4. Ashley Grimes

I know, many of you will say Grimes should be higher on the list. after all, a player coming in over the winter period and yet ending up as leading scorer surely says a lot about his quality, right?

It may do, but the season he played we ended up relegated and despite his goalscoring heroics, I can’t help but picture him lost up front for five goalless games at the end of that season. Harsh? Maybe, but in truth, I’m also being fair on Grimes by acknowledging his input in a terrible campaign.

He joined on loan from Millwall, and scored 17 goals between November and March. Without those goals, we would have been relegated by Easter, that’s fact. He formed a decent partnership formed with big Delroy Facey and at one point it looked set to push us to a respectable mid table finish. Had that been the case, it could be argued Grimes would have been our best ever loan signing.

Sadly, his last goal was in our 2-1 defeat at Stevenage that also proved to be the last time staying in the league looked likely. Delroy Facey had been injured the game prior against Macclesfield and Grimes’ didn’t score from open play after that: the Stevenage goal was a penalty.

Facey’s replacements weren’t able to help the youngster. Ben Hutchinson wasn’t up to the task and Drewe Broughton was out on loan helping Wimbledon to get the goals they needed to replace us at the end of the season. On the final day of the season Grimeswas verbally attacked as he left the pitch but, despite that, rumours were both Tilson and Grimes would have liked a permanent deal.

He spent those last few games epitomising everything wrong with the side that went down. He had obvious talent as 17 goals testified too, but we sank without a whimper and talented players didn’t look to be trying too hard to make it happen. Grimes returned to the Bank in 2016/17, getting sent off playing for Southport. He also featured for Edinburgh City as recently as 2017/18, but never repeated his scoring feat of 2010/11.