wasn't - we signed Nielsen at the same time for 2.25m ish, with Baardsen being signed for about 1.5m.

I remember being very disappointed with how Baardsen turned out for is. I was very excited when he first signed.