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BLIND, STUPID AND DESPERATE
 
Gone but not forgotten:
Mark Rooney
 
Position: Central defender
From: Youth team
Record: Played: 1 Scored: 0
To: St Albans City - Free transfer - May 1998
Career stats: Soccerbase
He was: Better than Peo Ljung

Terrible, innit? You blow any chance of a half-decent education to join a football club's YTS scheme - two years of sweating blood, cleaning boots and getting shouted at by coaches who make the games teachers at school seem mentally stable. You make it, though - you get your first contract, even if it is only for a year and Gifton's lasts until he's fifty-eight. You struggle on, make your first team debut (in the Auto Windscreen Shield at Fulham - hardly the stuff of childhood dreams but, hey, even Ronaldo had to start somewhere). You make the bench in a Cup tie at Sheffield Wednesday. You're getting somewhere.

And then you get released on a free transfer.

Your Watford epitaph is written by a pretentious fool who's only seen you play once and fell asleep for most of that game. Life's a bitch, man.