What’s the craziest decision your club has ever made?

[RiG]

Posting this Tweet.

 

[laukat]

37 minutes ago, John MacLean said:

This. 

Appointing the one on the right as manager and allowing the one on the left to sponsor the jersey for about £1.50 when, if you believe his autobiography, he was prepared to spend tens of thousands to do so. 

The 86/87 season was horrific beyond belief and those not old enough to have experienced it should consider themselves incredibly fortunate. 

Home crowds dropping below a 1,000 on several occasions. Playing trialists straight out of amateur football. Being gubbed 5-2 at home to Morton with the manager, who played in the first half, spending the second half hiding away in the secretary's office. 

We survived that season purely by Colin West being half decent and Johnstone finally getting binned in time for someone half competent, Billy Lamont, steering us away from the bottom two. 

This was a particularly rich period for crazy decision making at Firhill.

In the previous season we had finally managed to bin Benny Rooney (who arguably put out even worse teams than Johnstone) brought back Bertie Auld who was set what looked like an impossible challenge of keeping us in the league with only 7 games remaining

Auld won 3 and drew 3 of the 7 which kept us up with a bit to spare and had the Thistle support looking forward to season 86/87 with Auld in charge of what would surely be a team chasing promotion.

However Ken Bates then bought the club in June, discarded Auld, decided to appoint Johnstone even though Johnstone wasn't really wanting to be a manager and the rest is a horrific nightmare that didn't really start to turn around until Lambie was appointed in 1988.

Even then we still had some hilarity left in us by appointing Sandy Clark and the board issuing statements via the matchday programme such as the infamous "letter to the Boo Boys" - https://partickthistleahistory.wikifoundry.com/club-directory/boardroom/1990-letter-to-the-boo-boys/

[Gregor147]

Starting Ryan Stevenson up front instead of Lyle Taylor in the cup game v Inverness in 14/15. Unforgiveable. 

What? You didn’t play him as goalkeeper?

[DAFC.]

2021-22 could be rather mental for us. Appointing a manager with no track record whatsoever, off the back of relegating a part-time Alloa Athletic. What could possibly go wrong?

Appointing Davie Hay in 2004 was fucking mental. Pumped out the UEFA Cup by Icelandic fishermen and didn't get the bullet until after the 35th league game, with nothing short of a complete miracle required to keep us up. Enter Jim Leishman  There must have been something in the Fife water in 2004. 

[philpy]

Not the club as such , but MgGlynn's decision to play Andy mcneill instead of the witch in the 2-1 Derby defeat in 2011 still sticks in the craw.

[Jacksgranda]

15 hours ago, Day of the Lords said:

You could genuinely have an entry for the last five decades.

70s - Jim McLean passed over for the manager's job, goes to Tannadice where he achieves probably the greatest ratio of success to resources in Scottish, possibly British football history. To compound this complete f**k up, Davie White, Dundee's manager absolutely lost it when a few of the squad went to see Jim after winning the League Cup in 1973 - they had felt his coaching was an important part of their success, and White took that as a personal slight. They would all be sold on within a year or so, including Jocky Scott, one of the most prolific strikers we've ever had. Ingenious. 

80s - A couple of nominations here, one being selling John Brown in early January for buttons to Rangers at a time where Dundee were 9 points clear of United in the race for Europe and were scoring for fun. I can't even remember if he was replaced but we collapsed after that, limping home in 7th place, miles behind United. The other nomination is course Angus Cook, a truly dreadful chairman, hated by our entire support. Indeed after we beat Celtic 1-0 in September 88, Cook invited the Celtic squad to a party at his Broughty Ferry mansion. He would later be involved in a comical punch up with Andrew Drummond and be done for fraud involving large quantities of chicken nuggets. 

90s - Ron Dixon, a Canadian maniac who promised us an 8000 seater South Enclosure linked by a bridge to an ice rink, but delivered a greyhound track and near bankruptcy. Jim Duffy was paying the players out of his own pocket at times and admitted later that had Dundee not won a Coca Cola Cup Semi-Final at McDiarmid Park, the club probably would have gone to the wall. Ironically the men who eventually ousted Dixon came even closer to doing just that....

2000s - Surely the Bonetti experiment. Replacing a dour but efficient side managed by Jocky Scott which had finished 5th and 7th in the preceding seasons with the Bonettis, getting the club £23million in debt, all to finish fucking 6th and not make a cup final until things were going tits up and they'd been replaced by Duffy anyway, was by any measure quite incredibly stupid. It was quite surreal seeing Claudio Caniggia open the scoring in a Dundee derby at Tannadice and some of the football was just batshit mental. Ultimately though it achieved f**k all and arguably, nearly 20 years later, we've never really recovered (didn't help we let another shyster in Calum Melville take over and put us into Admin again 6 years later).

2010s - Begging a sky pundit to PLEASE TAKE THE JOB instead of going after the far superior Jack Ross was an absolute doozie. 

 

If you're going to be done for fraud, it might as well be for something worthwhile...

You could also argue in the 60s not building on the championship winning side. Instead of selling Gilzean, Ure, Robertson, Cousin & Penman (although they were sold later than the first two) signing players to augment that team. Probably not as easy hanging on to them as it might appear.

Charlie Cooke who was transferred to Dundee from Pittodrie in 1964 (for £40,000) said in his book he was told that they (Dundee) were going to build a side round him, but it never materialised.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Jacksgranda
Typo

[Double Jack D]

The obvious answer from many Rovers fans would be Claude Anelka or the Lewis Vaughan loaning to Dumbarton.

For me it would be spending money in the mid 90's like the Rovers were going to forever be a top tier team playing in Europe and selling right backs to the English premiership for not far short of £1m.

The amount of money we spunked between 1996 and 1998 was absolutely mind blowing!

[Ebanda's Handyman Services]

2 hours ago, oneteaminglasgow said:

Aye, I only heard about it fairly recently despite being around the same age as you.

Was there not one of the players who admitted he’d never been a footballer before but asked if he could stay on to mend things around the stadium or something like that?

Dalziel advised him that his time at the club was coming to an end but Ebanda didn't want to leave and told the gaffer that he could do odd jobs around the ground. 

Straight from Dalziel in an interview I did with him about 10 years ago. 

[John MacLean]

44 minutes ago, laukat said:

This was a particularly rich period for crazy decision making at Firhill.

In the previous season we had finally managed to bin Benny Rooney (who arguably put out even worse teams than Johnstone) brought back Bertie Auld who was set what looked like an impossible challenge of keeping us in the league with only 7 games remaining

Auld won 3 and drew 3 of the 7 which kept us up with a bit to spare and had the Thistle support looking forward to season 86/87 with Auld in charge of what would surely be a team chasing promotion.

However Ken Bates then bought the club in June, discarded Auld, decided to appoint Johnstone even though Johnstone wasn't really wanting to be a manager and the rest is a horrific nightmare that didn't really start to turn around until Lambie was appointed in 1988.

Even then we still had some hilarity left in us by appointing Sandy Clark and the board issuing statements via the matchday programme such as the infamous "letter to the Boo Boys" - https://partickthistleahistory.wikifoundry.com/club-directory/boardroom/1990-letter-to-the-boo-boys/

There were parts of 87/88 under Lamont with Dodds, Gallagher, Kelly and McGuire banging in the goals that were actually worth watching including a wee cup run but, yes, the nightmare didn't start to end until November 1988. 

Even then there were a few crazy decisions to follow. 

Allowing Lambie to go back to Hamilton. Appointing a massively out of his depth Sandy Clark, and then bringing Lambie back at god knows what expense. 

[Benjamin_Nevis]

27 minutes ago, Jacksgranda said:

If you're going to be done for fraud, it might as well be for something worthwhile...

You could also argue in the 60s not building on the championship winning side. Instead of selling Gilzean, Ure, Robertson, Cousin & Penman (although they were sold later than the first two) signing players to augment that team. Probably not as easy hanging on to them as it might appear.

Charlie Cooke who was transferred to Dundee from Pittodrie in 1964 (for £40,000) said in his book he was told that they (Dundee) were going to build a side round him, but it never materialised.

We have  a long history of either total lack of ambition from BoDs, or far too much. To be fair I think the loss of those guys in the 60s was inevitable. There was no way Dundee could compete with the money on offer from the likes of Arsenal and Spurs at the time. The Charlie Cooke bit reminds me I'll need to buy that - his chapter in Dundee Greats was brilliant reading - the stuff about him openly taking the piss out of Alan Ball in an international and dismissing Alf Ramsey as "Just another fucking gym teacher" were brilliant. 

[Cardle is Magic]

53 minutes ago, philpy said:

Not the club as such , but MgGlynn's decision to play Andy mcneill instead of the witch in the 2-1 Derby defeat in 2011 still sticks in the craw.

Led to hilarious accusations from Rovers’ supporters at the time that the club “didn’t want promotion” and had thrown the game.

[Scary Bear]

While the Anelka season was dreadful, it’s not like we learned from it. We just changed the characters and did the same thing with Locke/Yogi and spent another 3 seasons in the Seaside League. We were also relegated to the Seaside league back around 2000/2001 as well.

For me, the biggest mistake we made was pissing off Jimmy Nicholl back in the 90s. Look at Killie. They came up as Runners-up in 92/93 while we won the league. They stayed there. We went down but came back up again at the first attempt. Then we pissed off Nicholl and he left for Millwall. The full ramifications of appointing the janny (aka Jimmy Thomson) weren’t seen until the start of the following season. How much did we let the janny spunk on signings? Must have been approaching £1 million. Then there was the farce with Tommy McLean, then Iain Munro arrives. That season has defined the downward trajectory of the next decades. We were so close to being a stable Premier League team but one or two bad appointments and it all goes up in smoke.

Edit: as it’s the craziest decision, Anelka probably still wins. Killing the golden goose comes second.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Scary Bear

[philpy]

22 minutes ago, Scary Bear said:

While the Anelka season was dreadful, it’s not like we learned from it. We just changed the characters and did the same thing with Locke/Yogi and spent another 3 seasons in the Seaside League. We were also relegated to the Seaside league back around 2000/2001 as well.

For me, the biggest mistake we made was pissing off Jimmy Nicholl back in the 90s. Look at Killie. They came up as Runners-up in 92/93 while we won the league. They stayed there. We went down but came back up again at the first attempt. Then we pissed off Nicholl and he left for Millwall. The full ramifications of appointing the janny (aka Jimmy Thomson) weren’t seen until the start of the following season. How much did we let the janny spunk on signings? Must have been approaching £1 million. Then there was the farce with Tommy McLean, then Iain Munro arrives. That season has defined the downward trajectory of the next decades. We were so close to being a stable Premier League team but one or two bad appointments and it all goes up in smoke.

Edit: as it’s the craziest decision, Anelka probably still wins. Killing the golden goose comes second.

Can also count appointing locke instead of jack ross as one of the biggest mistakes ever.

[The Toun Clock]

54 minutes ago, philpy said:

Not the club as such , but MgGlynn's decision to play Andy mcneill instead of the witch in the 2-1 Derby defeat in 2011 still sticks in the craw.

Who's the witch? I watched that back recently and McNeill actually looked so shaky any time a ball was played into the box, a terrible goalkeeper.

Davie Hay appointment for me is up there. We went from sexy football/good manager, 4th place finish in the SPL, the SCF and Europe in 2003/04 to long ball, haddies, Davie Haye and avoiding relegation  by the skin of our teeth. The 2004/05 season was like a new world compared to the one prior. I always remember the rumour coming on STV news that Davie Hay might be taking over and my dad and grandad being disappointed, I didn't really know much about him as I was 12.. We still had the core of good defenders and midfielders from the Calderwood era but Crawford had left for Plymouth, Brewster left at some point that season and Barry Nic was injured for 90% of it. Some other fan favourites departed like Lee Bullen but we were able to get in some real haddies like Jesper Christiansen & Georgi Hristov, the latter being one of the worst to pull on the black & white.

In more recent times I was always a bit surprised that after winning league 1 in 2015/16 Josh Falkingham wasn't kept on. Regardless of size he was a solid player and should have been allowed a crack at the Championship with us, he was crucial part of that title winning team. Maybe he chose not to sign but I think he was happy here and AJ didn't want him. And I'll add Shaun Byrne to that. Another deemed not good enough and ended up going on to better things with Livi and Dundee. Two centre midfielders that were streets ahead of what we then had for a number of seasons.

 

[Dougie Mills]

15 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

If by craziest you mean "Infuriatingly fucking stupid" then the two fairly obvious ones are voting in favour of Rangers and arguably even worse the Galloway debacle. I think we lost a few fans after The Rangers one. The Galloway decision was a double whammy as it was complete and utter stupidity given the state of the country and yet again demonstrated the BoD contempt for our support. The pathetic attempts at an apology were fucked up not only once but twice.


 

These acts of utter disregard towards our support from the board are the most obvious things that spring to mind.

[The Toun Clock]

The closure of what was the old cage at East End. There had been an incident with someone throwing a coin during a Pars Vs Falkirk game. Sure the guy turned out to be a Celtic fan. The section was always known for creating atmosphere and also had a pretty decent view of the pitch. The club made the decision to close the section due to the behavior but gladly move them into the corner of the North West stand and to this day the section remains closed. Atmosphere has been pretty poor since although so has the football.

[Enigma]

Aside from what’s already been mentioned the club giving Rangers a contracted future Scotland international should rank pretty high.

Basically anything that happened while “this man” was chairman.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Enigma

[Sortmeout]

16 hours ago, flood said:

Alex dyer as manager.

On reflection you are right and certainly we all had doubts after the caretaker spell in charge but when SSC left more people (or it seemed that way) wanted AD appointed than AA to come in.

Remember that summer of 2019 though. Some of the rumours floating around were mad.  I’ve got no idea, and maybe someone ITK could shed some light on this, if Di Matteo was ever actually an option or even remotely close to happening but people were talking about us signing the boy from Juventus Kean on loan - who ended up signing for Everton for £18 million a few weeks later.

It was a crazy summer and then the Nomads tie just destroyed everything.

[Sortmeout]

12 minutes ago, Enigma said:

Aside from what’s already been mentioned the club giving Rangers a contracted future Scotland international should rank pretty high.

Basically anything that happened while “this man” was chairman.

Who is that?

[Monkey Tennis]

17 hours ago, 19QOS19 said:

If by craziest you mean "Infuriatingly fucking stupid" then the two fairly obvious ones are voting in favour of Rangers and arguably even worse the Galloway debacle. I think we lost a few fans after The Rangers one. The Galloway decision was a double whammy as it was complete and utter stupidity given the state of the country and yet again demonstrated the BoD contempt for our support. The pathetic attempts at an apology were fucked up not only once but twice.


 

Yip, the Rangers one was infuriating.

The most annoying part was that the club had actively sought fan views, then disregarded nearly all of them.  The justification which was later issued amounted to no such thing.  It was just really embarrassing and downright stupid.  

The Galloway one was so inexplicably mental that it almost had a comic element.  There had been nothing remotely amusing, however, about the Rangers decision a few years before.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Monkey Tennis