Worst decisions your club has made

[hbk4894]

Failing to buy a quality replacement for anelk

 

[JoeJoeJoeJoe]

Giving Steven Pressley a four year deal. Moving to Northampton. Building the Ricoh when Highfield Road was fine. Spending £1million on Freddy Eastwood. The list is endless.

 

[valefan16]

Appointing Gannon although it seemed a great appointment at the time!

V2001 is a toughy we all wanted them as saviours but over 10 years their greed killed us

 

[Dazza]

Making Terry Bullivant our manager in 1997.No surprise he resigned after a run of poor results.

 

[TimeyWimey]

Selling Dean Ashton in first week of January with absolutely no back up plan. Hence 5 month run without a win and the start of a big decline.

Then fast tracking Steve Holland to manager role to stop him going to Spurs. In hindsight we should have let him go, kept Dario as manager and built another succession plan.

 

[Dan Phillips]

Letting hbk4894 create a thread.

 

[hold'um Oldham]

Backing the creation of the greedy league when we were a founding member

Appoing graeme sharp as manager when we fell out of the freedy league succeeding joe royle. We needed a proven manager at the time and thats why we are where we are today

Getting chris moore as chairman. He gave us one awsome season but almost sent the club to extinction that summer

The appointment of many a shite manager but i suppose everyone could say that over the years

Being far too ambitious with development plans for them to get knocked back by the council and hitting the recession once they were finally approved. Also knocking the lookers stand down too early as part of the same development and losing a few hardcore lookers fans along the way

 

[Camborne Gills]

We could create our own separate tread on this

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

As above with the following inclusions.

- Not sacking Steve Davis early enough
- Not sacking Steve Holland early enough
- Building a Main Stand with an opaque roof that leads to that part of the pitch becoming a swamp come January.
- Appointing Norman Hassall to the board.
- Buying Anthony Elding, Calvin Zola and Joel Grant for hundreds of thousands of pounds only to see us relegated to League Two for the first time in 15 years.
- Signing Cameron Park on loan

 

[JJ1532]

As above with the following inclusions.

- Not sacking Steve Davis early enough
- Not sacking Steve Holland early enough
- Building a Main Stand with an opaque roof that leads to that part of the pitch becoming a swamp come January.
- Appointing Norman Hassall to the board.
- Buying Anthony Elding, Calvin Zola and Joel Grant for hundreds of thousands of pounds only to see us relegated to League Two for the first time in 15 years.
- Signing Cameron Park on loan

This decision ranks as probably the most stupid decision the club has made in the last 30 years. Ok, selling Ashton started our decline, but we stayed up that season, so the damage wasn't huge.

But giving Holland just shy of £850k in one transfer window was insanity. I mean, Zola had never scored more than 5 goals in a L1 season before he joined us. But suddenly he was worth £200k. How did Holland decide to pay that much money for him and which genius sanctioned that? Elding was signed by Leeds for £50k, scored 1 goal in 9 games and his value tripled to the £175k we paid for him. Erm, how? No scoring record in L1, a bang average scoring record in L2.

Ok, I can forgive Joel Grant, he was an up and coming winger in the conference and he clearly had the talent. I can see why scouts would have been impressed and why we signed him. Holland also bought Brayford, so did well out of that one. Donaldson however, despite being signed for the same amount as Zola and Eldim, sat on the bench during Hollands last few months in charge.

The Zola and Eldim transfers are the ones that stick in the craw most. Donaldson came good in the end(not that we made any money on him mind), Grant you could see why they signed him and Brayford they made money out of.

But it wasn't just the fact they lost money, it was also that the compromised the club by spunking big wages and 3 year contracts on these players. Then we went down and were saddled with these players in L2. I believe it was why the club suffered that cash flow problem in the 11-12 season and why directors had to give the club emergency loans to keep afloat. I mean, ok selling Ashton was a bad decision with regards to timing, but the Holland 2008 pre-season disaster was way worse because they made 3 terrible decisions. The first was to give the bloke money to spend. The 2nd was to think Calvin Zola was worth £200k and the 3rd was to think Anthony Eldim was worth £175k. We're fortunate that these mistakes didn't wreck the club, they could have done.

 

[The Hand of Dom]

£1.1 million. Tyrone Barnett.

Waiting 18 months too long to dismiss Ferguson.

 

[S74Blade]

Parting company with Neil Warnock after relegation our from the Prem in 2007/2008

 

[TrinidadsNumberOne]

This decision ranks as probably the most stupid decision the club has made in the last 30 years. Ok, selling Ashton started our decline, but we stayed up that season, so the damage wasn't huge.

But giving Holland just shy of £850k in one transfer window was insanity. I mean, Zola had never scored more than 5 goals in a L1 season before he joined us. But suddenly he was worth £200k. How did Holland decide to pay that much money for him and which genius sanctioned that? Elding was signed by Leeds for £50k, scored 1 goal in 9 games and his value tripled to the £175k we paid for him. Erm, how? No scoring record in L1, a bang average scoring record in L2.

Ok, I can forgive Joel Grant, he was an up and coming winger in the conference and he clearly had the talent. I can see why scouts would have been impressed and why we signed him. Holland also bought Brayford, so did well out of that one. Donaldson however, despite being signed for the same amount as Zola and Eldim, sat on the bench during Hollands last few months in charge.

The Zola and Eldim transfers are the ones that stick in the craw most. Donaldson came good in the end(not that we made any money on him mind), Grant you could see why they signed him and Brayford they made money out of.

But it wasn't just the fact they lost money, it was also that the compromised the club by spunking big wages and 3 year contracts on these players. Then we went down and were saddled with these players in L2. I believe it was why the club suffered that cash flow problem in the 11-12 season and why directors had to give the club emergency loans to keep afloat. I mean, ok selling Ashton was a bad decision with regards to timing, but the Holland 2008 pre-season disaster was way worse because they made 3 terrible decisions. The first was to give the bloke money to spend. The 2nd was to think Calvin Zola was worth £200k and the 3rd was to think Anthony Eldim was worth £175k. We're fortunate that these mistakes didn't wreck the club, they could have done.

To think Grant Holt went to Shrewsbury for £175K that window and we were a league above, what might have been...

 

[PUSBCCFC]

Moving the club to Northampton was the worst from us.

 

[4froale]

Ched Evans has got to be up there.

 

[THE LAST WALTZ]

Ched Evans has got to be up there.

What an unfortunate choice of words!

 

[Brammer_£500000]

Letting fraudrson within a 50 mile radius of Crewe....

 

[AusGill]

We could create our own separate tread on this

Dunno about that. Compared to a lot of other clubs we haven't made too many howlers. Yep, a lot of poor players and managers, but then who hasn't?

I'd put sacking Sir Keith Peacock back in '88 right up there though. 5 years of crud followed, that nearly led to our extinction.

 

[DearneValleyRover]

How far back should I go? The list would be very long.
In recent years, the sacking of SOD plus the experiment which eventually led to the appointment of P.Diddles and now one of our Directors refusing to sack him for the last 10 months.

 

[joethegill]

Everything to do with Mark McCammon

 

[Camborne Gills]

Hiring Ronnie Jepson?

 

[KeithH]

Parting company with Neil Warnock after relegation our from the Prem in 2007/2008

Employing the twat was ours!!

 

[Shrew_fan]

hiring Kevin Ratcliffe as manager.

 

[PuB]

Spending £13m on a single stand, then realising we didn't have £13m to pay for it...

 

[Camborne Gills]

...........and then not putting a roof on the Town End. (Would have saved a lot of grief from away fans)

 

[darren gregory]

Building the ( still unfinished after 15 yrs ) concrete jungle known as the Lorne street stand. Why ?

 

[jbet]

If I were a Swindon Town fan I'd perhaps suggest an error was not to tell player to 'play to the whistle'.

LOLZ.

 

[DaveOAFC]

Not signing a decent striker when Chris Porter got injured towards the end of the season in our playoff year. 2005/6. We were top in January after a class 1-0 away win at Swansea but faded badly.

The managerial appointments have been bizarre, woeful, and uninspiring.

Ched Evans. Barry Owen should be nowhere near our club being so keen and close to bringing this scumbag to our club.

 

[Matt_]

In recent times Paul Simpson's shocking decision to release, and pay off, Marc Pugh so he could sign for Hereford.

Even though Pughy was a bit hit and miss during his time at Town, like most lower league wide men are, his ability was still very apparent and his return in terms of goals and assists was more than decent.

Simpson's time at the club left an awful lot to be desired and was littered with poor decisions but this one was abysmal even by his standards!

 

[Jamie_Posh]

Making someone with 0 first team management experience our current gaffer.