Worst 10 Town players

I was still bored, so I also wrote this.

Worst 10 Town players I have seen.

1.   Jason Drysdale

He had pedigree – a good career at Watford and time spent at Newcastle – and he cost a good deal of money. So why couldn’t Drysdale kick a football correctly? He seemed at times to have square feet, the ball ricocheting off them at unpredictable angles. Watching him try to cross a football was like watching a children playing football with a rugby ball – superficially entertaining but heartbreaking at the same time. His career after leaving us – a bit of time at Bishop’s Stortford and not a lot else – shows how far his stock fell through his performances. The wonderfull fanzier THe 69er once described Drysdale as “genuinely no-footed”. They were not being unkind. Perplexing, puzzling – and downright awful.

2.   Shaun Close

Middle name “that wasn’t”. I was very young when watching Shaun Close play for us, but my Dad recalls an occasion when I asked him “why doesn’t our number 9 play like the other players? He doesn’t kick it properly and never kicks it towards the goal”. Which I like to think is as accurate a review as I’ve ever given a player. There isn’t really anything specific I can add to that – he just wasn’t a footballer. Although somehow he was.

3.   Frazer McHugh

It seems unkind to put him so high, as he was a very young player in a very poor team. But McHugh seemed strangely immobile for a young man. He couldn’t run. He barely walked. And when he got on the ball he seemed frozen with panic. I’m not sure I ever saw him give the ball to another town player. I was staggered a few years after leaving us when he reappeared, first at Bradford and then Notts County, but he soon disappeared again. One of the very few players I genuinely thought I could equal – and I am a very mediocre Sunday league footballer.

4.   Adrian Bakalli

The strangest 45 minutes of football from a player I think I’ve ever seen. Playing the first 45 minutes away at Stoke after we had secured safety, Bakalli wandered around the pitch as though on a stroll through the Town Gardens with a happily sedated look on his face, blissfully unaware of the game of football going on around him. Bizarre.

5.   Neil Webb

“We’ve signed an England international on loan” my Dad told me. Great! He’s bound to be something special. But hang on – where is he, and while I’m asking questions, who’s that fat bloke panting after 3 minutes? “That’s him” admits the old man. Clearly coming to us to try to regain some sort of fitness, Webb was as out of shape as a footballer could be. Looking back it seems quite sad for a player of his ability to look so poor, so unfit, so patently past his best. At the time, it was just immensely frustrating.

6.   Mark McCammon

Rubbish. Next.

7.   Ricky Shakes

He did seem to – every time the ball came near him. Like many a deceptive winger, he had pace, but at no point in his career did he have control of the ball. I don’t think he ever knew any more than I did what he was actually trying to do. Certainly, it wasn’t effective. Just incredible infuriating.

8.   Jamie Slabber

Made McCammon seem OK. No pace. No strength. No movement. No goals. No point.

9.   Adrian Viveash

So bad we signed him twice. That might seem unkind on poor Adi, who managed 69 appearances with us in two spells (inaccuracy alert! I used Wikipedia to get the stats. Look them up yourself if you care that much…) But he once lined up – I believe at Chesterfield, but happy to be corrected – in a back three with Matt Heywood and Alan Reeves, and he made the other two seem quick on the turn. He was fine if the ball was dropping towards his head, and his distribution wasn’t awful. But he could only defend an area the size of his own bottom. We knew this about him, and we signed him again. Unbelievable.

10.   Lee Collins

Of all the things Steve McMahon did – and I believe a quick search through this very forum may well explain some of these in detail – signing Lee Collins may seem rather trifling. But he really was poor. He liked to tackle – actually I’ll rephrase that – he liked to throw himself at opposing players, regardless of their proximity to the ball. But he couldn’t control it. Or himself. He played like a rapid dog with a firework located in his tail-adjacent orifice. Unsurprisingly signed for Blackpool to kick people by the sea, his career really faltered when McMahon stopped signing him.

Those who nearly made it: Paul McAreavey, Jimmy Glass, Paul Hunt, Richard Dryden, Lawrie Sanchez, Gary Elkins.