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

[Central Belt Caley]

1 hour ago, PB1994 said:

Kenny Cameron gets a lot of credit for being chairman at the time we won the Scottish Cup and came third but literally every decision made after that was a complete disaster

Appointing Foran as manager, who showed little interest in coaching/managing when he was coming into the end of his career, giving him a fucking 5 year deal then not bothering to sack him when it was obvious to everyone he was taking us down. Some of the contracts given out to players were absolutely crazy. The Mulraney one as mentioned and I think Warren had a similar type deal as well.

I seem to recall that not many of the players had “relegation clauses” too. I.e. if we got relegated their wage dropped too. Some crazy decisions made by the club in that period

[San Starko Rover]

Claude Anelka by a country mile, nothing else even comes close. Unbelievable stupidity from our board beyond comprehension up there with Rangers and Craig Whyte and we’re lucky we managed to survive it. Gary Locke, and Lewis Vaughan doesn’t even come close. 

[Highland Capital]

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.

[Cardle is Magic]

44 minutes ago, virginton said:

Douglas Rae signing Marc rather than Mark McCulloch and so landing us with a total fucking haddy from Arbroath…

I haven’t heard this story before? He signed the wrong player?

[Cardle is Magic]

5 minutes ago, Highland Capital said:

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.

Michael Fraser always turned into an excellent keeper in FM 2008.

[Jimi Shandrix]

1 hour ago, eindhovendeeaggio said:

I'm a Dundee supporter.

 

Yup, take your pick. Jim McLean would be a decent start.

[ICTChris]

For all the kids who can’t remember it, the Anelka era at Raith is one do the most bizarre things done in Scottish football. He signed guys who were, IIRC, playing the equivalent of Powerleague in Martinique.

They actually got a draw with one team I’m sure as well before he resigned.

[D'Jaffo]

If we had accepted Murray’s money in the 80s then who knows what kind of rollercoaster we would have went on but there’s every chance it would’ve ended in disaster.

Dunno if I’d describe it as crazy but I still can’t get my head round us giving Mark Roberts a new contract after losing to Cowdenbeath in the playoffs. Everyone could see it was going to end in disaster.

[AsimButtHitsASix]

1 hour ago, Cardle is Magic said:

I haven’t heard this story before? He signed the wrong player?

We don't know if the wrong player was signed or not but at the unveiling Rae did start going on about the wrong one. 

Personally I don't actually believe the manager identified M. McCulloch and we signed the wrong one without anyone noticing. I think we signed who we were after and someone in the back office copied the wrong wikipedia page. Wouldn't be surprised if I am wrong

[Rob1885]

Appointing Peter Grant

[Richey Edwards]

41 minutes ago, D'Jaffo said:

Dunno if I’d describe it as crazy but I still can’t get my head round us giving Mark Roberts a new contract after losing to Cowdenbeath in the playoffs. Everyone could see it was going to end in disaster.

Yeah, that was strange. The accompanying statement said that the objective was to reach the playoffs and he had achieved that. However, finishing in 4th place doesn't mask the fact that there were too many absolutely awful results that having an actual competent football manager might have avoided.

It was amateur hour at times that season.

[CALDERON]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

For all the kids who can’t remember it, the Anelka era at Raith is one do the most bizarre things done in Scottish football. He signed guys who were, IIRC, playing the equivalent of Powerleague in Martinique.

They actually got a draw with one team I’m sure as well before he resigned.

Airdrie, and it was pretty much down to John Hollins coming on board.  He was binned soon enough and normal service resumed.

[CALDERON]

Anyway, it will always be Anelka.

However, it is remarkable that loaning your best player to relegation rivals, who scores the goal that effectively condems your fate, is not the worst decision.  It must always be remembered that Vaughan was effectively swapped for Ryan Stevenson.

Edited August 10, 2021 by CALDERON

[Zen Archer (Raconteur)]

Employing someone whose only job was to know the rules yet we still ended up with Ryan Stevenson in goals.

[Richey Edwards]

7 minutes ago, Zen Archer (Raconteur) said:

Employing someone whose only job was to know the rules yet we still ended up with Ryan Stevenson in goals.

He played well to be fair.

[flood]

5 hours ago, Sortmeout said:

Could it be hiring a specific manager?

Abandoning your youth set-up?

Handing the keys of the club over to some type of foreign maniac/mercenary.

Making some decision that totally alienates your fans?

 

For Kilmarnock there have been many but I’ve narrowed it down to just these two which were crazy but for totally different reasons:

1 - Hiring Angelo Alessio to replace Steve Clarke. On paper a bit of a poor decision at the time and obviously with everything that followed since then it’s turned out to be one of the worst decisions we’ve made. I was excited by it at the time and I was a fan of AA. I think if the board had properly backed him we would (at the very worst) not have been relegated under him. The craziest part of this decision was that the board didn’t back the guy up at all against the supposed dressing room revolt.

or

2 - Michael Johnston not voting against letting Sevco back into the Premiership. A disgusting decision completely against what the vast majority of our fans wanted.

Alex dyer as manager.

[Benjamin_Nevis]

2 hours ago, Jimi Shandrix said:

Yup, take your pick. Jim McLean would be a decent start.

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. 

 

[19QOS19]

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.

[itzdrk]

6 hours ago, Nightmare said:

Short term - Gary fucking Caldwell.

Long term - demolishing our terracing before having a real plan in place, leading to Firhill being a 3-sided ground with the permanent embarrassment that is the bing behind the goal at the south end.

No room for revisionism on the long term one after the night against Falkirk? 

[Highland Capital]

Michael Fraser always turned into an excellent keeper in FM 2008.

There was a period around late 2007/early 2008 where he looked like a really good keeper. The pinnacle of which being a superb save in a 3-2 win over Celtic. Never seemed to regain that form again though. He did go back to playing shinty but don’t know if he’s still doing it.