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There have always been daft buys in football but since we started ruining football we seem to be there in a class of our own (excluding berbaflop maybe)

It would be easy to say robinho was by far our biggest folly but he remains a high profile international and perhaps more importantly is so motivated to leave that his huge salary will not stop him if he found a sunnier club interested in his services.

So who do you think was our worst piece of recent business and why?

Santa-Cruz - We paid way over the odds for him on the strength of one good season. We all knew how injury prone he is and we were never going to get value for money from him.

In several strange ways I think that the recruitment of Kolo Toure was not a smart move, subsequently making him captain...before buying his brother who said that playing with Kolo here was one of the main reasons he came....was just not a great series of moves.

I don't think he should be one of our starting centre halves, I don't think he's a good captain and if we fuck him off out of the team, or worse the club, I think we have to do some careful managing of his brother so as to not upset him

He should have been stripped of the captaincy last season when Mancini arrived and some of this would have been capable of being avoided.

Not the worse buy....but far from a great one and one which now gives us problems

King Kev wrote:Santa-Cruz - We paid way over the odds for him on the strength of one good season. We all knew how injury prone he is and we were never going to get value for money from him.

There's only one winner here.

While Robinho looks like shit purchase now, he served his purpose. He made other players look at us and think we are dead serious. Besides he was excellent in his frst season. Especially at home.

as of right now, i would have to say:

RSC ~20m
Jo ~19m
Lescott ~24m


Of these 3 lescott and jo look like they may still be able to make some sort of contribution ... unfortunately for RSC, he is older, still injury prone and in a team with a lot of attacking talent. He is definitely not a starter, so he won't get a run of games to show what he can do, and if he did I would have concerns that he would get injured any way ... actually it probably doesn't help his injuries that he doesn't get any game time, then comes into a game eager to impress and his muscles have no time to warm up to the activity. It wouldn't be this way for a normal person, but normal people aren't made out of rice paper.

lescott and Jo may still come good, that's in their hands ... but in terms of price and contribution, I would say these 3 have contributed the least while having among the highest price tags.

I do like all three of them actually, Jo probably the least ... but I think he prob has the greatest chance of making a positive contribution. Lescott could easily find himself frozen out by boateng, kompany, toure, richards ... while I think Jo will get a chance (if we keep him) in cups and with injuries to tevez/ade

Niall Quinns Discopants wrote:

King Kev wrote:Santa-Cruz - We paid way over the odds for him on the strength of one good season. We all knew how injury prone he is and we were never going to get value for money from him.

There's only one winner here.

While Robinho looks like shit purchase now, he served his purpose. He made other players look at us and think we are dead serious. Besides he was excellent in his frst season. Especially at home.

Absolutely, I remember a couple of weeks ago a mune was on his high horse about Robinho being a bad buy. He seemed to forget that he was something like 3rd top scorer in the PL that first year, a feat made all the more remarkable by the fact this was achieved without even turning upto away games.

It was only really last year when Hughes changed the system that he really was exposed - and there is no reason that Mancini couldnt get that back if he wanted, but he chooses to play even more defensively. Thats not necessarily Robinhos fault, even though the guy is clearly a cunt.

Santa Cruz, for me eclipses even Bradbury as a shocker - not necessarily because he is a bad player, but because we chased him like dogs on heat, got our pants pulled down, and in his haste to sign his buddy, Hughes didnt bother to wonder who was going to supply the ball to him.

kinkylola wrote:
RSC ~20m
Jo ~19m
Lescott ~24m

This. Lescott being the only one on that list that is not complete shit... but the price we paid for him is still an absolute joke he is worth maybe half of that.

Imagine if we only had Franks (lack of) money still, and RSC was our only buy that summer when Hughes was appointed,

Jesus we'd be fucked. We'd of had to sell about 3 decent players the next summer just to dig ourselves out of the financial mess that move would have made.

Luckily, we can just fuck him off for 5 million and forget about it. Nice chap, potential was there, but we all knew it was never going to work out perfect.

Crossie wrote:Imagine if we only had Franks (lack of) money still, and RSC was our only buy that summer when Hughes was appointed,

Jesus we'd be fucked. We'd of had to sell about 3 decent players the next summer just to dig ourselves out of the financial mess that move would have made.

Luckily, we can just fuck him off for 5 million and forget about it. Nice chap, potential was there, but we all knew it was never going to work out perfect.

I like his interviews on the OS....after a shit defeat....in which he played 15 seconds...when he tells us that all will be ok as the players are determined to bounce back

Hmm, we used to talk about Big Fat Bob, Vuoso and Lee Badbuy.

Now we are so grand we can all happily run down world famous world cup players in our squad.

Happy days.

john@staustell wrote:Hmm, we used to talk about Big Fat Bob, Vuoso and Lee Badbuy.

Now we are so grand we can all happily run down world famous world cup players in our squad.

Happy days.

cmon John.....no-one was happy with Badbuy....esp not once he'd set foot on the pitch in a city shirt!!

ant london wrote:

john@staustell wrote:Hmm, we used to talk about Big Fat Bob, Vuoso and Lee Badbuy.

Now we are so grand we can all happily run down world famous world cup players in our squad.

Happy days.

cmon John.....no-one was happy with Badbuy....esp not once he'd set foot on the pitch in a city shirt!!

Remember the joy when we signed him? Only to be dispersed as you say when he took the field!

john@staustell wrote:

ant london wrote:

john@staustell wrote:Hmm, we used to talk about Big Fat Bob, Vuoso and Lee Badbuy.

Now we are so grand we can all happily run down world famous world cup players in our squad.

Happy days.

cmon John.....no-one was happy with Badbuy....esp not once he'd set foot on the pitch in a city shirt!!

Remember the joy when we signed him? Only to be dispersed as you say when he took the field!

I can remember it well.....I was well excited before that match....even at that tender(ish) age I could tell he was toilet as soon as he had played a half

King Kev wrote:Santa-Cruz - We paid way over the odds for him on the strength of one good season. We all knew how injury prone he is and we were never going to get value for money from him.

This - no contest.

Big bob Taylor is forgiven for all sins due to scoring the goal against (brum?) that huge significance at the time with regards to that seasons promotion (that period blurs slightly for me!)

i cannot think of a single game santa clause has ever played well in!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Is this restricted to players,if not I would like to nominate Sparkless.

Benjani - does he count?

Depends on if you define worst buys as those that cost us so much but delivered so little and that's all relative...when we spent £3m on Bradbury that was pretty much all our transfer funds (and our most costliest player at that time), what we got in return was one of our worst investments of all time.

RSC has never lived up to hype...I tell a lie, we all knew he wouldn't live up to the hype, even when he was at Bayern the fans joked that there was a disabled parking space outside the ground for RSC!

benjani did score a goal off his ear against the scum ... we didn't pay THAT much for him, and in all fairness he had scored 12 goals in the first half of the season before coming to us, so ~7m wasn't that bad a fee, no one knew how bad he really was till he got here, but still, he did score that goal ... I also remember him running down a ball out wide shoulder his man to the ground and crossing in for our player to score, can't remember who though. Much more contribution than RSC for a 3rd the cost?