LOOK on the PFA transfer list and you will come across a couple of players called Maceo Rigters and Remco van der Schaaf. The names sound familiar, but by now the memories have faded.

Two products of the Dutch youth system, in East Lancashire they were less total football, more total disaster.

Rigters spent four years at Blackburn Rovers, making eight appearances, including a stunning 14 minutes of league football.

Van der Schaaf was equally unsuccessful at Burnley. After signing for the Clarets in the summer of 2008, he started the first game of the season but was substituted on the hour mark, with his new club 3-1 down at Sheffield Wednesday, and never appeared again.

It is hard to explain quite why their spells in England proved such failures, since both arrived with respectable pedigrees, but it seems baffling that only now have their associations with their respective clubs finally come to an end, following the expiry of their contracts.

Rigters has spent the last year at Willem II, while Van der Schaaf was incredibly loaned out for a full 18 months to Brondby.

History showed their purchases on long contracts, under the respective tenures of Mark Hughes and Owen Coyle, to be ill-advised.

But there still appear flaws in the system when a club is unable to move on an unwanted player for such farcical lengths of time, yet stars can sometimes force a transfer within days when they decide they are unhappy.