by stealthpapes »
07 Nov 2024 07:27
I had thought I'd posted this before.
Biggest Disappointments
Or: Just because you're Division 2 doesn't mean you can't be disappointed. I'll put the team name at the end, just so we can all play a guessing game as we go along.
GK: Borislav Mihailov - rumour has it he saw the play off final in '95 and thought that was our home ground. Rumour also had it that he wore a hairpiece.
RB: Greg Halford - came in for big money (over £2 million!), didn't fit, went to Sunderland where he pissed off Roy Keane. There is a story in the secret footballer that rather closely matches his time at my club.
CB: Daniel Carrico - won the UEFA cup while with us. Was on loan at Seville at the time. HIs ... checks notes ... 87 minutes for us ... 87 minutes? Brilliant.
CB: Martin Keown - hindsight possibly puts this as "he was a bit past his best", but defenders are meant to age gracefully, right? He came in as our promotion bid was faltering, we were 4th but struggling for wins. We finished 7th. He played 5 games of a possible 16. Cheers.
LB: Wayne Bridge - defenders are meant to age gracefully, right?
RM: Emerse Fae - close to a club record signing. Got malaria, refused to play in a reserve game. If I have it correct, we never won a single game with him in the side.
CM: Neale Cooper - probably the earliest one here. Remember my Dad saying he'd been a stalwart in Scotland, European success, played with Ferguson, was part of that Graeme Souness Rangers team for a time. All he brought south was the thuggery. Vanished after two months, turned out he went on to play 100 odd times for Dunfermline. Right.
CM: Ray Houghton - and only a few years on from being a regular that Ron Atkinson Villa side of the early nineties and scoring famous world cup goals. I mean, this is a player, this is a man with pedigree. Passed the ball sideways. Pointed a bit. Sad.
LM: Royston Drenthe - I am not even going to dignify how this one worked out with a complete
ST: Pavel Pogrebnyak - I mean, we've shelled out on quality here. Did OK in a struggling relegation season and stuck around the next season. Should have torn the Championship a new hole. Did not.
ST: Mass Sarr - as we moved to our new ground, we brought in what seemed like a new squad. Heading it up was Mass Sarr. Liberian International. Played for Monaco. Scored a lot in Croatia. Someone once made a statue of him but the feet were all wrong. Remember, those heady pre-internet days where rumours were proper rumours? Anyway, the local press all but made up a story about his having a personal witch doctor, he got caught drink driving and scored 3 goals in the old 3rd division.
Subs bench: Anton Ferdinand, Yakubu, Nicky Shorey in 2012 or Dave Kitson in 2009, Danny Guthrie, Tiago Ilori
So there, my Reading FC biggest disappointments. The biggest mismatches between hype/expectation and what we actually got. Some even played quite well at times, but you were always left thinking it could have been so much better.
-----------------------------------------------
As someone else pointed out, there's worse out there. That spell from Stam to Clement eesh, random players coming and going, players that just never were, other players that were falling from grace disgracefully. That squad is very much 'of a certain generation', there's been some deeper shite following.
I have a special list of strikers that have basically scored everywhere else, come here and do eff all.
But linking the two paragraphs there is one Chris Martin. Stam brought him over in January, then got sacked about a month later. Clement came in. Now, you'd look at the spell Clement was at Derby and the goals Martin scored, but also Clement got mysteriously sacked when his side were 5th and there's rumours that someone was boinking someone's wife. There's also the colitis story, which may explain the sometimes intermittent form.
Anyway, Chris Martin. Literally not a single shit given in the games I saw him play.
Legit amazed I could look it up tbh.
)