The 12 Days of Christmas Tat: A Festive Blog Series

[Deutsch Wolf]

I promised some special content for Christmas to my readers on Facebook, I promised some historical Wolves stuff on my feedback thread on here. So this is a combination of the two, a blog every day between now and Christmas Eve showcasing 12 of the very worst signings we've made in the last 20-odd years. A bit of a thank you for all the support I've been given since I started in July.

Anyway, here's episode one: hope you all like it.

Paul Jones
Steve Claridge
Tongo Doumbia
Mark Atkins
Tomasz Frankowski
Darren Ferguson
Jamie O'Hara
Tony Daley
Stefan Maierhofer
Robert Taylor
Leon Clarke
Roger Johnson

 

[Tredman]

Great article that DW. Hope to see Darren Ferguson in there too

 

[Sniffer]

Yet a few days after falling out with the club and its supporters.......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/internationals/3719514.stm

Jones was outstanding, producing fine stops from Owen, Wayne Rooney and Beckham, whose late booking rules him out of Wednesday's game in Azerbaijan.

Paul Jones - 8 (STAR MAN): Could do nothing to prevent the two goals and made a number of desperate saves to keep Wales in the game.

 

[lemonjelly]

I promised some special content for Christmas to my readers on Facebook, I promised some historical Wolves stuff on my feedback thread on here. So this is a combination of the two, a blog every day between now and Christmas Eve showcasing 12 of the very worst signings we've made in the last 20-odd years. A bit of a thank you for all the support I've been given since I started in July.

Anyway, here's episode one: hope you all like it.

https://danwolves.wordpress.com/2016/12/13/the-12-days-of-christmas-tat-1-paul-jones/

:icon_lol: Just made a post on another thread, anbd it made me think about suggesting a worst signings blog :icon_lol:

Great article that DW. Hope to see Darren Ferguson in there too

And guess what my suggestion was...

 

[YoungWolf]

Awesome stuff Dan, really enjoyed reading that.

I remember being particularly miffed by Jones' treatment of Oakes, after his heroics against United and Liverpool. I don't remember much about Jones, but I do remember his awful kicking.

 

[Tredman]

Awesome stuff Dan, really enjoyed reading that.

I remember being particularly miffed by Jones' treatment of Oakes, after his heroics against United and Liverpool. I don't remember much about Jones, but I do remember his awful kicking.

He was terrible at kicking in his first stint too, was a compeltely stupid signing when he came back

 

[Paul]

Love it

 

[Tyrannosaurus Dan]

A great read as always. I will look forward to seeing who else appears.

I remember being absolutely furious with DJ when he dropped Oakes. Truly awful man management.

 

[So Long Architect]

Lovely stuff.

A quick word of caution on the use of images, especially from Getty. Each of their images is trackable and they can and will come after you for big bucks if you use one of them without permission and payment. On our work blog, we downloaded an image to the library of our blog for potential use abut never actually published it. They still tracked it down and sent us a bill for £800. If memory serves, we settled on £300 after arguing that it had never been used and promising to delete it. But the alternative was being taken to court, which they have been known to do, though rarely.

You may have already considered this and sorted out a solution, in which case feel free to ignore.

 

[YoungWolf]

A great read as always. I will look forward to seeing who else appears.

I remember being absolutely furious with DJ when he dropped Oakes. Truly awful man management.

And yet the likes Oakes and Naylor, who he also threw under the bus with comments, went on to sign for him at Cardiff! Money talks I suppose!

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Lovely stuff.

A quick word of caution on the use of images, especially from Getty. Each of their images is trackable and they can and will come after you for big bucks if you use one of them without permission and payment. On our work blog, we downloaded an image to the library of our blog for potential use abut never actually published it. They still tracked it down and sent us a bill for £800. If memory serves, we settled on £300 after arguing that it had never been used and promising to delete it. But the alternative was being taken to court, which they have been known to do, though rarely.

You may have already considered this and sorted out a solution, in which case feel free to ignore.

They've changed their policy now as far as I'm aware - it's a free for all providing you embed it properly and don't crop out the Getty watermark and the credit for the photographer. They used to be proper shits about it but I think they've realised belatedly that you can't behave like a 1960s company in a 2010s landscape.

Cheers for the heads up anyway, I try to be careful about what I use

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

And yet the likes Oakes and Naylor, who he also threw under the bus with comments, went on to sign for him at Cardiff! Money talks I suppose!

Cooper as well. Hardly ever picked him here but goes and signs him again. DJ was a strange man sometimes.

 

[So Long Architect]

They've changed their policy now as far as I'm aware - it's a free for all providing you embed it properly and don't crop out the Getty watermark and the credit for the photographer. They used to be proper shits about it but I think they've realised belatedly that you can't behave like a 1960s company in a 2010s landscape.

Cheers for the heads up anyway, I try to be careful about what I use

Ah, wasn't aware of that. I suspect there's a different view taken when you're not using the image for commercial purposes as well.

EDIT: Yes, free for non-commercial stuff - http://www.gettyimages.co.uk/resources/embed
Good. Like you say, about time.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

A great read as always. I will look forward to seeing who else appears.

I remember being absolutely furious with DJ when he dropped Oakes. Truly awful man management.

Shunted Miller wide (and soon after dropped him altogether) to accommodate Cort too after he'd scored in those United/Liverpool games. Despite Cort being about as fit at the time as Neil Shipperley, it took him a good ten games or so (being as he'd hardly played for three and a half years) to get anywhere near up to speed...by which time we were more or less doomed and we'd pissed off Miller to the point he asked to leave, and having been set on a move for so long never wanted to sign a new deal with us again even after DJ had left.

 

[Quirkafleeg]

I dearly hope Seyi Olofinjana is in there. The only cunt to ever make me walk out of a Wolves game.

 

[Tony Towner]

Shunted Miller wide (and soon after dropped him altogether) to accommodate Cort too after he'd scored in those United/Liverpool games. Despite Cort being about as fit at the time as Neil Shipperley, it took him a good ten games or so (being as he'd hardly played for three and a half years) to get anywhere near up to speed...by which time we were more or less doomed and we'd pissed off Miller to the point he asked to leave, and having been set on a move for so long never wanted to sign a new deal with us again even after DJ had left.

Iversen had also started to come into form at the point he was dropped for Cort too.

 

[Paul]

According to his Wiki page Steffan is still playing at 40, do they feed these Norwegians some kind of youth serum ??

 

[nimrod]

I dearly hope Seyi Olofinjana is in there. The only $#@! to ever make me walk out of a Wolves game.

i'd say it's a cert. yet stoke signed him for a few million which makes you wonder what we were missing?

 

[Tony Towner]

i'd say it's a cert. yet stoke signed him for a few million which makes you wonder what we were missing?

Nothing, we saw he'd had a freakish run of 2 yd tap ins, Pulis didn't.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Ahem:

To qualify for this hallowed group, the players must fall into at least one (and preferably more) of the following categories:

An obviously bad idea from the outset

A massive let down relative to expectations, due to the player’s own failings

Ditched at a large financial loss

Negligible positive impact at any stage of their Wolves career

Openly damaging to the club with their very presence

This lets several of my personal bête noirs over the years off the hook, at least until I decide to start another series where I can happily include them. So count yourselves lucky Matt Doherty (a cheap punt – yes, I said punt – from the Irish league), Seyi Olofinjana (saved by Tony Pulis inexplicably handing us a hefty profit on what we in turn inexplicably spent on him in the first place), Stephen Hunt (a good job he scored that goal against Blackburn) and the various players who primarily failed here due to injuries or off field issues as this isn’t really anyone’s fault (although there is one exception who is included for good reason, and we’ll come to him in due course).

Seyi gets away with it because we somehow got close to double back what we paid for the big lummox. He wouldn't do if he'd gone for his proper value of about £200k. And in the interests of fairness, even if I felt he was more often a hindrance than a help to us even in the season in question, he did score a reasonable amount of goals for us in 06/07 when we made the playoffs. Even if most of them were from less than three yards out. And he missed a fuck ton of chances along the way. And everything else about him was still pure Seyi.

I only have 12 spots and in light of that there are miles worse candidates to be had...

But he'll get a piece about him eventually, I couldn't stand him. Just not in this series.