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

[LongTimeLurker]

Slightly too young at the time to remember anything about it but resigning from the league and merging with Clyde for about a week in 1970 would be impossible to top as the craziest move by Accies. Fortunately Jan Stepek & co stepped in to save the day.

[Jacksgranda]

1 hour ago, Day of the Lords said:

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. 

Probably not, but Penman, Robertson & Cousin went to Scottish clubs.

[Enigma]

56 minutes ago, Sortmeout said:

Who is that?

Alan Young

[renton]

20 minutes ago, Enigma said:

Alan Young

this MAN!

[RRFC2711]

Who's the witch?

The right honourable Sir David McGurn esq. Surprised he isn’t still bringing out night sweats in the Big teams darkest dreams. Why on earth he played McNeil was the biggest mistake I’ve seem McGlynn make…..flapper extraordinaire….
 

[keyser_soze]

3 hours ago, Double Jack D said:

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!

 

2 hours 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.

Obviously Anelka wins hands down, the worst descision by a football club EVER in history.

 

I recall the Janny spending £325K on a useless ginger cnut from Airdrie Paul Harvey ?

[renton]

6 minutes ago, keyser_soze said:

 

Obviously Anelka wins hands down, the worst descision by a football club EVER in history.

 

I recall the Janny spending £325K on a useless ginger cnut from Airdrie Paul Harvey ?

I mean, yeah it was. At the same time all of our issues, the majority of our historical debt all hinge on that period between the Janny and Nicholl Mk. 2.

 

[Ebanda's Handyman Services]

4 hours ago, Cardle is Magic said:

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

I've heard that since I've been a Rovers regular. 

Canny afford to go up etc... 

[Cardle is Magic]

48 minutes ago, Ebanda's Handyman Services said:

I've heard that since I've been a Rovers regular. 

Canny afford to go up etc... 

It boggles the mind that some people actually believe it.

[Broken Algorithms]

It's probably recency bias, but I felt the Locke/Hughes season was far worse than the Anelka situation. The Anelka one made absolutely no sense and set the club back about 5 years but it came on the back of years of the club being run shoddily by successive boards.

The appointment of Locke, a perennial loser as a manager, after we'd reached a new peak under McKinnon was like watching a mate on a night out who is absolutely smashed. You're amazed by the stupidity of the decision making, you can't help but watch, all the while you're fully aware that they'll regret it the next day. It was like we'd had a seemingly competent board who then felt they needed to make decisions to spite fans.

The communication out the club at the time was very poor too (it's fortunately been improved substantially). In the middle of our run where we couldn't buy a win under Locke we were trying to flog hospitality tickets for a Scottish Cup match against Hearts which included a Q&A session with him and Skacel. That season was easily the angriest I've been at the club. A lot of people who had built reasonably reputations ruined them in a season of madness. 

[Double Jack D]

13 hours ago, Ebanda's Handyman Services said:

I've heard that since I've been a Rovers regular. 

Canny afford to go up etc... 

To be fair, we got promoted in 1994/95, had 2 seasons in Premier League, won a national trophy and had a run in Europe.

26 years on and we still haven't fully recovered from the financial impact....

[Halbeath Raith Rover]

Anelka was insane.

The Locke era was awful but we did take 4 points from the first two pars games, 2 points from the first two Hibs games, took Hearts to extra time in a cup replay, and came back to get that 2-2 away to Dundee Utd, so there were some good weeks anongst the utter dross and many defeats.

McGurn being dropped and not playing at East End sticks out as a crazy decision by an otherwise great manager.

[Cardle is Magic]

58 minutes ago, Double Jack D said:

To be fair, we got promoted in 1994/95, had 2 seasons in Premier League, won a national trophy and had a run in Europe.

26 years on and we still haven't fully recovered from the financial impact....

What financial impact?

[Specky Ginger]

19 minutes ago, Cardle is Magic said:

What financial impact?

Of not being able to afford to go up. 

[Specky Ginger]

18 hours ago, philpy said:

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

And add to that the fact that McGlynn applied for the job when both Locke and Smith were appointed, but the CEO, and whoever else drew up the short list, deemed him not worthy of even an interview. 

[Double Jack D]

42 minutes ago, Cardle is Magic said:

What financial impact?

Of going up....

[Rob1885]

Not signing Lawrence Shankland in Summer 2017. Hindsight playing a big part of course [emoji23]

[velo army]

Cheers to @John MacLean for the recollection of 1986 and all that. Attended my first game aged 4 in October 1987, but I didn't know a y of that (my da and uncle obviously erased that from memory).

For me it was selling Liam Lindsay for near enough f**k all. A decision that still rankles tbh. It was tinpot, small time nonsense. He'd been arguably our most important player that season, was the only CB to make the Premier team of the season and scored about 8 goals too. Best defender we'd had since Paterson and we sold him for absolute buttons. He was still under contract as well. 

Ragin.

 

 

 

 

 

[Cardle is Magic]

10 minutes ago, Double Jack D said:

Of going up....

What was the financial impact though? What did the club spend that the increase in prize money, ticket sales etc didn’t help with?

[mps02]

The one for me was replacing George Burley with Simon blood Stainrod. Bonkers. Stainrod was to management at Ayr what Adolf Hitler was to world peace.