Read the article about him in 442 this month. Brutally tough childhood and a strange journey he had in football.
He is generally mentioned when picking villas worst ever.
Never saw him play tho
[quote=“KIB man”]He is generally mentioned when picking villas worst ever.
Never saw him play tho[/QUOTE]
villas worst ever player- that would be a mammoth of a thread- shaun teale, tony daley, richardson, dean saunders & half the current crop spring to mind
Mark Draper
…Alan Wright, Dalian Atkinson…
forgot about him, that baldy slow winger that also played for forest- strabge thing about these donkeys is they played a lot of games for them,
julian joachim play for villa?
[quote=“north county corncrake”]forgot about him, that baldy slow winger that also played for forest- strabge thing about these donkeys is they played a lot of games for them,
julian joachim play for villa?[/QUOTE]
Steve Stone, they paid huge money for Joachim that time as well I think…
I remember a great quote from Draper “I would love to go foreign and play for one of the big clubs in Italy, like Barcelona” or something along those lines
Had saunders name on the back of my first villa jersey. The muller yoghurt home one. He left about two weeks later. None of the players you have mentioned come anywhere close.
Allback and kinsella would be well up there. Never saw bosko balaban play for us so couldn’t comment on him.
He was a good player in the centre of the park during the Little era. Fairly sunk without trace after
the bar isnt to high i suppose- two centre halfs who flopped in serie A are cult hereos amongst villa fans 
Without doubt the greatest waste of talent has to be Tonton Zola Moukoko
23 goals in 85 games for Atkinson according to Wiki. Not too shabby imo. Scored some crackers AND played for Real Sociedad (26/12) too, like this man.
Didn’t all those players mentioned feature on the Villa team who finished runners up in the league that season?
Read a funny interview with Tonton Zola Moukoko a few months ago. He was pretty amused about his legendary Champ Man 01/02 fame.
Mark Kennedy
Danny Cadamateri
Sliced bread
[quote=“farmerinthecity”]Harsh. A very good footballer but suffered from injuries. Wasn’t he in the States for a while?[/QUOTE]Played in Chicago :guns:
[quote=“Gaillimharais”]O Rourke’s son is injured.
John “Scan” Concannon was the best underage Galway footballer of the last 20 years to not make it. :guns: :guns: Probably the best underage footballer in Ireland at the time too. On the Jarlath’s Hogan winning team of 1994 it was him and not Padraig Joyce who was playing full forward. (Althugh Joyce was the captain)
Would put Joe Sheirdan of Meath on this thread.[/QUOTE]
Concannon was my shout, outrageous talent.
The Guardian done this a while back, well suited to this thread
1) Billy Kenny (Everton, Oldham)
When Kenny, aged 19, was the man of the match in the Premiership’s first Merseyside derby, his team-mate Peter Beardsley excitably christened him the “Goodison Gazza”. If only he knew. The comparison was not gratuitous: Kenny was a midfielder blessed with sublime skill, especially in his passing, and perhaps more importantly a striking fearlessness (when Vinny Jones greeted him with a trademark early reducer, Kenny took the medicine uncomplainingly and then gave Jones a taste of it a few minutes later). But sadly the comparison to Gazza was equally relevant off the pitch: Kenny self-destructed, only much sooner. He chose not to choose life; he chose something else.
Unable to handle his newfound celebrity, he began to cross the white line on and off the pitch. “Some mornings I got home at four or five, had a couple of lines of cocaine, slept for an hour and then went to training,” he said. “Sometimes I could hardly see the ball. I was a joke.” He was sacked first by Everton and then by Oldham; he played his last league game at 22. But even though he only played 17 times for Everton, he still makes some fans’ all-time XI.
2) Robbie Fowler (Liverpool, Leeds, Manchester City, Liverpool, Cardiff)
He might have been football’s answer to Oasis: a rock ‘n’ roll star who burned dramatically if briefly, and who has been hanging on to the memories at the expense of dignity ever since. Fowler arrived from nowhere in the mid-90s, an irresistible fusion of streetwise swagger and instinctive talent, and a shameless homage to a sixties great (the Beatles/Jimmy Greaves, if we are to continue this already laboured comparison). He scored over 30 goals in each of the three seasons from 1994-97, but would never again reach 20. In 1995-96, in particular, he was truly sensational, terrorising the champions Manchester United (four goals in two league games.
3) Nii Lamptey (Anderlecht, PSV Eindhoven, Aston Villa, Coventry City, Venezia, Union de Santa Fe, Ankaragucu, Uniao Leiria, Greuther Furth, Shandong Luneng, Al Nassr, Asante Kotoko, Jomo Cosmos)
In footballing terms, Lamptey was the son of God. Pele anointed him in 1991, saying that Lamptey was “my natural successor” after his bewitching attacking brilliance had helped Ghana win the Under-17 World Cup. He was already playing for Anderlecht, enjoying a sensational debut season at 16, but then it started to go wrong. Unable to read, write or express himself in English, he was eaten alive in the big, bad world of unscrupulous agents. He should have been nursed like a crown jewel; instead he was tossed around like a piece of meat: overall he played in 10 countries and four continents.
His naked talent won out for a while, most notably in a splendid season at PSV Eindhoven at the age of 19, but the ill-fortune that had begun when he was abused by his parents as a child was slowly catching up with him: most tragically, two of his children died at a young age. At least this story has something resembling a happy ending: three years ago he founded the Glow-Lamp junior school, which started with one pupil and now has nearly 400.
(If you want to know more, read this fantastic piece)
4) Keith Gillespie (Manchester United, Wigan, Newcastle, Blackburn, Wigan, Leicester, Sheffield United)
Of all the myriad roadblocks to a promising career, a foreigner rule might just be the most perverse. In 1995, Keith Gillespie was the heir apparent on Manchester United’s right wing, well ahead of a limited trier called David Beckham, and had already scored one stunning goal in a top-of-the-table clash against Newcastle. That pricked Kevin Keegan’s interest, and he asked for Gillespie in part-exchange when Alex Ferguson tried to buy Andy Cole. Ferguson only agreed because of the foreigner rule, and his desperate need for England-qualified players.
The rule was scrapped a year later, but for Gillespie it was too late: away from the strict tutelage of Ferguson, he was unable to control his vices, particularly gambling. Despite sporadic glimpses of that scintillating talent (most notably when he terrorised Barcelona’s Sergi in a glorious Champions League victory in 1997), he was on an inexorably downward trajectory. The same thing, of course, might have happened had he stayed at United. Or he might now be married to a Spice Girl.
5) James Will (Arsenal, Dunfermline)
The thought of a Scottish goalkeeper being the best footballer in the world might seem like the definitive contradiction. But at the 1989 Under-17 World Cup, Will was peerless among his age group: he won the Golden Ball for his performances guarding the Scottish net after they were beaten in the final by Saudi Arabia. It’s a significant award - subsequent winners include Nii Lamptey, Cesc Fbregas and Anderson - and, with Will already on Arsenal’s books, the future seemed mapped out. But Will could not find a way: after five seasons without a first-team game he went to Dunfermline, playing his only professional games before quitting a year later.
“I got a bit disillusioned with football,” he said. He now plays for his village side, Turriff United, but his priority is not keeping his sheets clean so much as keeping the streets clean: he works as a policeman, and uses his long arm to enforce the law rather than repel opposing attackers.
6) Wayne Harrison (Oldham, Liverpool)
Harrison might be the only sportsman to retire having had more operations (23) than years (22). He was the most expensive teenager in the world, at 250,000, when Liverpool signed him from Oldham in 1985. Aged 17, he had only made five first-team appearances, but had ransacked Liverpool in an FA Youth Cup tie at Anfield. Oldham won 4-0 and the Liverpool manager Joe Fagan was given the word. “You hear reports about a special player perhaps once in 20 years,” he said. “That’s why we bought him.”
The signing even made the nine o’clock news, but after that the only bulletins were of the medical variety. Harrison’s grotesque misfortune began when he fell through a greenhouse, almost dying due to the loss of blood, and over the next few years he injured almost every part of his body. Finally, in May 1990, he shattered cruciate ligaments in his knee and that was that: he retired without playing a first-team game for Liverpool. His body was so damaged that, when he was granted a testimonial in 1992, he could not even hobble on for a cameo appearance.
Concannon bet a good Dublin minor team on his own in an All-ireland semi final in '94…i’d say he might have been a bit small and light for senior inter county though?..
Joe Cassidy was some underage player…was oustanding for Derry U-21’s when they won All-Ireland…then just faded away with their seniors…
Doc O’Connor.