Gillingham FC transfer swoop for ex-Spurs player was a disaster - he lasted just one month at Priestfield | OneFootball

Jamie O'Hara was injured when he arrived at Gillingham in 2016, and ended up not staying with the club for very long.

When Gillingham picked up the former Spurs midfielder Jamie O'Hara from Fulham on a free transfer in 2016, they must have thought they were getting a bargain.

It was quite a coup for Gillingham, a League One club at the time, to acquire the services of such a player.

Great things had been expected of O'Hara. When he moved from the Arsenal academy to Spurs as a 16-year-old, the story was big enough for the FA to comment on the subject.

Following loan spells at Chesterfield and Millwall, he made his debut for Spurs in December 2007 and ended up becoming a regular in their first team for a while.

But the arrival of Harry Redknapp as manager in December 2008, O'Hara started to fall from favour at White Hart Lane, and he ended up on loan at Portsmouth - for whom he played in the 2010 FA Cup final - and Wolves, making the latter of these a permanent deal in 2011. He stayed there for three years before having his contract terminated and moving on to Blackpool, and then to Fulham in 2015.

Figures from FBRef

His move to Gillingham was brief and disastrous

O'Hara made 37 appearances in the Championship for Fulham throughout the 2015/16 season, but he was released by the club that summer.

Gillingham was another step down for O'Hara, this time into League One, and he later admitted that being released by Fulham had sent him into a “downward spiral mentally”. He was also carrying a foot injury that he hadn't been able to shake off, and it would be this that would truncate his stay at Priestfield.

Manager Justin Edinburgh was confident about the decision at the time of his arrival: "Once again, we've brought a player of Premier League quality into the club. We've said this summer that we've wanted to strengthen the first-team, and not merely the squad, and I think this signing is again testament to our work."

He signed a two-year contract with the Gills on the 12th August, but with his mental health already suffering and that injury, it would turn out to be a brief stay.

By the end of September, and having made just three appearances for the club, all of which came from the substitutes' bench, his contract was terminated by mutual agreement.

That foot injury, it turned out, had been worse than originally believed.

O'Hara became more famous as his playing career declined

Jamie O'Hara found himself in the strange position of becoming more famous as his career declined. His marriage (and subsequent divorce) to the model Danielle Lloyd made him tabloid fodder, and his next career move was nothing to do with football. In January 2017, he appeared on Celebrity Big Brother. He later expressed his regret over having turned down an offer from Burton Albion to do so.

His final attempt at rescuing a football career came in non-league football at Billericay Town, and initially things went well. He joined the club in March 2017, and they won their league at the end of that season, but as that club found notoriety on account of the occasionally eccentric behaviour of the club's new owner, Glenn Tamplin, O'Hara remained something of a bit-part player, making 43 appearances for them and having a spell as player-manager before leaving in 2020.

His post-playing career has been more successful. He joined TalkSport as co-host of their show The Sports Bar, and remains there to this day.

But Gillingham supporters may well wonder what might have happened, had a fully-fit Jamie O'Hara might have been able to play for them.