Ipswich Town’s £1.7 million transfer deal with Watford was very disappointing

Hearing the name Tamas Priskin certainly still sends shivers down Ipswich Town fans’ spines, as the Hungarian striker symbolized a bog of mediocrity at Portman Road at the start of the past decade.

The forward joined Suffolk from Watford in the summer of 2009, although he failed to impress for the Tractor Boys after joining from Hertfordshire for a reported £1.7 million.

Five goals in 51 league games pretty much sums up the frontman’s stint in East Anglia, with his average performances helping to back-to-back Championship mid-table finishes before being loaned out to a slew of other EFL clubs.

The not-so-magnificent Magyar is a player who will always be remembered by Town fans, but not for the right reasons, as his meager contributions during his two-and-a-half year time with the club came to an end when player and club mutually agreed to part ways.

Tamas Priskin EFL career: Watford, Ipswich Town, Preston North End

Priskin clearly accomplished enough at Watford to suggest he could play in the second tier, but his debut season in the Premier League with the Hornets saw him score just three goals in 21 games after arriving from Gyor in his country.

The Vicarage Road faithful must have thought they had a top goalscorer on their hands after he opened his account in his fourth League Cup match against Hull City, but it would take until April for him to score his first league goal, the final goal in a 4-2 victory over Portsmouth.

In his second season in England, evidence that Priskin was failing to live up to the hype began to emerge, as Watford loaned the striker out to Preston North End midway through the season before bringing him on in a futile attempt to salvage the situation in the Hornets’ playoff semi-final defeats to Hull City.

In his third season in England, the Hungarian finally started to click, scoring 14 goals in 41 games to entice then-Ipswich manager Roy Keane into a summer move for the striker, and Watford were more than happy to be compensated with a seven-figure fee for his services.

As soon as he moved to Portman Road, normal service resumed, with Priskin’s name rarely appearing on the scoresheet as the Tractor Boys remained in mid-table, neither facing relegation nor threatening promotion.

This was peak-Ipswich gloom; in the midst of a nine-year stretch of nothing-much seasons without a single playoff push, Priskin was a great illustration of a club that had lost its way in the early part of the century – a far cry from the promotion challengers at Portman Road today.

Tamas Priskin goalscoring record Ipswich Town

It took Town until February to realize their mistakes, as they offloaded the forward to QPR for the final few months of the season, allowing his shot-shy antics to be scrutinized by a new set of fans for a few months.

The 2010/11 season may have been Priskin’s most memorable in Suffolk, with eight goals, the best of which came in a 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the League Cup semi-final.

Although the Gunners went on to win the return leg 3-0 to advance to Wembley, it was a highlight of another unglamorous year in Suffolk for both player and club, with another season finishing with Priskin temporarily moving on to Swansea City.

As the arguments with the Welsh over the Hungarians’ wages and who was paying them raged on, he became persona non grata at Portman Road for the remainder of the campaign. A loan move to Derby County was the latest damp squibb of a loan move to add to his collection, before making one more appearance for the Tractor Boys against Blackpool before his contract expired in January 2012.

The itinerant number nine went on to play in Russia, Austria, Israel, Slovakia, and his home Hungary, with his 15 league goals for Watford before joining Ipswich serving as the ultimate red herring; he has scored over 50 league goals in his career.

Town was the fall guy in that specific arrangement, since the Hungarian prank proved too good to be true. Priskin retired last year after spending most of his career in his home country, where he scored 17 goals in 63 international appearances.

He may not be well received in East Anglia, though, after a faltering few seasons in Suffolk, which Tractor Boys fans would want to forget.