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Tommy2holes

Life President⭐
Joined
Jan 21, 2007
Messages
11,419
Following on from signings that failed to deliver what is southends worst deal in your eyes.

Please sum up your choice

I think one of the worst deals we have done is to let Tommy mooney leave to go to watford whilst getting the pub player that is keith dublin in return,

Also the signing of gary poole from plymouth for 400k has to be ranked as one of the worst wastes of blues resources. He was distinctly average at best.

Barnards departure for 125k was not good business either. Lets be honest he is worth 500k+ all day long but maybe that deal will come good with a sell on.

Ofcourse signing ricketts for a rumoured 5k pw to sit on the bench and just get fatter is up there.
 
Our worst signings were players on big, long contracts signed in the second tier seemingly without any consideration that we were one of the smallest clubs at that level and might get relegated. Jeroen Boere and Peter Clarke both spring to mind.

I guess Mike Marsh would fall into that category, although I really did like Mike Marsh so will give him immunity from criticism.
 
How about;

1. Peter Clarke
2. Billy Paynter
3. Richie Foran

All in the same season for between £600-750k, no doubt the money spent on the three of them should of been invested on other players whom would of suited the club more. We cried out for experience that season, didnt get it and paid the price with being relegated.
 
Im not sure why so many people slate peter clarke.

Yes he cost the club a lot of money , which is not his fault , but his performances were more than acceptable and the commitment was there.

People dont slate barrett whos performances were shocking at times purely because he was a local lad. Also barrett was the one of the top earners at the club. I certainly wouldnt include either them in the bad dealings bracket.
 
God there's too many to mention both out and in, but for me it was letting Lee Barnard go - ultimately that is why we are in L2 now.

There are 2 worst transfers that should have happened but didn't and that was when Mark Stimson tried to persuade us to sign Aaron McClean and to resign Kightly (yes that did happen!!) but Tilly and Brush turned both offers down - the rest is history as they say!!
 
God there's too many to mention both out and in, but for me it was letting Lee Barnard go - ultimately that is why we are in L2 now.

There are 2 worst transfers that should have happened but didn't and that was when Mark Stimson tried to persuade us to sign Aaron McClean and to resign Kightly (yes that did happen!!) but Tilly and Brush turned both offers down - the rest is history as they say!!

Can't have happened, Tilly could never have made a mistake like that...Oh hold on.
 
Im not sure why so many people slate peter clarke.

Yes he cost the club a lot of money , which is not his fault , but his performances were more than acceptable and the commitment was there.

People dont slate barrett whos performances were shocking at times purely because he was a local lad. Also barrett was the one of the top earners at the club. I certainly wouldnt include either them in the bad dealings bracket.

Barrett gets a ludicrous amount of stick on here.

Clarke was a terrible transfer because he cost a large transfer fee and had a long contract on relatively high wages all the while being a player who we didn't really need. He was a carbon copy of Barrett, not significantly worse or significantly better. Both played their best football alongside big, dominating centre halfs (Prior, Sodje, Dervitte) and it's no coincidence that our defensive record when they played together was shocking. We needed someone to replace Prior/Sodje and become the player who we'd base our back four around for the next two or three seasons. Peter Clarke was not the player to do that and, in my opinion. he's therefore one of the worst pieces of business we've ever done.
 
Dougie Freedman :thumbsup:
I really feel sorry about Dougie Freedman. I suppose that I should have entered it the previous thread as he was a player that had caught my eye for many years and I was pretty excited about his arrival. I'm sure that he wouldn't enter for consideration on this thread if he hadn't suffered his serious injury, which effectively ended his playing career. Billy Paynter is another one who was a good striker but had to wait until he got to Swindon to show it. I'm afraid that I have to put that one down to Steve Tilson. He must have known the type of striker he was bringing in and how he needed to be used..........if he was not going to use him in the right way, he should never have been signed.
For me, the worst signing Steve Tilson ever made was that odious Richie Foran and that wasn't so much down to the fact that he was a poor performer for us. The worst sin was bringing that 'bad apple' into the club whom, I consider, to be the prime reason why we lost one of my favourite players, Mark Gower.
 
Barrett gets a ludicrous amount of stick on here.

Barrett is the classic example of a player on here who's over-praised by some and over-slated by others. He was a decent if limited centreback who loved playing for the club and deserves respect for that.

there's two categories of ropey signings emerging, it seems:

a) the finanically unjustifiable - Clarkey, and the clutch of players signed in the Whelan era on deals we couldn't afford (Boere being my pick because he evidently didn't give a ****).

b) the panic buys - Tilly has a fair few of these in the likes of Foran and Paynter - players who didn't add anything obvious to the squad, or just didn't have the quality or their head in the right place (Soares is another, but we'll let PS off given that he had about a fortnight to sign a whole squad).

there's some others mentioned in the thread that I don't think deserve to be here- e.g. the likes of Freedman where they was an obvious logic to the signing but it didn't work out due to injury. I do miss the Fry era bizarre swap deals though (mooney for cash plus dublin, something bizarre involving Roger Willis...)
 
There was one in the Peter Taylor did in getting rid of Jonathan Hunt and Gary Poole for £100k, Dave Regis and someone else who was also cack - can't remember who. The players heads had obviously been turned by Barry Fry, but for our record signing & a player rated at £2m+ a year later that was shocking business.
 
Gary Poole for £375,000 a club record at the time I think was a joke. Possibly the worst defender I have seen, failed to realise he was **** and kept getting caught in possesion. Missed a vital Pen vs west Brom in Taylors first game in charge.
 
Agree with the suggestions of Foran, especially as both he and Scott McDonald were both at Motherwell at the time, and maybe a few more quid on the transfer fee could have signed McDonald instead. One joined us, the other went to celtic and scored goals for fun! Of course we may never have been able to pursuade McDonald to join us, but stranger things have happened.
 
Didn't someone on here say that Steve Hammell was the one acting as a go-between between us and Scott McDonald and that he believed that McDonald would have come had we agreed a fee?

Foran really did look like a panic signing when the McDonald deal didn't come off.
 
I would have loved to have seen Foran played in his natural position of Striker, but he only ever got a couple of run outs there, used mainly on the wing, which is probably why he was so crap.
 
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