So, Bellamy. You can't possibly sell our best player they said! Many assumed Redknapp would take him to Spurs, newly qualified for the CL. Ended up at Cardiff in the league below, did alright. We fucked up Spurs the next year and embarked on a decade plus trophy spree.
Adam Johnson. Had the best job in football.... 10 real tough and smart professionals working their arse off in perfect unison, he had the incisive role so took the plaudits for matchwinning moments. He wasn't fit to lace the boots of half of that dressing room. Don't remember what happened to him.
Navas kept his spot for three years in a team aiming to dominate everything, despite having the worst case of head-down winger syndrome I've ever come accross. We knew he was fast, fit, he could dribble and I swear he could actually hit that bloody ball better than most. But he never ever got to the stage of being able to look up and see what option was needed. Never even got to the stage of instinctively picking based on the state of the game. It was bad option after bad option. Still, nice lad and worked well enough. I just can't see how we ever expected to win much if he was a key attacker, let alone playing the type of football we did.
Gael Clichy. He was WANK. 'Oh, I like Clichy, he can't play much but he can defend a bit'. No. He couldn't. He was hopelessly lost at anything above the mostt basic positional stuff. He had no defensive, last gasp, or covering instinct either. And as for his footballing skills. But yes, he was very fast.
Corluka is a good shout. He was graceful and intelligent. But slower than most glaciers. His most notable attribute was the knack of being somewhere close by every time a goal was scored against us. Close by, but never involved. Standing still, having used that big Balkan brain to make the decision very early on to write the situation off and preserve his energy and reputation, chosing steadfastly to not get involved with things that might have ended up with him having tried but failed to rescue the situation. I suppose he might have chosen differently, and his intervention or attempt to mitigate the defensive situation, might have worked out well. Vedran, however, somehow instinctively knew that it was better to leave such possibilities to our imagination.
Jo. The boy who broke the mould, demonstrating that you could succeed in being an outcast, a target of fans, and still reasonably end up with the 'over-rated' tag many years later. By the time he returned to the squad, he was as far down the ladder as it's possible for a young player to travel in a few months. Confidence shot, and missing a bunch of technique, leaving us to realise that whatever he'd had that had made him worth buying, it certainly wasn't pace, it surely wasn't skill, it definitely wasn't strength, and it can't ever have been innate attacking instinct or anything remotely recognisable as fighting spirit.
SWP (II). I'm sorry, really. But that season was just not pretty at all. He ended up in midfield with some midfielder in front on the right wing, but that wasn't the problem. It was more the ongoing failure to display any top flight footballing skills.
McManaman? Sure, if we throw Robert Fowler in so they can have a chummy time of it. Early retirement lads! Fill your boots. FAT BASTARD.
I'd say Richard Dunne but.... in retrospect I have him down as a remarkable over-achiever in his earlier years, someone who actually was over-rated, and destined by the law of averages only to disappoint more and more as time went on.
George Weah. Over-rated by me. Was a favourite as an AC Milan player. In retrospect, he was never a Van Basten or even a Desailly. Even accounting for that, I had - have - a hard time accepting how bad he was for us, and the whole episode goes down as a disillusionment I've never been able to face. I will die in denial. He beat 8 players and scored once.
Steve McMahon, over-rated by me. I was young, and pretty much in awe of us having a midfielder who could play 30 yard diagonal passes.
Michael Hughes. My first ever 'pet' signing. He was going to be MINT. I knew it. 90 Minutes magazine new it. Eventually, he was a good player in a W Ham that usually outclassed us despite us having 'moved up in the world'. But that was 5 or 6 years after joining us, during which time he accumulated about half a dozen appearances in a lower-mid table French side.
Tevez... nah, kidding. He'd walk into any of our teams at any stage, to this day.