Released by the club or from jail?

Probably score more goals than Benteke.

Red and Blue Army!

We seem to have got our money back at least.

Red and Blue Army!

That's a good point. We've done pretty well out of players being released by other clubs in recent years.

Clyne was on the scrap heap. Cahill was without a club, McCarthy was either free or near enough and Everton certainly wanted shot of him. Ayew was also unwanted at Swansea.

Going back to Collymore, I thought we paid about £150k for him, sold him to Southend after he didn't make it here, and they sold him to Forest for something close to a record at the time - maybe over £2m? I also refuse to do the research.

I have clear memories of Collymore at Palace. Nobody could make sense of him as he seemed far too tall to be a poacher like Wright, and so surely had to be a target man, like Bright, but he was crap in the air. He also had a few games on the wing, but had no final ball at all, much to the disapproval of Messers Bright and (I think still) Wright.

When given a chance to play up front he would often burst through two or three defenders in spectacular fashion before blasting the ball over the top of the Whitehorse lane end.

Somehow at Southend he forced himself to place his shots low into the corners, and almost overnight he was a very valuable asset. The rest is history.

Southend also did well by getting Chris Powell off us for a song I think?

Collymore was bought from non league for a cool £100k so to sell him after Wright had left for only £150k seemed a strange decision to me. 6 months later he was sold to Forest for over £2m.

We did get 12.5% of sell ons though so got money out of that move and also when he moved on to Liverpool (as Southend had a % clause too)

I'm sure it was 2 million - not Alan Smith's finest hour, he reckons you could not reasonably have predicted Collymore's rise based on what he saw at Palace. But Collymore used to light the place up every time he came on, was often a sub to Wright and Bright, this is the biggest one to have got away by a long way