Worst Professional Footballer you've ever seen play in real life

failing that, i was at landsdowne road when that butler chap (currently at wolves, i think) made his one and only appearance for the republic of ireland in a friendly against the czech republic. every time jan koller so much as sneezed he was on the ground like the proverbial sack of spuds. fluffed clearances, underhit passes - the whole works. the fact that we won 3-2 meant it was a performance we can chuckle at, so it wasn't so bad, from the onlooker's perspective.

Stanic scored a fantastic goal for Chelsea a few years back i seem to recall

Also for Wimbledon - Clive Goodyear.

I saw Mike Duxbury have a couple of nightmare games for MUFC vs Chelsea in the 80s. Incredibly slow, ran like an old man, couldn't tackle, couldn't pass. Next thing he's in the England squad.

And..Chelsea's own late 80s/early 90s snail - I give you Graham Roberts. A number 14 bus moves down Fulham Broadway on match day faster than old Robbo.

No, wait! He scored that beautiful header in the Stockport game. Ha ha.

Another nightmare has surfaced from CFC's last soujourn in Div 2 circa 89/90 : Dave Mitchell. This bearded, mulleted (think Barry Gibb)& quite old 'striker' was unearthed from some Dutch club and had apparently played a few games for Glasgow Rangers at one time. What can I say? It MUST have been a scam of some sort - this guy redefined the parameters of uselessness. He played about 4 games for us, touched the ball about twice in each, and mainly hung around offside or on the wing, seemingly trying to avoid the action. He had a shot in one game (against Walsall, IIRC) - from 15 yards he hit the ball like a toddler and forced the keeper to....do nothing really. It wouldn't have gone in - it wasn't going hard enough!

I must look up his career stats now.

Souness is such a dufus.

Wasn't there a story in Roy of The Rovers along these lines (ie, random stranger mistaken for big name star and chooses not to disabuse people of this flase perception and becomes good? If not, please ignore; it's obviously a concoction of my fevered brane that on reflection, sounds just like my kind of travelling to work daydream.

Noooooooooo Wurzel was great. I only saw him a few times in his 2nd spell at Accies when injury had wrecked him, but those who saw him before he was sold to Chelsea reckon he was a god. A career ruined by boozing.
It was so sad when he died. He wasn't even 40. Used to see him at the social club all the time when I popped in before reserve matches way back. A really likeable guy , a true gent.

My fave Wurzel story was when playing for Accies the ball was booted high up in the air and when the ball came back down the guy who was standing next to him was rolling around on the pitch holding his balls.

Is there a thread for best players? I don't wanna add the names of Accies players to a thread where Ronaldhino, Zidane, Platini etc are mentioned.

I'll nominate Regi Blinker.

We were talking about this again in the pub last night. I still can't think of anyone worse than Martin Hayes.

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The problem with Scheidt wasn't how bad he was, it was that he was never in a month of fucking Sundays an international class £5M player. We wuz robbed.

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What on earth was Ron Atkinson thinking? When he made his debut (Feb 86) United were top of the league and on course for their first title in nearly 20 years. But behind the scenes Atkinson had secretly sold Mark Hughes to Barcelona, and brought in the dimutive and moustache-sporting Gibson as his replacement. By the end of the season United had sunk to fourth place (behind West Ham). By November United were bottom of the table and Atkinson was sacked. In 18 months at United Gibson started just 14 league goals and managed only 1 goal. I saw his final appearance in May 87 where he helped us lose 4-0 at Spurs.