The "What Could Have Beens"...

[Deutsch Wolf]

After talk of Silas and Joao Teixeira on a couple of threads today, give me your players who should have been great but it never happened.

Neil Masters
Chris Marsden
Mark Burke
Dougie Freedman
Steffen Iversen

The way we dealt with all of the latter four still annoys me (tbf Masters was just broken, but that should have been a really good signing). Dominic Foley was never going to be a worldbeater but we should have made better use of him as well.

 

[NicholasG1973]

Kevin Ashley

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

The money we spent on Ashley was pure:

£500k on a right back in 1990. It'd be like paying £9m for one now. He wasn't awful per se, but he just looked like any old bog standard third tier full back as I remember. We already had some of those.

I'm sure there's a community of Blues fans somewhere who lament us ruining their future England star, mind...

 

[Tredman]

George Ndah
Carlos Kameni

 

[Quirkafleeg]

Kevin Ashley

If he hadnt assaulted and nearly decapitated a fellow professional in one of the pre-season games he could have been a very decent right back. I cant believe he got 88 appearances thought it was much less.. However injures plagued him throughout.

 

[Quirkafleeg]

George Ndah

Matt Carbon ended what could have been a half decent Wolves career.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

George Ndah
Carlos Kameni

Big Carlos could still realistically have been our keeper now and it's 14 years since we "signed" him.

I remember watching us play Port Vale on Ndah's debut and if you'd been asked to pick the £3.5m player and the £1m player between him and Akinbiyi and you didn't know better, I bet no-one would have got it right.

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Danny Hegan - Sadly he could not resist the lure of alcohol. So much talent wasted because of his love of night clubs.

 

[Quirkafleeg]

Im so glad Peter Taylor convinced the Leicester board to shell out £5m, because we got shafted by Bristol City at £3.5m for Akinbiyi.

 

[Kenny]

Danny Hegan - Sadly he could not resist the lure of alcohol. So much talent wasted because of his love of night clubs.

Guessing the biggest from your era was Knowles. I know he had already achieved something but he surely would have gone on to true greatness he had stayed in the game

 

[Kenny]

Im so glad Peter Taylor convinced the Leicester board to shell out £5m, because we got shafted by Bristol City at £3.5m for Akinbiyi.

Got a decent enough goal return from him though.

 

[Quirkafleeg]

Got a decent enough goal return from him though.

18 wasnt it ?

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Im so glad Peter Taylor convinced the Leicester board to shell out £5m, because we got shafted by Bristol City at £3.5m for Akinbiyi.

Two factors really:

1) They knew we were desperate and we had £6m burning a hole in our pocket. Colin Larkin and Mark Jones were not going to get us very far

2) They owed Gillingham about 20% of whatever they got, so the price went up. Remember with Bully, we asked daft money not only because he was brilliant but because Albion had a massive sell on clause on him

 

[FrankMunro-371]

Guessing the biggest from your era was Knowles. I know he had already achieved something but he surely would have gone on to true greatness he had stayed in the game

Absolutely. Knocker was a rare and wonderful talent who had the football world at his feet. I didn't mention him because he chose to leave football, but he must be rated as one of the most gifted footballers Wolves have ever had.

 

[Quirkafleeg]

Adam Proudlock. Not sure if it was because of the drink or the fact I had 31 Proudlock on my blue away shirt.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

I also had major love for Michael Branch in his first six months here. Looked a right bargain at £500k. He was still alright after that, I saw him get applauded by all sides of the ground at Barnsley in Oct 2000 or so. Then DJ thought it was a good idea to turn him into a right winger.

 

[Deleted Cyber]

I am going to be a little controversial but these two did not look bad signings when they happened. Both had been good players in sides that had just been relegated and both turned into unmitigated disasters. I give you Roger Johnson and Jamie O Hara. In the year before joining us but were tipped for international honours. We all know what happened next. Perhaps not in the should have been great category but neither should have been the disasters they were.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

Not one person argued against either signing. In fact there was mucho flapping on here when the O'Hara deal took a few weeks to sort out and Johnson was the main priority for many, many people (we needed a CH and he was the obvious one). We weren't to know.

 

[Deutsch Wolf]

As for Proudlock, I hope he's kicking himself right now. Could and should have had a perfectly respectable career as a Championship striker. Messed it up because he couldn't be arsed.

He can console himself with scoring the worst hat-trick of all time at Bradford in 2001 I suppose.

Michael Branch doing himself proud:

 

[Trips]

I also had major love for Michael Branch in his first six months here. Looked a right bargain at £500k. He was still alright after that, I saw him get applauded by all sides of the ground at Barnsley in Oct 2000 or so. Then DJ thought it was a good idea to turn him into a right winger.

I remember being at the game when we hammered City 4-1 (maybe on a Friday night) and Branch got two. Left thinking what a player we had got on loan and hoping it was made permanent. Also remember one guy kicking off furiously at 4-1 when Wolves started singing "It's just like watching Man U" :icon_lol:

edit - DW getting the highlights video up while I'm still typing!!!!!