Makes a grown man cry!

Shame he was terrible.

Kanchelskis too....

Howard Kendall because Shankley thought he had him!

Latchford!

Oh, I should add that I felt a certain thrill when I heard The Victims had spent THIRTY FIVE MILLION POUNDS on an uncoordinated greasy horse.

I couldn't believe we were getting a Brazilian footballer. Then he played. I then knew why nobody else wanted him.

Saddest departure was probably Lee Carsley or Nigel Martyn

Kanchelskis shocked me.

Of course the drawn out purchase of Big Dunc after his loan period. Still got the Gwladys Sings the Blues from right afterwards.

Pienaar on loan in Jan got a fist pump - all happened so late in the day.

I had no idea who he was at first but the money paid got my attention pretty quick.

Signings I disliked? Gibson might be that one!

That taught me a lesson about youtube!

Before that I was over the moon about the Yak....

Most depressed signing for me was Fellaini, it came at the last moment and smacked of desperation..I wrote a damning few comments on here.. . it didnt take me long to become a fan.. and once he sorted out his tackles from behind he is now a giant of the team and could lace up for any side in the world. Amazes me we still have him!

Alan Ball out.

Best and worst deals ever.

Saddest was Alex Young finally leaving.

I remember being intrigued when we signed Fellaini and Bilyaletdinov. I was really pleased when we signed Andy Johnson and the Yak - and much the same when Pienaar (first time especially) and Arteta made their loans permanent. I was overjoyed when Duncan Ferguson did the same.

On reflection though, I think that the last signing that really excited me in a kid at Xmas-time kind of way was Tony Cottee - a proven goal-scorer acquired for a British record transfer fee who, at the age 23 (give or take a year), still had the best part of his career ahead of him. The fact that he scored a hat-trick on his competitive debut probably helped to cement the idea that we’d made a really special signing.

I'm always excited by any new signings, generally speaking, the club will have done their homework on the player in question so I usually find it pretty easy to put a positive spin on anyone we sign up.

The last one I got really excited about? Bily probably.

Was depressed by the rash of signing of has-beens... especially Ginolla and, God forbid, Gascoigne. McFadden looked a little crazy to me too, though I can can of see the rationale of getting a back up player on a free, and he didn't at least look terrible when he came on.

But the one I hated, and even stopped going to the match for a while, was the signing of Norman Whiteside. Not because he was a bad player, just because I hated him.

...and Earl Barrett.

As a 14 year old on a family holiday in Torquay at the time, I remember being gutted when my Dad returned to our B&B from the newsagents just before brekkie, and held up the back page of the paper which had the massive headline of just "KANCELLED", and a story about how his move to us had fell through. Luckily it went ahead a day or 2 later!

Heitinga - knew we had signed a top centre half.

van der Meyde - Had watched him him tear Scotland apart in play off games and could not believe we had signed him haha.

Ferguson - Easy the most excited I have been about signing a player when we brought him back from Newcastle.

The signing that most depressed me.

Fellaini - I was hugely pissed off that we had smashed our transfer record on what appeared to be a panic buy ( I still think it was ). What made it worse was I thought we signed the wrong one and Defour looked the better player. It didnt take long for me to see Fellaini's quality though but i'm still convinced we would have got him for a third of what we paid if we signed him a month earlier.

Players I was upset to see leave.

Martyn - Brilliant.

Carsley - Took a long time to replace him.

Rooney - More angry than upset, how any Evertonian could abandon the club at such a young age without ever scoring against Liverpool is beyond me.

Big Dunc's return and his goal against Charlton suggested he could be the legend we thought he'd be only for him to be injured for the next game against Derby (I think). Still was a legend to me though.

The last signing to offer hope was probably Andy Johnson. I thought, at last we have some pace and someone who can get goals. That was the last time I can remember us starting a season well.

Signings who excited but turned out to be rubbish are too many to mention but John Collins and James Beattie spring to mind.

As for most exciting signing, taking Kanchelskis, a player in his prime, off Manure when they wanted to keep him showed serious intent by Everton. And getting Lineker and Snodin ahead of United, Liverpool and Spurs was a good feeling and again signified where we were at the time. Probably a lesson in there though that it was all too brief even though both performed well. Sometimes the best signings are ones like Cahill, but you don't know it at the time.

Worst departures are probably Rooney and the above two although I found the Lescott one hard to take as it proved the money would always override everything else.

I suppose the Fernandes deal that was allowed to fall through also had me pumping the air..

Most depressing signing is tough, there have been so many! Mark Hughes is definitely up there.

I was really sad to see Marco Materazzi go, I thought he could have been amazing for us... Barmby and Hutchison were pretty heartbreaking too... but Dunc was definitely the worst!

We signed the best right winger in the league when he was only 26 years old. That will probably never happen again.

When we sold him I was devastated.

The most exciting player I've ever seen at Goodison.

When we signed Carsley I thought it was a sad day for our club. Signing such a poor player showed just how far we had fallen.

How wrong I was......Lee Carsley was an excellent signing.

John Collins was a massive let down though.

I was a Championship Manager addict at the time and always signed him cause he was amazing!! So when Everton signed him I was ecstatic!

I have never trusted football management simulators since!!

Out;Collins (B), Gabriel, Young, Ball, Kendall, Beardsley, Ferguson.

Barmby gets a mention for some reason too.

Checked out this lad Mirallas and bejaysus he looks nifty though

I would say the last one was Tony Cottee - who I think we broke the british transfer record for ?

I suppose you are looking at £20m & upwards for that kind of signing today.

Mind you - £35m for Carroll still brings a smile to my face today !!

We had just finished 4th and got through to the early rounds of the CL. Beattie was our most expensive signing ever and had chosen us over other interested parties because of the club's history etc. etc. I remember his debut on a warm late-Summer's evening against Vilarreal where we all had great hopes, both for him and our chances in the competition.

Pierluigi Collina and Beattie being utter shite killed those dreams pretty sharpish!

I agree with the depression of the Mark Hughes transfer... I hit rock bottom, so much so I actually started liking Radiohead.

The thing is, for me anyway... its the ones I get excited about (Drenthe, VDM, etc) that turn out to be flops. However, transfers of the likes of Carsley, Martyn, Gough, Cahill etc didn't exactly have me foaming at the mouth, but turned out to be faves through turning out great performances week on week.

Depressed - James McFadden 2011-12

Depressed. Phil Neville

I think with the way Moyes tends to buy fairly unknown players, there haven't been any players he's signed that have got me excited. The last real signing to really get excited about was Kanchelskis.

Also Cottee - especially after witnessing him bagging a hatrick in the first game of the season 88/9 when we beat the Barcodes 4 -0. I thought at the time he was the icing on the cake.

Traumatic departure: Rooney without a doubt.

I genuinely remember the day I came home from school and my Mum told me she'd heard on the radio that Everton had signed someone. It turned out to be Andy Gray, the catalyst, along with Peter Reid, of our 80's success. I still think we sold Andy Gray too soon.

Age makes you a bit more cynical and less prone to be star-struck. At the risk of sounding like John Motson - It's all about the team, the blend etc - as we were really a team without stars at the height of our 80's success.

A full season with Jelavic firing on all cylinders would be brilliant, given what we had to look forward to up front this time last year.

I'll be gutted if moves for Mirallas and Kevin Johnson fall through.

Also I've heard that Harry Redknapp has been sniffing around trying to make a deal for Kev Johnson, tapping up players who we were meant to sign just for the sake of it.

(see what I did there?)

If memory serves he scored 2 on his Goodison debut against his old club, Birmingham City, and celebrated at the Street End as though his very life depended on it.

Maybe I've got it wrong after all these years but I remember running on the pitch to celebrate his goal in my old rain mac then pegging it away from a copper trying to nab me. An old boy said "you were like a speedy version of Columbo there lad" as I jumped the wall back into the Goodison Rd terrace - pure heaven.

Classic Everton.

Depressed: Choose any one from Ginola, Gazza, Mark Hughes.

Beardsley
MoJo
Bilic
Matterazzi
Amo
Kanchelskis
Nyarko (the new Viera)

Kicked the cat:

ROONEY
Dunc
Speed
Ball
Jeffers

Awful:

S Hughes
Williamson
Some of the above

And I will be supping a few when Super Kev Johnson pens his deal.

Fuckin get in KJ lad!!

He did arrive as a very big deal, we were needing something extra up front and the £1.5 million was a large fee then. He came with a big reputation of goals and the board dug reasonably deep for the £1.5. We were close to the Everton we know today, modern Everton........the money was just starting to run out, no more Moores money and the success generated cash was spunked by Harvey and Kendall took care of the rest. So it was a big signing.

He was fucking last.

Mark Ward says that very soon after MoJo arrived he sussed he wasn't anywhere near what he was and pretty much told him so, to which I think Johnson may have agreed if I remember right!! After that the board pulled the plug on Kendall, they just didn't trust him any more. To be fair to him though he was right about Dion Dublin and knew the cash was there to do the deal.

Crazy thing is Kendall did a very similar thing in his third spell with John Spencer, remember that?! John Spencer always looked a decent player to me at Chelsea. Nothing amazing but a good player, the kind probably better than you'd first think when you take a look, had some goals in him.

Again, we needed something up top, he turned up and he just didn't look like the same player, certainly didnt impress me anyway.

He was up for grabs for £1.5 after the loan and I just KNEW Kendall was going to take him. He did nothing. Walter Smith came in and he started the first 2 games of the season. He was subbed, possibly at half time in the second, and was promptly frozen and then fucked off!! By then I think Howard had completely lost his judgement on a player.

Christ I hated that twat.

Depressed about - Gibson(how wrong can u be), Bent(same), Neville(still undecided).

Remember getting the paper on the way to work and being gutted that Keown signed for Arsenal, also remember being gutted tha santa claus signed for the shite(Zavier) but then being pleased when he turned wank

More recently Felli. I had seen him on the box a few times and thought he was a good player and on transfer deadline night I was away and was depressed buy the lack of signing and kept using my blackberry to see if we had any signings. I stayed up late (12.30 for me late) and looked as though nothing happened. So I went to bed very depressed. So next day by chance I again used the blackberry to get onto the web and was shocked and overjoyed that Felli had joined us. I still feel happy he is a blue.

Andy Gray is also a good shout and I must admit when peanuts rejoined on loan last season I kept shouting in joy for about 5 minutes.

I was happy when Andy Johnson signed. I was happy with Gibson because I knew he was under rated.

When you look at how good players like Dacourt and Mattarazzi turned out to be, I do feel a sense of regret that they left. With Rodwell at the moment, I don't feel it.

Most 'excited by' signing - has to be when you're a kid, so I would say Alan Ball. Some of the arler arses might also remember that signing Ernie Hunt was a big news item, though that might have been because his real name was Roger Hunt ! Otherwise Bob Latchford and Duncan McKenzie.

Most disappointing - Rooney, without a doubt. It brought home to me that in all probability I would never see Everton win the League again.

Someone might correct me, but wasn't his debut a stormer against Leeds which we won 4-1?

Anyway, the most exciting transfer for me was Kanchelskis. I loved him at Man U, couldn't believe we signed him (it nearly fell through at the last minute, too).

But thats only my dodgy memory!!

McFadden had a cracking game that day, should have scored, and was all anyone could talk about.

Reminiscent of Branch's first home game against Sheff Weds (I think it was).

Maybe the "most exciting debuts" is another thread. Cottee, Branch, Speed, McFadden...

In about, I'll guess, late 90s we brought on a young mifielder at Goodison. The first time he got the ball on the left the crowd roared him on "Take him on, go on". He did a few tricks and then tripped on the ball and fell over. All you could hear was about 35,000 people say "awwwww".

I reckon he was blonde and always thought it was probably Michael Ball or John Hills.

Strange how the memory starts to fade.

That was funny ................ Can just imagine that. If TV cameras would have caught it, that would be up there with Eddie Cavanagh's Wembley moment.

Most disappointing departures - Ball, Rooney and from a purely emotional stand-point - Tim Cahill. I miss you, Tim!!

I think the Irish wonder kid you refer to who was "the next George Best" was Martin Murray who we bought, I think, from Home Farm. Never kicked a ball in anger for us.

Alan Ball from Blackpool and Bobby Latchford got my pulse racing.

I was 7 when we gat the Ball of Fire and knew we were the biggest team in the country when we landed him.

I was in my parallels and crombie doing the Everton boot walk when Bobby Latchford signed with Archie Styles and HK going the other way. No chance of emulating the beard then, could just about manage it now.

Still got a pulse but these days I'm afraid I haven't got excited about a signing since big Dunc came back.

:<( Lineker

But those who are really old, might remember that after Dave Hickson left us for Villa, he moved to Huddersfield Town. He'd been at Huddersfield some time when (it was reported) the then powers that be inquired about bringing him back to Goodison. They were told that there was no chance, so came away with an aging carthorse called Rod Belfitt (aka "Rod the plod"), or am I thinking of Jimmy Glazzard? God we signed some crap in those days.

I can't stop saying that. This kid looks electric. Lets hope someone put 50p in the meter.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NmMJI2MDY4&feature=related

As for the melancholy, I think I have repressed many of those memories. Off the top of my head, I say Ginola & Gascoigne.