Best and Worst Villa Loan Deals

[HongKongVillan]

There are quite a lot of pointless loan signing, I mean Bednarek seems pointless but at least he had 3 games under his belt. That wonderkid from Liverpool Illori(spelling?) another pointless one.

 

I'm sure there are more but we just forget cos it's so pointless.

 

Danny Eatshit the worst for me. Shit on the pitch as well as being an absolute eat shit off it.

[Xela]

6 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Vaclav Drobny too, another strange one 

RIP 

[Xela]

Alan McLoughlin was a strange one. Was highly rated, came to us on loan in 91 and never played. 

Went on to have a decent career with Pompey and 40 odd caps for Eire. Sadly died a couple of years back with cancer. 

[Zatman]

5 minutes ago, Xela said:

Alan McLoughlin was a strange one. Was highly rated, came to us on loan in 91 and never played. 

Went on to have a decent career with Pompey and 40 odd caps for Eire. Sadly died a couple of years back with cancer. 

genuinely never heard that he played for us before. I remember him playing a lot for Ireland and had a few programmes/sticker books and never ever mentioned he was here

[SuperTed]

44 minutes ago, Sulberto21 said:

JERMAINE JENAS ! Worst. Done!

Agreed. I knew someone who worked in Malmaison when he lived in a suite there during that spell. Apparently he’d phone up and ridiculous times with obscene requests, one I remember was demanding some really obscure cereal (sigh, I can already hear the puns I’ll get in response to this )

How he ended up being a regular pundit is beyond me. All the charisma of a flip flop.

[Johnnyp]

29 minutes ago, Xela said:

Alan McLoughlin was a strange one. Was highly rated, came to us on loan in 91 and never played. 

Went on to have a decent career with Pompey and 40 odd caps for Eire. Sadly died a couple of years back with cancer. 

Saying Eire gives people from Ireland ire. Just saying

[theboyangel]

Michael Bradley was a huge disappointment. 

[Xela]

11 minutes ago, SuperTed said:

Agreed. I knew someone who worked in Malmaison when he lived in a suite there during that spell. Apparently he’d phone up and ridiculous times with obscene requests, one I remember was demanding some really obscure cereal (sigh, I can already hear the puns I’ll get in response to this )

Grrrrrreat post! 

 

[cyrusr]

1 hour ago, Zatman said:

I pretty much explained it. Grant Holt didn't leave us with a monster contract

To be fair, aren't you judging him on his full time contract rather than loan? If he was that poor during his loan spell we wouldn't have signed him surely? Whilst there is no doubt he has been poor for a while, he is by far nowhere near the worse loans we've had. 

Top: 

Tammy & Mings were both fundamental for the promotion (El Ghazi & Tuanzebe were pretty good for it as well). Grabban/Johnstone were good in the last Bruce season. Reina was helpful for staying up. Going back a bit further Keane & Milner definitely were good loans and helped a lot. 

Would probably go with Tammy, Mings & Reina mainly because they contributions were critical for the success of the club.

Worse:

Barkley at least had a decent couple of games but drifted off massively. Drinkwater clearly terrible both on and off the pitch. Bolasie was literally a waste of space. Others were largely forgettable without looking at the full list (forgot that we had Cleverley!). 

For me Drinkwater and Bolasie were definitely the 2 worse. You could pick a lot for 3rd, largely forgettable players. 

[Risso]

Kirally was pretty rubbish in his Sports Direct grey joggers. A few years later, Ryan Bertrand did alright, albeit he wasn't a ruddy proper bloke like Grant Holt.

[Guest av1]

1 hour ago, Tayls said:

Whose wasteman again? Surprised Dawkins isn’t on the list! 

Bolasie 

[Mantis]

32 minutes ago, SuperTed said:

Agreed. I knew someone who worked in Malmaison when he lived in a suite there during that spell. Apparently he’d phone up and ridiculous times with obscene requests, one I remember was demanding some really obscure cereal (sigh, I can already hear the puns I’ll get in response to this )

How he ended up being a regular pundit is beyond me. All the charisma of a flip flop.

The BBC seem to love taking boring and/or stupid mediocre players and making them regular pundits. See also: Savage, Murphy, Richards etc

[KMitch]

Short term memories around here...  Naming players who cost peanuts and rarely played for us are hardly the worst deals...

Best:

• Sam Johnstone - Very solid keeper for us in the Championship for 1.5 seasons
• Mings - Leadership/solidity at the back sparked our 10 game win streak and playoff campaign
• Abraham - Goal machine.  Loved him here.
• Robbie Keane - Very short loan, but another goal machine and "proper man".
• Kyle Walker - Very very good for his short time here.  Solidified his case to start for Spuds the following season.
• James Milner - Class Class Class

Worst:

• Drinkwater - astronomical fee and paid a lot of wages.  He was dreadful and played a lot during his spell.  Hands down one of the worst I can remember
• Cleverly - Paid a big fee and ~40-50k/week in wages for a player completely anonymous in all but 3 of our games for us.
• Michael Bradley - 4 appearances total for a total of 100 minutes.  Not sure if Houllier actually rated him or just signed him to show Petrov/Sidwell he didn't need them anymore.  Had to have been a pretty big loan fee/wage for the time.

 

There are a million cheap loans who rarely featured for us, if at all.  Doesn't mean they're the worst...

• Andre Moreira
• Borja Baston
• Tiago Ilori
• Grant Holt
• Simon Dawkins
• Andy Marshall
• Gabor Kiraly

[MrSmirch]

Grant Holt was very depressing. Lambert must've been hitting the buckfast and reminiscing before he made that call
 

The championship ones were pretty good. Johnstone, El ghazi, Tammy, Snoddy, Hause, Mings etc

[HKP90]

51 minutes ago, theboyangel said:

Michael Bradley was a huge disappointment. 

Reading this I was thinking 'Michael Bradley played for Villa?'. I think that says everything.

I'd concur with Drinkwater as worst, as he not only managed to be awful on the field, but had an attitude that stank like The Sty at low tide.

[villaslash]

Best 3

• Milner
• Walker
• Mings

Worst 3

• Drinkwater
• Bolasie
• Hmm… so many but I’ll go with Jermaine because you knew he could play but didn’t do it for us.

[HKP90]

It's a weird question though really, because generally you go into the loan market for backups and squad depth, so unless they really exceed expectations, they are never going to play much. Unless there is an option to buy.

[HKP90]

6 minutes ago, HKP90 said:

Reading this I was thinking 'Michael Bradley played for Villa?'. I think that says everything.

I'd concur with Drinkwater as worst, as he not only managed to be awful on the field, but had an attitude that stank like The Sty at low tide.

Not even youtube has any clips him playing for us. And there are clips of me brushing my teeth on YouTube.

[Johnnyp]

I wish Balaban was a loan. 6 million was still a huge fee in 2001. 

[VillaChris]

Carbone was pretty good I thought.

One of those scorer of great goals rather than great goalscorer type but he scored some crackers in 99/00, helped us reach the cup final and generally provided a spark in a season that was about a game away from Gregory getting sacked given we weren't scoring much and losing most weeks. Dublin also broke his neck that season so Carbone was very much needed and tbh we looked better with him and Joachim as duo so perhaps we shouldn't have rushed Dion so quickly to get him starting in the cup final when he was at best 50%.

Of course being us we then didn't sign Carbone and signed Ginola on the 40k Carbone wanted! Later on in the season we again had injury crisis and went back to Sheff Weds to sign Giles de Bilde who'd certainly make the top 5 worst loans.