Rank your top 10 loanees of all time

[Ghost of Clough]

8 hours ago, ronnieronalde said:

Tin hat on.

I really should know better by now but STILL after years of daft rows I can't resist ?

Those who think Chris Martin was poor for us during his loan spell are probably the same people who couldn't (or wouldn't) admit we were playing some great stuff under NC long before Steve came in. He showed some real glimpses of pure class, it was fitness he lacked, not quality.

** football fans in not knowing a good player if he hits them between their eyes, shocker.

Some surprising posters thinking he was awful, including a couple who's football views I usually rate highly.

Martin was brilliant, even in the 10 games or so NC was still here THAT season.

Some could tell he was a good player, but his loan spell was far from successful

[ronnieronalde]

13 minutes ago, Ghost of Clough said:

Some could tell he was a good player, but his loan spell was far from successful

I can only speak for me GoC.

I was absolutely convinced he was the missing link within 3 or 4 games. Stats wise someone else will remember better than me, he only got a couple of goals in 8 or 9 games but the goals he got were very clever finishes and his speed of thought stood out.

We needed a link man to play the style of football NC was trying to get us to play. I genuinely think they thought Connor Sammon could hold it much better than he could. Once it was clear he didn't have a great first touch, we needed someone else.

Maybe I'm a bit weird like that but I loved Chris and his arrogance/confidence and clear football intelligence straight away.

[SaintRam]

On 19/05/2019 at 22:33, ronnieronalde said:

Tin hat on.

I really should know better by now but STILL after years of daft rows I can't resist ?

Those who think Chris Martin was poor for us during his loan spell are probably the same people who couldn't (or wouldn't) admit we were playing some great stuff under NC long before Steve came in. He showed some real glimpses of pure class, it was fitness he lacked, not quality.

** football fans in not knowing a good player if he hits them between their eyes, shocker.

Some surprising posters thinking he was awful, including a couple who's football views I usually rate highly.

Martin was brilliant, even in the 10 games or so NC was still here THAT season.

I don't deny that there were glimpses of Martin's ability during his few loan appearances, and the player that he became after signing permanently is just another notch in Nigel Clough's very impressive belt of finding diamonds in the rough.

But, at no point during his loan spell did I sit up and think "holy crap this guy is good.", it was just glimpeses. He just looked like a run of the mill Championship player, to me. He was better than Tyson or Robinson at that time, but that isn't much of a bar to surpass.

 He didn't become a notable player to me until Nigel Clough had his last summer to work on him. He was excellent straight from the off in the 2013/14 season.
 

That's why he isn't very high on my "top loanees" list. If he'd been on loan for the full 2013/14 season he'd be on top of it. Luckily, his contract was up and we could get him on a free.

[ronnieronalde]

34 minutes ago, SaintRam said:

I don't deny that there were glimpses of Martin's ability during his few loan appearances, and the player that he became after signing permanently is just another notch in Nigel Clough's very impressive belt of finding diamonds in the rough.

But, at no point during his loan spell did I sit up and think "holy crap this guy is good.", it was just glimpeses. He just looked like a run of the mill Championship player, to me. He was better than Tyson or Robinson at that time, but that isn't much of a bar to surpass.

 He didn't become a notable player to me until Nigel Clough had his last summer to work on him. He was excellent straight from the off in the 2013/14 season.
 

That's why he isn't very high on my "top loanees" list. If he'd been on loan for the full 2013/14 season he'd be on top of it. Luckily, his contract was up and we could get him on a free.

This will shock the living daylights out of some but at that point I'd probably have been Sam Rush's biggest fan. Pre season, for the first in his managerial spell Nige got to sign the players he wanted to sign and it looked like he was finally being backed. I believe Sam would have been respsonsible for that "push!". What I didn't twig straight away was that he was pushing more to grow his own reputation than he was pushing for Nigel to do well.

When Rush or whoever it was managed to get Chris for nowt I'd have kissed his feet.

Then I heard a tiny comment about the money men maybe not fancying Nigel. I wrote a long post saying I hope they give him the chance to bed the new players in. Looked at the fixture list and literally came on and wrote he's got to get past the Forest game to survive and that I hope they don't get trigger fingers.

I wrote that before we played Burnley first day of the season.

Sometimes glimpses are enough to know you're on the right track. While NC was at Sheff Utd there was a lad who was struggling to get into the side called Jamie Murphy. They played a cup game away at Cambridge. Murphy came off the bench and tore them apart for 15 minutes.

15 minutes was enough to know the lad had something special, something different. All he needed was a manager who put him in the side and the other players to get him on the ball whenever they could. For me it was the same with Chris Martin. He was cleverer than those around him.