Yobo, you're right - Lee Marshall was a complete turd of a player for us (no offence to him personally of course, i'm sure he's a very nice guy!). the fact he cost 600000 quid rather than 5mil moves him just below Ade IMO.
if you assume that ade, wise, jones and marshall have all been crap for us for one reason or another then one way to look at it is.....
ade: cost 5mil sold for approx 2.5mil after 1.5 seasons. net loss 2.5mil + wages
wise: cost 1.6mil (i think) - sacked after one season. net loss 1.6mil + wages
jones: cost 3mil - will be released at the end of this season (i think) after playing bugger all number of games for us. net loss 3 mil + 3.5 years wages
marshall: cost 0.6mil - sold for 800000 quid to wba. bugger me - how did we manage to make a profit?!?!?!
benji: cost 1.5mil - probably worth about 350000 quid in todays market
i think this shows up jones as the worst piece of business although at the time of buying no-one could have known jones would be so injury prone. however, we should have realised that leeds would have been willing to accept a lot less for him (750000 quid is the rumour mill figure).