Premier League signings that were meant to be a coup


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gordon was the better keeper i'm not saying otherwise but 9m for a great keeper who could never stay fit or a solid goalkeeper and 500k who you could depend on....

you can't tell me that gordon was better than fulop and a 9m striker?

I don't think Fulop was solid tbf, though we could have bought one who was relatively cheaply. Easy to criticise Gordon too but looking individually at his injuries:

He had broken bone which wasn't picked up by xray. Keane insisted he played when he didn't want to and he made the injury worse and it was picked up = extended time out.

Defoe basically stamped on his arm - time out. He had a plate in his arm when he came back and he was in absolutely tremendous form at the back end of the season. The following season on medical advice he had the plate taken out and immediately his arm broke in the same place, resulting in him having to have a plate put in again and costing more time out.

The last one was a knee injury. It was persistent for a while and possibly needed operating on. IIRC he had an exploritory op and visited a specialist, who suggested to strengthen it and play on, but it ended up making things worse. He did rather than having it operated on, but it cost him his career here and a year or two or his career.

Three things which kept him out ages, but largely could have been avoided. If I was going to criticise him it wouldn't be for the injuries, it would be I didn't think he was the strongest goalkeeper at times, but he was a tremendous keeper and leagues ahead of Fulop.
 
If I was going to criticise him it wouldn't be for the injuries, it would be I didn't think he was the strongest goalkeeper at times, but he was a tremendous keeper and leagues ahead of Fulop.

i don't disagree with all that you've posted but IMO you take all that into account when you judge a signing. we spent 9m on him, we didn't get our money's worth, not even close.
 
you can't tell me that gordon was better than fulop and a 9m striker?

Which 9m striker? You seem to be suggesting that signing Gordon in some way limited what we spent, when the reality was we couldn't sign a 9m striker and tried to sign every fucker going. Even Mido and David Nugent turned us down, we'd been looking at players like Forlan too, Baines turned us down as did others, we even went to Man Utd with a large bid for Evans - no one established really wanted to come at that point. Even in the January we were having to pick up players like Reid from Charlton who had failed at Spurs and Bardsley who had turned us down before and Prica.

It wasn't till the following season when we'd stayed up and were looked as being a better bet that regulars from Premier League clubs really became available and we chucked more money around.
 
Which 9m striker? You seem to be suggesting that signing Gordon in some way limited what we spent, when the reality was we couldn't sign a 9m striker and tried to sign every fucker going. Even Mido and David Nugent turned us down, we'd been looking at players like Forlan too, Baines turned us down as did others, we even went to Man Utd with a large bid for Evans - no one established really wanted to come at that point. Even in the January we were having to pick up players like Reid from Charlton who had failed at Spurs and Bardsley who had turned us down before and Prica.

apparently there is a canny good league somewhere called abroad, shame we didn't send any scouts over there like.

your point is valid that we were still spunking the cash, shame it was on a large amount of crap
 
But turned out to be flops

Esteban Fuertes - Derby

Difficult to class him as a flop - he only played eight games.

In July 1999, Fuertes was purchased for £2.3m by Jim Smith, manager of Derby County in England. He scored two early goals, the winner against Everton in the league[1] and another against Swansea City in the League Cup.[2] However, weeks later, he was refused entry back into Britain when immigration officials discovered that his Italian passport was forged. Derby were able to sell him on to Lens in France for £2.8m.[3] His final European club was Tenerife in Spain.
 
Sergei Rebrov

Who was that Colombian up top for villa?
Juan Pablo Angel?

Anderson for Utd is a good one - hugely rated when he went there.

remember being gutted when Nugent went to Portsmouth as we were linked with him.

Dan Gosling to Newcastle.
 
apparently there is a canny good league somewhere called abroad, shame we didn't send any scouts over there like.

your point is valid that we were still spunking the cash, shame it was on a large amount of crap

I recall us going for players like Baines, Chiellini, Forlan and others. Maybe those were too high, but give Keane and co were starting from scratch and didn't have a scouting set up to speak of on arrival, then we went for young British based players with scope for improvement and things to prove. True a lot didn't work out but the character part of that showed out when you look at how many late equalisiers and winners we got that season - looking at it now it was ridiculous. Also we finished 15th that season. Bruce came in two seasons later and spent a shit load on Bent, Catts, Cana, Turner whilst also bringing the likes of Mensah, Zenden, Da Silva and others in and only finished 13th, with the core of his side being made up of Keane players, many signed that season where you say we spent the money on a large amount of crap - Gordon, Bardsley, Richardson, Reid, Jones played decent roles under Bruce so it can't all have been that bad.

And the Michael Chopra signing is another that's regularly slated, but we lost virtually nothing on him, had him here for two seasons, mostly played him wide and he scored some really important goals. People like Danny Higgibotham also came in, done a decent job and we sold quickly for the same amount we paid.

Easy to look back and say we could have signed this or that, but mostly we couldn't.
 

You make some very good points and a great post but I still don't see how that makes Gordon any less of a massive waste of money?

Chopra is a great example tbf - if we had spent that money on a quality winger wed have had a much more balanced side, Chopra could have played in the right position and the likes of Healy and Cole would never have been needed.
 
I don't think Fulop was solid tbf, though we could have bought one who was relatively cheaply. Easy to criticise Gordon too but looking individually at his injuries:

He had broken bone which wasn't picked up by xray. Keane insisted he played when he didn't want to and he made the injury worse and it was picked up = extended time out.

Defoe basically stamped on his arm - time out. He had a plate in his arm when he came back and he was in absolutely tremendous form at the back end of the season. The following season on medical advice he had the plate taken out and immediately his arm broke in the same place, resulting in him having to have a plate put in again and costing more time out.

The last one was a knee injury. It was persistent for a while and possibly needed operating on. IIRC he had an exploritory op and visited a specialist, who suggested to strengthen it and play on, but it ended up making things worse. He did rather than having it operated on, but it cost him his career here and a year or two or his career.

Three things which kept him out ages, but largely could have been avoided. If I was going to criticise him it wouldn't be for the injuries, it would be I didn't think he was the strongest goalkeeper at times, but he was a tremendous keeper and leagues ahead of Fulop.


Fulop terrified the life out of me at the land fill, I swear for about 5 seconds he had no idea where the goal was, neither did Chopra the little f***ing wanker!
 
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