The £1.7 million transfer deal between Watford and Ipswich Town was a huge letdown: view

Fans of Suffolk Town may still shudder when they hear the name Tamas Priskin because the Hungarian striker was the embodiment of a mess at Portman Road at the beginning of the previous decade.

After leaving Hertfordshire for the Suffolk in the summer of 2009 for a rumored £1.7 million, the forward struggled to reach new heights for the Tractor Boys.

The forward’s tenure in East Anglia may be summed up by his five goals in 51 league games. His lackluster performances led to consecutive midtable Championship finishes before he was shipped away to numerous other EFL teams.

The underwhelming Magyar will always be remembered by Town supporters, but not for good reasons. The player and the club amicably decided to part ways after the player’s pitiful contributions to the team during his two and a half-year tenure came to an end.

Career in the EFL for Tamas Priskin: Watford, Ipswich Town, Preston North End

Priskin clearly proved he could play in the second division while at Watford, but after joining the Hornets in his Premier League debut, he scored just three goals in 21 games following his transfer from Gyor in his native country.

The goalie for Ipswich Town asserted with confidence what they might have been able to accomplish recently.

It took until April for him to score his first league goal, which came in a 4-2 victory over Portsmouth, but the supporters at Vicarage Road must have felt they had a star striker on their hands after he opened his account in his fourth game for the team against Hull City in the League Cup.

In his second season in England, Priskin was beginning to live up to the hype when Watford loaned him out to Preston North End midway through the campaign. The striker was then brought on in an attempt to try and save face during the Hornets’ playoff semi-final losses to Hull City.

In his third season in England, the Hungarian finally started to settle into a groove, scoring 14 goals in 41 games to entice then-Ipswich manager Roy Keane to make a summer move for the striker. Unsurprisingly, Watford was more than happy to be compensated with a seven-figure fee for giving up the player.

After he moved to Portman Road, everything returned to normal, with Priskin’s name hardly ever showing up on the scoreboard as the Tractor Boys kept grinding away in the middle of the table, never really being threatened with relegation or promoted.

In the midst of nine seasons of nothing special, not even a playoff push, Priskin was a perfect representation of a club that had lost its way throughout the early part of the century; a long cry from the promotion hopefuls at Portman Road today. This was peak-Ipswich gloom.

Tamas Priskin set an Ipswich Town goal scoring record.

Town didn’t realize their mistakes until February, when they decided to let the forward play for Queens Park Rangers for the final few months of the campaign, giving another group of fans a chance to enjoy his brash antics.

Priskin scored eight goals in the 2010–11 season, maybe his most memorable throughout his time in Suffolk. Of those goals, none was more memorable than the one that sealed a 1-0 victory over Arsenal in the League Cup semi-final.

Even though the Gunners went on to win the second leg 3-0 to advance to Wembley, that triumph was the high point of yet another unglamorous year in Suffolk for the player and the team. Priskin was once again temporarily moved, this time to Swansea City, as the season came to an end.

Persona non grata at Portman Road for the next campaign, as disputes with the Welsh side about the Hungarian’s salaries and who was paying them raged. He added another wet squibb of a loan move to his collection when he took a last-minute appearance for the Tractor Boys against Blackpool before to his contract expiring in January 2012.

The intrepid number nine had stints in Russia, Austria, Israel, Slovakia, and his home country of Hungary. His 15 league goals for Watford prior to joining Ipswich proved to be the ultimate red herring; he finished his career with little over 50 league goals.

In that particular agreement, Town ended up as the fall guy since the Hungarian deception turned out to be too good to be true. After watching his career end in his native country, where he will be remembered with affection, Priskin eventually retired last year, having scored 17 goals in 63 international games.

Though Tractor Boys fans will wish to forget about his shaky few seasons in Suffolk, he might not be as well received in East Anglia.

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