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A comment someone made on the Notts Co thread about Taylor being the best of the players who's come to us in his dotage got me thinking about the best and worst players we've had after their prime (not loanees) - ie. having had illustrious careers further up the pyramid. Not sure I can make teams - for some reason we've hardly had any ex-star goalkeepers - but here are a few names I'd put in each category:

LAST HURRAH 11:
Culverhouse - Hoddle - Hazard - Walters - Barnes - Macari

SHORT-CHANGED 11:
Peach - Kilcline - Elkins - Fenwick - Sheehan - Prutton - Ince - Nalis - Thorp - McAvennie

Is it just me, or do they disappoint more often than not?

 Barnes  :hmmm:

 However like this game, so will have a think.

Someone like Paul Allen, who aided the 95/96 side, came aged about 33. Brain Borrows would also be a shout played mostly at Cov in the top flight, but also Everton and MBoro.  37 when he turned up... we didn't go down he played 80 games in about 2 seasons.

Ken McPherson, could also merit consideration, although early career not exactly stellar, cam eto us at 34 and helped win promotion in 62/63, and ws still playing at 38.

John Smith, had played a bit in the Spurs double side and West Ham, turned 30 during 68/69 and was widely considerd to be the brains which drove the 68/69 legendary side.

Keeper you might want to consider Jim Barron.... had a bit of pedigree,  over a hundred games for Forest arrived aged 32 and played for a couple of seasons.

Brian Hamilton, had a pretty decent pedigree when pitching up here, played a fair bit in the 78/79/80 sort of era when we were decent... 32 when piching up 35 when leaving, went ot Tranny and played until 39.

BTW I'm focusing on Tayloresque players who've offered something.

Shocker, no Neil Ruddock!?

Kenny Allen was kind of old when he joined.

Frank Talia was part of the Blackburn Squad that won the Premier League. Make of that what you will :)

But it's not just old, they have to have had a career further up the pyramid, makes it more tricky.


 

Gareth Whalley? Tony Thorpe? Jamie Cureton?
 :suicide:

I'd say Ian Woan would have to be in there. Was 32/33 when he joined us and played for Forest in the Top Flight. He scored "that goal" which prevented Newcastle winning the Premier League.

That bald striker who partnered SSP in 03/04...his name escapes me for some reason, Judas something?

Chris Ramsey, played at a high level with Brighton, although having looked he wasn't very old when he joined us.

 22 when he joined us after 30 games for Brighton over a few years, doesn't qualify.

McMahon, Neil Webb, Lawrie Sanchez, Gareth Hall...

Webb, was only on loan

(https://www.fansnetwork.co.uk/images/news/7219.jpg)

 :)

Good shout.

If you just wanted an old keeper who'd played a lot at a low level, then Alex Ferguson who played 7 games post war, aged 44 would be yer man.

Dave MacKay, pretty much on his own as the biggest c*** ever to turn out for STFC - and there have been a few!  

He also replaced the Don with a player who never turned out in British league football again after his spell here, Tommy Jenkins.

 Jimmy Quinn is a curio, he was 40 when he turned out in his 3rd spell at the CG

To qualify for the Best Xi I would think they have to look like they are in the wrong division - so despite their age we are left wondering how lucky we have been.  The worst XI the opposite, so a player like Fenwick, as ineffectual as he was, didn't drop down to play for us!

Paul Allen is a good call Reg, he was a class above and came with energy.  He looked like he should still have been playing higher, same for Culverhouse.  Hoddle and Hazard, both being good enough to leap back up the league in terms of clubs they next played for!

Nallis would certainly be in the other team, although, most frustrating, was seeing that he had clearly been a good footballer, it's just that he sort of got footballing dementia-arthritis if that could be a proper thing.

Was Kenny Allen any good?  I remember him, just, but only because he looked like a School Caretaker had been given a go on the pitch.  I honestly cannot recall whether he was any good in goal or not.

David Lucas would kind of fit that bill.

Brian Borrows

Steve McMahon was a handy player for us. Still a cunt, though.

An interesting criterion flip... so to be in the best XI, they have to have dropped down yet still play like they're in the higher Div. Makes it a bit tough....  someone like Brian Borrows, looked like he belonged a rung below his previous, despite still being useful. Whereas yes, a Walters looked like he could still do something higher up.

I think you'll struggle to get XI who dropped down, after years but looked like they could move back up.  Think if they've dropped down and you get some good service out them then that's more realistic.  There's usually good reasons why they've dropped down

Brian Marwood. Not many appearances but didn't let the side down.

Darren Ward could make the both the best & worst over the hill squads based on his time with us.

Gary Elkins, a contender for worst 11 regardless of age.

Ian woan

Another game I was at  :)
At least he got stuck in  ;D

https://youtu.be/9cTadL6UaHs

Frank McAvvenie....epic panic buy fail

Didn't Ossie Ardiles pull on a shirt for us as player manager?

 In the bad XI, then Ken Keyworth gets a mention. Poor old Ken had been a useful player for Leicester appearing in the cup finals of 61 and 63, scoring in 63, and was in their 64 LC winning side. But to prove the rule that there is a reason why they drop down, he was carrying an injury, that did for him. Always a shame when that happens.

He was only on loan, but Andy Gray was awful, couldn't make it out of the centre circle.  Might be saved from entry by playing a win over Oxford though.

loan though wasn't he?

Nope. Just quickly regretted.

Tony Galvin was some way from his peak as far as I remember

Galvin was player Assistant Manager, but I don’t remember him being much cop on the pitch for us.  We had a couple of the 90’s teams that returned to us late in their careers looking over weight and somewhat having lost their lustre.

David Geddis. Steve White. Dave Bamber.

Remember that guy we got from Walsall the season we went down in 05/06... He was a Gills legend and turned us down the previous summer to sign for Walsall  before being released and heading here. I thought was actually okay but clearly unfit and ultimately we went down so one perhaps for the forgettable.

Paul Smith was the name I believe.

Tony Evans, Jake Findlay, Bryan Hamilton, Roy Greenwood, Dave Moss's 2nd spell, Rideouts 2nd spell(loan), Ian Muir(loan), Paul Richardson, Brian Marwood, Tony Galvin, Andy Mutch, Lillian Nalis, Lawrie Sanchez, David Geddis, Frankie Mcavennie, Brian Kilcline, Neil Webb(loan), Jamie Cureton, Gareth Whalley and Tony Thorpe were all pretty shit in the twighlight of their careers before joining us.

In fact you could make a couple of shit teams from that line up.

Not sure you could include Bobby Barnes in that list RF as he was only 25 when he joined us.

As for the good, we have had many, Steve White, Brian Borrows, Ian Culverhouse, Mark Walters, Paul Allen, Freddie Darras, Mickey Hazard and several others.

I agree about Ward, similar could be said about Reeves who had a couple of torrid seasons with us as well as a couple of decent ones, I had forgotten about Elkins.

Has anybody mentioned Tommy Miller yet?

Many on your list though are not players who've performed at a high level and dropped down, or in some cases not in their 30's, when arriving at the CG like Chalkie  As has been pointed out the likes of Brian's Hamilton and Marwood brought something to their respective sides, so were far from useless.  Of more concern is the many recent and current players we have who've never got up the hill in the first place. 

To listen to some on here they'd have BOO back at LB rather than Taylor as he could run up and down a bit, when he wasn't abusing his body.

Almost every player I mentioned was over 29 when they joined the Town, of the list of crappees every one of them had at one point played top division football except Ian Muir who scored a shitload of goals for Tranmere before coming to us , my mistake he scored a shitload after signing for us! hes the odd one out.

Muir was a loan though, so doesn't count, as was Webb.  Mutch wasn't dropping down he was stepping up, his time with us his only top flight season, he wasn't completely useless considering he was playing at a higher level than usual.

You used to get someone like a Geddis, who could be brought in during the season, to act as short term cover, and be a squad man.  Now the gaffer in his case Macari, probably didn't expect him to be able to replace Shearer and White, but he did score 3 in his 10 games all on the road and we did get to the PO's, so he did a job, was just an OK player i the circumstances.

Similarly, I think Richards was brought in by Flitcroft with the remit of score me a dozen goals til the end of the seasoin and get us into the autos or at least PO's..... similar was Paul Benson, ahd we gone up, like with Benson, Richards may not have featured much at Div 3 level.

Miller something of a curio, we only lost 7 games of his 34 league appearances in 12/13, so was he good or useless?

Ady Williams was pretty good for a season or two having had a very good career at Reading and Coventry.

Adi Viveash's second spell was pretty dreadful.

Hence why I made a point of stating loan in my poast. for the first 2 before you quoted it.

Mutch, yes he played at a level lower all his career thats true but he did represent England B in the late 80's.

Here's the relevant part of Froggy's OP.....

Yes a point I missed first time, which is why I added the (loan) in brackets after posting, of course you never missread or miss things do you  :hmmm:

I can only remember him from the 3-0 Home win against Plymouth when Simpson & Close got sent off (poss 89?)

However it all adds to the debate.... which is a good thing.

He had the nickname 6X for a reason, a drink he liked to partake in during his time at Swindon.

He showed he had some class and always had his socks around his ankles. Never understood this.

You could always see that he USED to have some good skills but by the time he arrived he was way past it.

Lots of players back in the 70s and 80s never wore shin pads, Bobby Barnes and Steve Claridge were 2 of them who hated them too.

Proper Football............

Considering the amount of times Bobby Barnes was kicked as he jinked around defenders that was always a surprise that he chose not to wear them.

(http://soccersignatures.co.uk/image/cache/data/Bobby%20Barnes%201-700x700.jpg)

I always thought Adi Whitbread was useless seeing as he cost £500,000 - although, tbf, it was hard to shine in that PL season.

Also for the fact that he was used in p/ex to get Beauchump here.

Whitbread was 22 when joining us, from a lower league side.... and had a lengthy career after leaving us. 

It wasn't the done thing though was it? I bet players from that era have some good scars.

Remember when Stigger ran his studs down a Ipswich player's shin in a televised game leaving sizeable calling card ??

I remember when shin pads were material with canes inserted longwise.  When the lightweight plastic jobbers came along it was proper exciting, not having played 11 a side in anger for about 40 years, I've no idea whether the technology of the intervening years has made them even better?

There were some proper challenges back then! I would say that probably in the 70s and early 80s possibly as much as 1/4 of the players didn't wear them, but some had them as thick as the Encyclopedia britannica! (often centre backs)

My first shin pads when I started playing when I was about 7 back in the early 70s were bamboo strips, by the time I started playing in the school team at Gorse Hill about 3 years later they were plastic and with polystyrene backing, I hated wearing them.

I think Galvin got his last International cap while playing for us!

He did, his last international cap for Eire was September 1989 vs Germany a couple of months after joining us, he was never called up again though.

Or in reverse over the hill players who never had a league career - Tony Gough

Gough was a strange one, think Fred Ford thought he could be the new Tony Book, so I expected him to be better than what he was.  To rectify this was simple, to be a Town fan just don't expect much and you won't be let down, and even sometimes pleasantly surprised.

Not sure how old he was when he joined but starting off at Juventus you’d expect a bit of talent from Vincent Pericard.

Sadly not. A 15 year career with a fruitful 23 goals

And who remembers this from the not too distant past

Jakob Jesionkowski

We got Vincent in his prime years, 28 years old it looks like!  What an absurd career.

What ??,  worse than Terry Gibson ?.

Gibson started 8 games for us and was never on the losing side, he lost  his last game when not starting but coming off the bench late on.

Could Colin Barrrett be classed as over the hill. Not in terms of age, as he was 27 when he signed for us, but only played 5 games before being released the following summer when he moved to Andover.

For a player who won the first division championship in 77-78 with Nottingham Forest (and played the majority of the games that season); he must have had a bad injury to be signing for a division three team on a free transfer two years later. I wonder if he had a medical, and if so how he passed it.

Gibbo was awful and we swerved signing him on a perm.  Considering he had a decent top flight career with Man U, Cov and Wimbledon he definitely qualifies.

Given he played nearly 200 games for Verona, Alberto Comazzi was hopeless.  Albeit given what happened soon after he left STFC, maybe he had stuff on his mind... And another PDC signing, Lukas Magera, didn't blow anyone's socks off (as promised by Jeremy Wray)

Ossie's 2 games for Town underwhelmed (and he was sent off) and his compatriot Nestor Lorenzo started well but faded quickly and certainly didn't live up to the hype after he was signed as a World Cup finalist.

Fact fans: Galvin was (presumably still is) fluent in Russian and got a degree in Russian Studies from Hull Uni before joining Spurs.  Pretty rare for a pro from the 70s/80s era to have degree, let alone such an esoteric one

Lawrie Sanchez was sh1te and over the hill when he signed for us. He didn't want to play for us against Wimbledon.

I reckon almost half of the team (and most of the defence) would be made up from the Premier season. Fenwick, Kilcline, Sanchez, McAvennie......you could almost argue Mutch as well, although he came from Wolves who were below us at the time. I always remember him as the stand-out player for Wolves when we played them, but was a disappointment (to me anyway) when he played for us. Having said that, he may well have been our top scorer that season...?

Has anybody mentioned Paul Ince?

‘Go on son, make a name for youself’

Probably the best shout I’ve ever heard at a football match

Phil King played like a future pub landlord in his brief second spell.

David Kerslake mirrored Phil  .... but Phil is a man of the people, ex footballers and pub running should be encouraged