Signings that you were excited by at the time but disappointed you in the end

[mattbianco1]

To flip reverse 1973Blade 's thread. Who have we signed over the years that never lived up to the hype?

I'll start with a few:

• Patrick Suffo
• Leon Britton
• Ahmed Fahti
• James Harper
• Lee Hendrie

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

Brian Howard.

 

[BladesMadGreeny]

Ryan Leonard
Ricky Holmes

 

[MadDad38]

 

[Berkshire Blade]

Random one but I had seen Chris Hussey play ryman league division one south and West as a 17 year old and he looked different gravy. He'd scored a few eye catching goals as a pro too and thought he was going to be a left sided Brayford at the time we signed him.

Turns out some other fella we signed the same day called Mark Duffy was more important

 

[Cappy]

To pick two recent loans that I was (perhaps weirdly) excited about....but massively underwhelmed

Khadra and Goode

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

Oliver Burke

 

[John Street West Terrace]

Barry Hayles , Geoff Horsfield , Ashley Ward , Richard Cadette , Adl Akinbuyi , Leon Britton

 

[DifferentClass]

I thought Dean Hammond would turn out to be pretty decent...

 

[Sheffsteel]

James Harper, always thought he was a beast of a midfielder when playing for Reading.
He even looked good playing in the Premier league with Reading.....was impressed that we managed to buy him.

He joined us and never looked the same player....
He arrived initially on loan...then we offered him a short term contract to the end of the season
His wages must have been really high because we never offered him a new contract, so he left on a free to join Hull City.

 

[Maidenhead]

Alan Young and Steve Finnieston.

After those two I stopped getting excited about signings until I'd actually seen them kick a few balls for United.

 

[DifferentClass]

Cameron Archer.

Thank fuck he had a buyback clause...

 

[JD88]

To flip reverse 1973Blade 's thread. Who have we signed over the years that never lived up to the hype?

I'll start with a few:

• Patrick Suffo
• Leon Britton
• Ahmed Fahti
• James Harper
• Lee Hendrie

Dean Hammond on paper looked a terrific signing for league 1. Reality however ............

 

[Revolution]

Vinnie Jones. 700 grand for a long throw and some clapping.

Nowhere near the enforcer he as advertised as being.

 

[ChuntyMalone]

Paul Ifill - he was ok for us but not the player I'd been seeing for the previous few years

 

[Sithblade]

Vinnie Jones, football wise bar his long throw he didn't particularly stand out (to me). I know I read from Rooks and John Greaves that he was a big part behind the scenes helping us to stay up in 90/91.
But a year after signing him we sold him to Chelsea and we ended up finishing 9th.

 

[Sithblade]

Vinnie Jones. 700 grand for a long throw and some clapping.

Nowhere near the enforcer he as advertised as being.

Just beat me to this

 

[Robby Blade]

Peter Withe. The only time I saw him score was against us after we had sent him to Birmingham

 

[Le Cynique]

Can we include managers? If so, Nigel Adkins seemed like a great appointment but we all know how that ended up. Also Mickey Adams; I thought he’d be better than he turned out to be.

 

[100% part time blade]

Grbic. I honestly thought a decent keeper from the continent might help us start to build some sort of defence. The level of excitement at the signing was admittedly not particularly high as I had literally no idea who he was, or whether he was decent or not, but the distance between that and the level of disappointment at seeing him actually play was almost immeasurable.

 

[sufc323]

Ryan Leonard. The amount of time pissing about getting him and he barely played before he got sold again

 

[ben1987]

Dean Hammond
Chris Hussey
Ryan Leonard
Ricky Holmes
Jose Baxter
Ivo Grbic… when did we last sign someone from Athletico

 

[Houso]

Ben Woodburn

But Brian Howard is definitely my top pick here.

 

[JJBlade]

There will be more of these types than players we were happy with
But Steve Neville

I remember the pitch invasion after the Walsall game, I was upset and pissed off, I was young and close to tears. But one of the older guys we used to go to the games with was absolutely furious.
He went down the tunnel after the players (mental, I know)

He saw Steve Neville talking to someone about a couple of birds he'd got lined up that night. My mate went for him and got pulled away by security.

He got himself free and said "I'll have you, you, you, and you ya curly haired bastard"
He'd have been carted off to jail for that nowadays.

 

[raul]

Bruno Ribeiro and Ravel Morrison for me.

 

[FTPE]

Paul Ifill
Ricky Holmes
Dean Hammond

 

[Balham]

Oliver Burke

Were you really excited about signing Oli The Burke? The signs were clear from the outset that he was an awful footballer and therefore an awful signing.

For me aside from those already mentioned: Florent Cuvelier and Jack Rodwell.

 

[Klaatu Barada Nikto]

Were you really excited about signing Oli The Burke? The signs were clear from the outset that he was an awful footballer and therefore an awful signing.

For me aside from those already mentioned: Florent Cuvelier.

Well it very quickly dawned on me that he was shite, but not at the point we signed him

 

[Silent Blade]

Vinnie Jones. 700 grand for a long throw and some clapping.

Nowhere near the enforcer he as advertised as being.

Claimed in his autobiography that he won the MOTM award with us every week.

UTTER BULLSHIT!

 

[SwissBlade]

Brian Howard.

Howard had been so good for Barnsley that he was expected to come in and boss it for us… couldn’t have been further from the actual.

I’ll add Luke Freeman, the step over king. He’d beat his man, look up and then do a step over to lose any momentum rather than play the ball. I swear I saw him do a step over before taking a corner and putting it straight into the first man