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

[Specky Ginger]

4 hours ago, cowdenbeath said:

Didn’t Nicholl and his back room staff cost a fortune- him , Alex Smith, Terry Butcher and John Brownlie.

Correct, and we were handing out contracts like confetti. Lee Dair (a waste of a wage himself) recommended some guy he'd played with in the Rangers youth team (Galloway, if my memory serves me correctly), so rather than give the guy a couple of trial matches, he was immediately handed a six month deal to prove himself. 

That on top of handing out full time contracts to jobbers like Greig McCulloch and Jay Stein season after season, and it's not hard to see why we've been bleeding from our arse financially for a long time. 

[craigkillie]

18 hours ago, Double Jack D said:

Maybe for 0p in the pound Dunfermline

Seriously though, I totally agree. If we are able to get top flight football again it must be done via a sustainable plan and managed properly to ensure the future wellbeing of the club.

However it's difficult to argue with the "we canny afford it" clique based on what happened to us following our last golden era.

I really don't understand what this means. There are almost no additional costs required to be a Premiership club, and the prize money and gate income is substantially higher. In what way could any club not afford that? You might not be able to afford to be competitive, though Livi and Hamilton would beg to differ, but that is not the same as not being able to afford promotion.

Edited August 13, 2021 by craigkillie

[CALDERON]

The last time that argument came up for the Rovers, undersoil heating was still a requirement I believe, which would have brought it's own costs etc.

Different story now, of course.

[Double Jack D]

50 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I really don't understand what this means. There are almost no additional costs required to be a Premiership club, and the prize money and gate income is substantially higher. In what way could any club not afford that? You might not be able to afford to be competitive, though Livi and Hamilton would beg to differ, but that is not the same as not being able to afford promotion.

Totally agree, I hate the we canny afford to go up argument.

I was merely noting that since the last time we were promoted we have suffered a 1/4 century of financial distress. Lived experience doesn't support my argument lol.

[TheScarf]

2 hours ago, craigkillie said:

I really don't understand what this means. There are almost no additional costs required to be a Premiership club, and the prize money and gate income is substantially higher. In what way could any club not afford that? You might not be able to afford to be competitive, though Livi and Hamilton would beg to differ, but that is not the same as not being able to afford promotion.

The only 'additional cost' would be if you actually wanted to strengthen your squad.  Logic would suggest that better players command higher salaries, and even then, like you say, the larger prize money and gate income would swallow those bigger wages up.

[sophia]

On 10/08/2021 at 21:02, Highland Capital said:

Going into the final game of the 08-09 season and going into the final game against Falkirk, needing only a point to stay up and Butcher decided to leave one of the club's best ever keepers Ryan Esson on the bench due to a training ground bust up and starting the mediocre Michael Fraser in goal despite him signing a pre-contract with Motherwell.  This would be bad enough but in defence Butcher opted for the right-back Ross Tokely at centre-back and the centre-back at Pavels Mihadjuks at right back for reasons completely unknown.

We got beat 1-0.  Tokely got sent off and we went down.

This was catastrophic from Butcher and outed him as more interested in his ego than his job.

However the biggest mistake was one of the first ICT had to make and that was moving to a location that is as sterile as it is inconvenient. Sutherland compounded this by adding poundshop "temporary" stands.

[Caledonian]

Paying Alloa Athletic a transfer fee for Harry Rutherford in a case of mistaken identity. The deal was concluded in the mistaken belief that the player being purchased was Tommy Hutchison. 

[HamiltonWest]

Paying Alloa Athletic a transfer fee for Harry Rutherford in a case of mistaken identity. The deal was concluded in the mistaken belief that the player being purchased was Tommy Hutchison. 

This sound like a great story, tell me more.

I'm imagining this starts with the Ayr manager making a call to Alloa enquiring after "the big lad with the moustache" or some other vague description.

[Caledonian]

1 hour ago, HamiltonWest said:

This sound like a great story, tell me more.

I'm imagining this starts with the Ayr manager making a call to Alloa enquiring after "the big lad with the moustache" or some other vague description.

 Back-up goalkeeper George Anton was sent on a scouting mission to look at Alloa winger Tommy Hutchison but Ally MacLeod was uncertain of his name. He took the view that, of the two Alloa wingers, his target would stand out. In that particular game, Harry Rutherford stood out as being the better of the two. If only he had picked another day to be a standout! On reporting back, the name Rutherford was mentioned to Ally. He believed that this was the player whose name had been brought to the club's attention and he was purchased for £4,000. Ally took little time to realise that the club had bought the wrong winger. This was in November 1966 and I was one of the many fans bemused by the club paying a generous fee (at the time) for a player who was mediocre at best. This story did not break into the public domain but was told to me by Dougie Mitchell several decades later. Dougie was an Ayr United player at the time and he heard Ally's "I've signed the wrong player" rant (there might have been an expletive). 

[gav-ffc]

Wrong forum but appointing Margret Lang as chairman and having Craig Campbell in her ear killed our club.

[HamiltonWest]

38 minutes ago, Caledonian said:

 Back-up goalkeeper George Anton was sent on a scouting mission...

Thanks, @Caledonian, that is as good as I hoped for. The first line of the tale sets up the farce perfectly.

[standman]

On 10/08/2021 at 20:16, virginton said:

Wut

The Raes did buy a roof from the spoon-burners but didn't bother putting it up. Benching of the WDE was a basic condition of getting the stadium anywhere near the criteria for the top flight, back in 2012/13, when we had a capable team to do so and were spending more than enough on the first team squad anyway. 

If we didn't add the benches then we wouldn't have been able to use the WDE at the end of last or beginning of this season either. It'd probably have been condemned altogether by now. 

We are at cross purposes- I was talking about in 1981 !!!

[Highland Capital]

This wasn't quite as crazy as not sacking Foran but Caley Thistle re-hiring Craig Brewster was a bizarre decision.  He hadn't even been that good the first time round and his spell at Dundee United was disastrous.  

[Stellaboz]

Probably the board ousting Leishman for Munro, despite it being before my time. I think that soured thousands of followers for a long, long time.

Also making "Legends" bar instead of a proper football club pub. The space had the potential to be terrific not only on a match day but throughout the week and despite having shot term success, was doomed to long term failure through shite branding and mis management from Robin Ozog/the Mastertons.

[vikingTON]

On 12/08/2021 at 14:27, BraeTon74 said:

The problem for us Morton fans isn't thinking of a disaster, its choosing one which stands above the rest since we are an ongoing, constant shambles and have been for my 25 years on this planet. 

Appointing a fitness coach manager, paying a fee for Henk Van Schiek, having 1 goalkeeper, Sam Ramsbottom, letting Allan Moore continue for so long, Gary O'Connor, Nacho Novo, Warren Hawke's letters to fans and not letting JJ and Houston play Telfer only for them to quit a few hours before our game then for us to play Telfer anyway.

1) Telfer only came off the bench, so if the clause that entitled him to an automatic extension was based on number of starts then it was job done. He didn't get an extension so the club got what it wanted.

2) Jonatan Johannson and his slaphead assistant were the most useless of the 17 managers we've racked up this century bar none, so provoking their early exit was the best piece of business the club have done this side of the Ross Forbes-Andy Barrowman player swap with Dunfermline in January 2015. 

3) I'm also not sure what the justification is behind the Allan Moore shout, given that he produced our highest league finish since 95/96 five months before he lost his job. A better manager than Moore could certainly have done better with the resources at his disposal, but there's no guarantee we would have found one at that time.

He was also not responsible for the stinking 2013/14 season, which was caused by the board letting the likes of Peter MacDonald and co. waltz off by imposing a disastrous squad/wage structure. When your manager is funding his own scout trips on Ryanair to Bratislava to pick up the cheapest ringers he can get, the issue lies upstairs at the club.

That the main supporter of that disastrous scheme is still slithering around GMFC's boardroom is inexplicable and will produce more calamitous f**k-ups in the future.

Edited August 14, 2021 by vikingTON

[vikingTON]

Anyway, discussion of the Ross Forbes deal has reminded me of one of our spectacular, all-time f**k-ups from the same transfer window: signing Michael Tidser in January 2015 only to be informed that he couldn't actually play for the rest of the season because he had already appeared for two UK clubs. 

Paying six months' wages for someone to watch Loose Women and start up their Herbalife franchise because our CEO was too thick/lazy to actually understand the transfer rules. 

[Enigma]

2 minutes ago, virginton said:

Anyway, discussion of the Ross Forbes deal has reminded me of one of our spectacular, all-time f**k-ups from the same transfer window: signing Michael Tidser in January 2015 only to be informed that he couldn't actually play for the rest of the season because he had already appeared for two UK clubs. 

Paying six months' wages for someone to watch Loose Women and start up their Herbalife franchise because our CEO was too thick/lazy to actually understand the transfer rules. 

You’d have to pay me six months wages to watch Loose Women.

[Otis Blue]

21 hours ago, Caledonian said:

 Back-up goalkeeper George Anton was sent on a scouting mission to look at Alloa winger Tommy Hutchison but Ally MacLeod was uncertain of his name. He took the view that, of the two Alloa wingers, his target would stand out. In that particular game, Harry Rutherford stood out as being the better of the two. If only he had picked another day to be a standout! On reporting back, the name Rutherford was mentioned to Ally. He believed that this was the player whose name had been brought to the club's attention and he was purchased for £4,000. Ally took little time to realise that the club had bought the wrong winger. This was in November 1966 and I was one of the many fans bemused by the club paying a generous fee (at the time) for a player who was mediocre at best. This story did not break into the public domain but was told to me by Dougie Mitchell several decades later. Dougie was an Ayr United player at the time and he heard Ally's "I've signed the wrong player" rant (there might have been an expletive). 

Brilliant stuff - Scottish fitba', superb.

[Otis Blue]

Excellent thread this, keep it going folks.

I haven't read back through all the posts but I'm sure QOS will have a few howlers in there too ....... the recent George Galloway fiasco for one ....... and how about having a UEFA Cup qualifier with Stephen Dobbie in your squad and only starting him from the bench in both ties - kudos to Gordon Chisholm there!

[AyrshireTon]

I'll throw in the pre-season where the manager threw away stupid money when re-negotiating contracts for players who nearly got us relegated and were expecting a wage cut. Think it may have been 08-09?

Counter this with the (mentioned earlier) flipside of the cost cutting of the 13-14 team after missing out on promotion.