Where does Carroll rank in worst ever signings?

[CountryRoyal]

For as much as drenthe was a waster, you can’t say he wasn’t at least entertaining.

[Snowflake Royal]

^^^^
We have a winner. Wins by 1 1/2 lengths ahead of another, at the time record signing, Steve Moran.

Surely he won it by a nose...

Subtle.
I am with Aluko being the worst because of the cost which then had a longer term effect on the club's finances.

I find it too hard to pick an individual, but Aluko is absolutely in the favourites, along with Evers, Kromheer, Van Der Kwaak, Brayson, Pogrebnyak, Fae, Halford, Brooker, Brett Williams, Drenthe, Baseya (may have mixed him up), Virginia, I'm sure there are others

[kirkrich]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

[Sutekh]

^^^^
We have a winner. Wins by 1 1/2 lengths ahead of another, at the time record signing, Steve Moran.

Surely he won it by a nose...

Subtle.
I am with Aluko being the worst because of the cost which then had a longer term effect on the club's finances.

Presuming that's why we got saddled with him for so long, trying to spread the cost over 4 years! Oh well, no doubt he'll be back on 29th Aug and play the best game he's ever had in his life.

[Snowflake Royal]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

[Franchise FC]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

He'll be gutted to be dropped

[Snowflake Royal]

If there's any appetite I can run a series of polls for each positions and we can take nominations ahead of it to reach a worst (and if we want best) XI.

[Snowflake Royal]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

He'll be gutted to be dropped

Tbf,he's used to dropping

[Franchise FC]

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

He'll be gutted to be dropped

Tbf,he's used to dropping

But he's now the droppee, rather than the dropper

[SCIAG]

Then there's Emerse Fae and about 60% of the signings made by Tommy Burns.

He was our record signing at the time wasn't he ... hardly played.

Daniel Carrico for me would be the winner of the least recognised good signing ... how he went onto captain Sevilla after us and being judged not good enough for a relegated team still baffles me.

I'm not sure he was considered not good enough - I think he simply never settled in England. It didn't help he'd only played about six minutes of football in the nine months before signing for us and had to learn the language to communicate with staff and players. In the brief cameos we did see of him, he looked like he'd be a quality player (not including his first game for us when he clearly nowhere near fit enough to be playing).

The big issue was his fitness, we only signed him in the first place because he was coming back from a serious injury and he needed to be managed very carefully.

I don’t think anyone could watch his performance against Liverpool and fail to be impressed.

[CountryRoyal]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

Marcus Williams sub left back?

[ReadingGlasses]

My stand out memory of Brayson was when someone in the midfield launched a long pass through for him to run on to, and despite having a couple of seconds to watch the ball and time his run, he managed to run in front of the ball so that it hit him in the back and bounced back off in the wrong direction. He stood there looking totally confused about what had happened.

At least he was a relatively cheap signing though. I'd put more expensive signings far higher up the worst signings list.

For me the stand out two are Fae and Aluko. Fae because the team was crying out for a replacement for Sidwell, put a lot of money in Fae to be that player, and he literally didn't turn up. Had that team managed a halfway decent signing instead then history could have been very different. And Aluko because he was one of the biggest examples of a catastrophic series of signings which put the club in its current crisis.

[Stranded]

Brayson was one of those that showed that banging them in for fun at youth level was no guarantee of success at senior level - although he may have had more chance of succeeding if he had joined a club that were not on a downward spiral as we were at the time.

Scored something silly like 250 goals over 8 seasons in the Newcastle youth ranks.

[blythspartan]

I always remember poor Shaun Cummings looking like one of the worst players I’d have ever seen and then I think in a game where we won 2-1 away at Leicester he went from zero to hero overnight. I never followed his career after he left us but I am guessing he didn’t go on to achieve much.

[Sutekh]

I always remember poor Shaun Cummings looking like one of the worst players I’d have ever seen and then I think in a game where we won 2-1 away at Leicester he went from zero to hero overnight. I never followed his career after he left us but I am guessing he didn’t go on to achieve much.

Don't think he has officially retired but has been without a club since 2019 when he was last recorded as having a trial at Port Vale. Left Reading to spend 2 seasons at Millwall and despite being offered a new deal there went onto Rotherham instead. He spent a season there before a season at Doncaster.

Was dreadful at Reading after joining as a right back but seem to recall that BM got desperate for left back cover at Leicester (in 2010 I think) and he suddenly became immense and you couldn't justify dropping him! After that at Reading he got a serious injury I think and then just couldn't get back in the team.

[Sutekh]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

Marcus Williams sub left back?

The full backs is always questionable I find in a worst XI. The rest of the team largely picks itself but always felt Gurney was better than given credit for and Boden was decent in an otherwise cr@p squad. Think I'd certainly put Marcus Williams in long before Bodin, then there's Steve Swales....

[Snowflake Royal]

My stand out memory of Brayson was when someone in the midfield launched a long pass through for him to run on to, and despite having a couple of seconds to watch the ball and time his run, he managed to run in front of the ball so that it hit him in the back and bounced back off in the wrong direction. He stood there looking totally confused about what had happened.

At least he was a relatively cheap signing though. I'd put more expensive signings far higher up the worst signings list.

For me the stand out two are Fae and Aluko. Fae because the team was crying out for a replacement for Sidwell, put a lot of money in Fae to be that player, and he literally didn't turn up. Had that team managed a halfway decent signing instead then history could have been very different. And Aluko because he was one of the biggest examples of a catastrophic series of signings which put the club in its current crisis.

£100k is a lot at the bottom end of tier two at the turn of the century.

Our transfer record was only £800k when he joined.

[Snowflake Royal]

.....................Virginia
Gurney, Khumalo, Kromheer, Bodin
Brooker, Evers, Meyler, Crawford
...............Brayson, Savage


Can't believe Van der Kwaak no longer has his place.

Marcus Williams sub left back?

The full backs is always questionable I find in a worst XI. The rest of the team largely picks itself but always felt Gurney was better than given credit for and Boden was decent in an otherwise cr@p squad. Think I'd certainly put Marcus Williams in long before Bodin, then there's Steve Swales....

Bodin was so bad no one on our team told the ref he'd sent the wrong player off.

Had some issues with RB and second striker, not nailed on contenders. Swales was ok

[stealthpapes]

Didn't we once do a shittest first 11? There are some real gems from the past

Previously written Disappointment XI

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.

[From Despair To Where?]

My stand out memory of Brayson was when someone in the midfield launched a long pass through for him to run on to, and despite having a couple of seconds to watch the ball and time his run, he managed to run in front of the ball so that it hit him in the back and bounced back off in the wrong direction. He stood there looking totally confused about what had happened.

At least he was a relatively cheap signing though. I'd put more expensive signings far higher up the worst signings list.

For me the stand out two are Fae and Aluko. Fae because the team was crying out for a replacement for Sidwell, put a lot of money in Fae to be that player, and he literally didn't turn up. Had that team managed a halfway decent signing instead then history could have been very different. And Aluko because he was one of the biggest examples of a catastrophic series of signings which put the club in its current crisis.

The other thing with Fae is apparently we'd been in for him the year before but he'd just had an absolutely blinding season and didn't want to leave. Nantes then promptly got relegated with Fae in particular copping tons of criticism for a series of gutless performances and a serious attitude problem and we hadn't been paying attention, snapping him up for a "bargain" £2.5m.


The thing with Boden is that the team was so poor, he didn't stand out as particularly dreadful. I mean, this was a team with Swales, Booty, Legg and Bowen in it