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2-1. Amongst his eight goals for Villa that season was the opener as we lost 3-0 at the SOL, earning him an even louder chorus of disapproval than that which had greeted the announcement of his name, and one goal in one appearance against us plus the manner of his departure means that as far as haunting goes, he’s a definite 9/10.
Connor Wickham arrived in a blaze of publicity in 2011, having spent the previous season terrorising defences as a teenager for Ipswich. To say his time with us was fraught with disappointment is an understatement,
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as we refused to give him a regular start and loaned him out at times when we needed a big striker. In his post-Sunderland career, he’s earned millions of pounds while playing only sixty-seven times in seven years, very much a case of too much too young. After fifteen goals in ninety-one games for us, we gave up and
sold him to Palace, for whom he played against us three times. He scored twice in five minutes on March 1st 2015 as we drew 2-2 at home, so, despite his generosity on the champagne front, he gets a haunting rating of 9/10.
Mikael Mandron might only have made three substitute appearances for the Lads but has been a bit of a pest in the six games he’s played against us. In March 2020, he matched Kyle Lafferty’s brace as we drew 2-2 at home, effectively ending our hopes of automatic promotion and meaning that we ended the season a point off the Play-Off places. Thankfully, he couldn’t repeat that performance when we whupped his current club, Crewe, 4-0 at Gresty Road last October- but that was probably down to them having Callum McFadzean at left back-sorry to bring that up. Haunting rating 8/10.
Then there’s the player who applied the latest hit of the Curse of The Former Player, Chris Maguire. To be honest, he’s probably cursed a number of his former clubs, but being haunted by him looked far from happening when we played Lincoln in the Papa John’s Trophy at Sincil Bank in October. We’d quite justifiably
BENT been worried about him, as he’s the sort of player who bears grudges and he’d not been best pleased when we got shot of him. As it turned out, he looked completely disinterested for the seventy minutes he
was on the field, but as Lincoln could only be bothered to name four subs, I reckon his club weren’t that bothered either as we won 2-1 with a debut goal for sub, Stephen Wearne, proving crucial.
Fast forward to January 2022 and the League game at the Sol, when somebody had clearly put something in Maguire’s pre-match drink as he put in the sort of performance that made him such a crowd favourite. If only he could do it every game, he’d have a century of Scotland caps and a contract with Rangers or Celtic. He was at it from the off, earning a yellow card after only ten minutes and generally winding everybody
up, team-mates in the right way, opponents in the wrong way. There was a goal on the half hour, which
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