BRIAN CLOUGH and Peter Taylor were shrewd operators in the transfer market but their first signing for Brighton was a flop.
Possibly panicked into making changes to a side shipping goals at an alarming rate, their spending of £20,000 on Ken Goodeve was money wasted.
The former Manchester United youth captain managed only six appearances and left the club seven months later.
In the autumn of 1973, fresh with a transfer fund previous manager Pat Saward could only have dreamt of, the former Derby County managerial duo bought Goodeve from Luton Town, where he’d struggled for games after leaving Old Trafford.
Clough and Taylor had been less than impressed with the squad they’d inherited at the Goldstone Ground – particularly after witnessing successive capitulations to Bristol Rovers (8-2) and non-league Walton & Hersham (4-0).
As they sought to shape the side with their own players, the first arrival through the door was Goodeve, who would at least have found one familiar face in the dressing room. He and Peter O’Sullivan played in the same Manchester United youth and reserve sides (see programme line-ups below).
In April 1969, they had reached the FA Youth Cup semi-finals where West Brom beat them 5-3 on aggregate, winning 3-2 at home in the first leg and 2-1 at Old Trafford, when it was reported a crowd of 20,000 were watching.
Goodeve and O’Sullivan played in the same United reserve side as the likes of Jimmy Rimmer in goal, John Fitzpatrick, Nobby Stiles and Don Givens.
In April 1970, Goodeve was one of four fringe United players – Givens, Jimmy Ryan and Peter Woods were the others – who were sold to Luton for a combined total of £35,000.
In two seasons at Kenilworth Road, Goodeve captained the Town reserve side but managed only nine appearances, plus six as a sub for the first team.
He was still only 23 when he joined the Albion. He was handed the no.6 shirt alongside Norman Gall for the away game at Tranmere Rovers on 8 December, along with fellow debutant Peter Grummitt, initially on loan from Sheffield Wednesday, in goal.
But neither new boy could halt the slump, as Albion caved in to a 4-1 defeat. Left-back George Ley didn’t play another game for the club after that game at Prenton Park.
Young Steve Piper was drafted in to play alongside Gall in the following match – a 1-0 defeat at Watford – and Goodeve was handed Eddie Spearritt’s no.4 shirt instead.
He retained his place in the side for the Boxing Day clash with Aldershot (when Burnley youngsters Harry Wilson and Ronnie Welch made their debuts) but this time in place of Ronnie Howell in midfield. Again, Albion lost 1-0.
Clough and Taylor continued to chop and change and Goodeve was dropped to the bench for the next four matches, only getting a brief look-in on the action when going on for Welch in the 2-1 home win over Rochdale on 19 January.
John Vinicombe, Albion writer for the Evening Argus, was not impressed. “The chief disappointment so far has been the failure of Ken Goodeve to recapture his Luton form. Goodeve, who started in the back four with Albion at Tranmere, has subsequently appeared in midfield and so far not made his mark,” he wrote.
Goodeve found himself playing in the reserves with a growing band of former first-teamers and, it wasn’t until 25 March that he got another sniff of first team action.
That was when he stood in at right-back for Paul Fuschillo away to Wrexham (0-1) and five days later at York City (0-3). But that was it. After five starts and one appearance as a sub, he didn’t play for the Albion again.
In the close season, he was offloaded to Watford for half the amount Albion had forked out seven months earlier.
At last, at Vicarage Road, he got plenty of playing time under his former Luton teammate, Mike Keen, who had taken over as Hornets manager.
Indeed, in only the second month of the new season, Goodeve was back at the Goldstone in the Watford side beaten 2-0 courtesy of goals by Ricky Marlowe and Welch.
Goodeve in action for Watford against Albion’s Fred Binney
Born in Manchester on 3 September 1950, Goodeve joined United on schoolboy terms in October 1965 and was signed up as an apprentice the following year. In September 1967, he signed a professional contract at Old Trafford.
By the time he departed Old Trafford in April 1970, he’d not managed to make the step up to the United first team.
At Luton, his teammates included John Moore, who’d previously been on loan with Brighton, Barry Butlin, who played five games on loan at Brighton in 1975, and Don Shanks, who was a Mike Bailey signing in 1981.
After the sparse playing time with Brighton, Goodeve played 69 consecutive games for Watford between 1974 and 1976 but a groin strain ended his professional career.
He was able to pursue a non-league career at Bedford Town for five years and was in their 1980-81 side that won the Southern League Cup.
He subsequently played for a number of non-league outfits in the same region, as detailed in this Watford FC archive and ended up as player-manager of Bedfordshire side Wootton Blue Cross between 1993 and 1997.
According to the Hatters Heritage website, Goodeve continued to play football until he was 47 before becoming customer care manager for Galliard Homes in London, commuting from Wootton every day.
CONNOR GOLDSON’S dad Winston must have had mixed emotions when his son scored the only goal of the game at the Amex on New Year’s Day 2016.
The avid Wolverhampton Wanderers fan in him would have been delighted to see his side leave the south coast with three valuable Championship points.
Unfortunately, Wolverhampton-born Connor was playing for Brighton that day – just his second game in the blue and white stripes.
What made it worse was that the defender had been on Wanderers’ books for five years as a young boy but was released when he was only 13.
Goldson must have been mortified when, in the 32nd-minute of that first game of 2016, he inadvertently diverted Jordan Graham’s cross past David Stockdale in the home goal.
Sure, injury-hit Albion had chances to restore parity or even win, but 11th-placed Wolves hung on to the lead and Chris Hughton’s luckless Seagulls saw a winless run extend to six games.
Albion also lost the next two matches but got back on track with a 1-0 win at Blackburn on 16 January and then pushed hard for an automatic promotion slot.
For Goldson, that fixture marked the start of a run of games alongside Lewis Dunk, and his first goal for the club came in a 2-1 away win at Birmingham City on 5 April, when he glanced in a Jiri Skalak set-piece delivery.
Goldson celebrates his goal at Birmingham with Beram Kayal and Lewis Dunk
He found the net again a fortnight later with a towering header from a corner as the Seagulls crushed QPR 4-0 at the Amex to edge closer to the top two (Burnley and Middlesbrough) with three games to go.
The centre-back partnership was only broken up when Dunk was shown a red card in the penultimate game, a 1-1 draw at Derby, and suspended for the final game of the ordinary league season.
Goldson was alongside returning skipper Gordon Greer for the crucial away game at Middlesbrough on 7 May when the 1-1 draw meant Boro, equal on 89 points, pipped the Albion to automatic promotion by virtue of having scored two more goals.
With Albion forced to endure the play-offs, Goldson’s involvement in the Seagulls’ bid to overcome Sheffield Wednesday cruelly came to a premature end when the centre-back was forced off injured before half-time in the first leg at Hillsborough, and Albion eventually succumbed 2-0.
The injury prevented Goldson being involved in the second leg when Dunk scored but Wednesday somehow managed a 1-1 draw to thwart Albion’s progress.
If that was a blow, it was the least of the troubles the defender would have to overcome the following season.
Frustrating though it was that Brighton brought in Shane Duffy to partner Dunk in the centre of defence, Goldson’s brief spell back in the side in early 2017 came to a juddering halt when a routine scan discovered a heart defect that required surgery.
Then it wasn’t just his football career that was under threat, but his life was in danger if urgent action wasn’t taken to operate on the swollen aorta the tests uncovered.
It has since emerged that Winston suffered a heart attack aged only 35 and Goldson’s grandfather had died of a heart problem.
The required “preventative surgery” took place at the Royal Brompton Hospital, Chelsea, leaving him with a scar down the middle of his chest. His best friend in football and former Shrewsbury teammate, Jon Taylor, told The Athletic: “He thought the worst about not playing again. He was struggling. When I saw him in the hospital it was horrible.”
Taylor was among several former Shrews people Scottish football writer Jordan Campbell spoke to for an extended article about Goldson published by The Athletic in March 2021.
“I made a T-shirt for him before a game which said ‘Stay Strong Con’. That gave him a little bit of a boost but he’s got a great family around him,” said Taylor, who is now at Doncaster. “When he had the op, and he knew he could play again, his mentality was, ‘How quickly can I get back?’. Even as young lads at Wolves we knew his mindset was second to none.”
Campbell reported how once Goldson had come to terms with the situation, he was determined to get back playing regularly, and just 15 weeks after the operation he took part in a pre-season friendly match in Austria. In a changed second half team, he lined up alongside Uwe Hünemeier against Fortuna Dusseldorf.
Physio Chris Skitt, who’d nurtured Goldson through physical issues when he was developing at Shrewsbury, said: “If I talk to kids and they say, ‘What does it take to be a professional footballer?’, I use Connor as the example.”
With a surname that lent itself so readily to the Spandau Ballet classic Gold, the “indestructible” line in the lyrics was a natural for Albion’s singing fans to pick up on.
But at the end of August 2017, on transfer deadline day, it looked certain Goldson would continue his rehabilitation into league football with a season-long loan move to Ipswich Town.
He was manager Mick McCarthy’s main target, but Albion pulled the plug on the deal at the last minute because of the collapse of a separate deal for centre-back cover they’d hoped to complete.
Goldson played in League Cup matches against Barnet and AFC Bournemouth but it wasn’t until December that he finally got his chance to feature in Albion’s debut Premier League season – and he turned in a Man of the Match performance as the Seagulls beat Watford 1-0 at the Amex.
He played in three games in January: FA Cup matches against Crystal Palace and Middlesbrough (2-1 and 1-0 wins), and the 4-0 home defeat to a rampant Chelsea.
Goldson and Duffy in action v Chelsea
As Albion progressed to the fifth round of the FA Cup, Goldson once again got a start, alongside Hünemeier, as Albion beat Coventry City 3-1 at the Amex.
His last league game in an Albion shirt was as a 71st-minute substitute for Duffy in a 4-0 reverse away to Liverpool on the final day of the season.
During the close season, Goldson seized on the chance to play for his boyhood hero Steven Gerrard, who had just been appointed manager of Glasgow Rangers. Gerrard drove all the way to Brighton for face-to-face talks with Goldson and explained how he saw him as a cornerstone of the rebuilding job at Rangers.
The often magnanimous Hughton was not going to stand in his way and said on the club website: “Connor has done extremely well for the club in the three years he has been here, but he wants to play regular senior football, and at this stage we cannot give him that guarantee.
“He has been a great professional and a pleasure to work with – and he has shown a great mental strength to come through a very tough time after he underwent crucial heart surgery just over a year ago.”
Determined to seize the opportunity presented to him in Glasgow, Goldson remarkably played in 151 of 159 games Rangers took part in over the next three years; when he made his 150th appearance, it was the quickest any player had reached that landmark in the club’s history.
After Gerrard departed Rangers to take on the manager’s job at Aston Villa, Goldson indicated he wanted to make a move himself, although, at the time of writing, he remains in Glasgow.
Born on 18 December 1992, Goldson grew up on the same Wolverhampton estate as future Wanderers players Leon Clarke and Carl Ikeme.
As the son of a Wolves-mad dad, it was probably not surprising that his early footballing promise was nurtured with Wanderers. The family lived only a 10-minute car ride from Molineux.
“I was with Wolves from the age of eight until I was 13,” Goldson recalled in an Albion matchday programme article, explaining that he was in the same group as Jack Price and Ethan Ebanks-Landell, who both made it through to the first team.
“I was a striker until I was about 10 or 11, simply because I was the biggest and the quickest, but I was then converted into a centre-half,” he said. “When I got to under 14 level, the manager stopped playing me and so my dad and I made the decision to leave for Shrewsbury – and it was the best thing that could have happened to me.”
Shrewsbury fast-tracked Goldson through the groups and he was training with the first team by the time he was 16. He signed professional forms at 17 and made his first team debut the following year.
“I owe Shrewsbury a lot, both the first-team management and the coaches who brought me through,” he said.
In The Athletic feature, Skitt described in detail how Goldson went through a difficult physical development phase which in effect involved “putting him back together”.
The physio was responsible for resetting his body and created a specific programme comprised of core work, gym sessions and remedial work to counter the loss of power growth spurts were causing.
“We even tried to get him boxing to improve his footwork because of his canal boat shoes. He is a size 14 and they are absolutely honking,” said Skitt.
After successfully rebuilding his body, Goldson played 18 games at the start of the 2013-14 season under Graham Turner but only 11 were as a starter, so he went on a two-month loan to Cheltenham.
His loan was extended but he was recalled after first team coach and reserve team manager Mike Jackson (the chap who has taken over as caretaker Burnley manager following Sean Dyche’s sacking) was put in charge at Shrewsbury until the end of the season following Turner’s resignation. Goldson played every minute of the last 21 league games.
Shrews were relegated but the following season, under Micky Mellon, with Jackson as coach, Goldson was a key player as they bounced straight back: he won the club’s Player of the Year and Players’ Player of the Year awards and was named in the PFA Team of the Year.
Such recognition led to Brighton signing him, doubtless with half an eye on his replacing Greer, who was edging towards the end of his playing days with the Seagulls.
It was a while before Goldson got his chance and Greer admitted in The Athletic feature that the new boy’s frustration spilled over into a set-to with the skipper in training.
“Training finished and we went into the dressing room to find that the lads had laid out two sets of boxing gloves for a laugh with the Rocky music playing,” said Greer. “As soon it was over, though, it was done, as I liked Connor.”
And to show the hatchet had been well and truly buried, Goldson revealed that after he’d taken the captain’s place in the side, behind the scenes Greer had offered him encouragement and advice. “He’s been very helpful and supportive at the same time,” he said. “There are plenty of people who wouldn’t be like that, so I can’t speak highly enough of him.”
Goldson had to wait until 15 December 2015 to make his Albion debut, when he went on as a substitute for the injured Hünemeier against Middlesbrough. Unfortunately, the visitors emphatically ended Albion’s 21-game unbeaten run, winning 3-0.
That game was watched from the stands by Jose Mourinho, who’d just been deposed as Chelsea boss, catching up on the progress of his former Real Madrid colleague and Boro manager Aitor Karanka.
For the new young centre-back, the rise to playing in the Championship was all a learning experience, and he said: “I’ve been working with Colin Calderwood a lot, even after training, and as a former centre-back himself, he has put on a lot of good drills.”
Little did he know at the time there would be far greater challenges ahead.
IN ALBION’S bleak midwinter of 1972-73, manager Pat Saward was desperate to try to reverse a worrying run of defeats.
The handful of additions he’d made to the squad promoted from the old Third Division in May 1972 had not made the sort of improvements in quality he had hoped for.
An injury to Norman Gall’s central defensive partner Ian Goodwin didn’t help matters and Saward chopped and changed the line-up from week to week to try to find the right formula.
Previously frozen out former captain John Napier was restored for a handful of games (before being sold to Bradford City for £10,000). The loan ranger’ (as Saward was dubbed for the number of temporary signings he brought in) then tried Luton Town’s John Moore in Goodwin’s absence.
Youngster Steve Piper was given his debut at home to high-flying Burnley, but Albion lost that 1-0. Then Saward tried left-back George Ley in the middle away to Preston, but that didn’t work either. North End ran out comfortable 4-0 winners with Albion’s rookie ‘keeper Alan Dovey between the sticks after regular no.1 Brian Powney went down with ‘flu.
As December loomed, and with Goodwin still a couple of weeks away from full fitness after a cartilage operation, Saward turned to John McGrath, a no-nonsense, rugged centre-half who had played close on 200 games for Southampton over five years.
“With his rolled-up sleeves, shorts hitched high to emphasise implausibly bulging thigh-muscles, an old-fashioned haircut and a body dripping with baby oil, ‘Big Jake’ cut an imposing figure,” to quote the immensely readable saintsplayers.co.uk.
In Ivan Ponting’s obituary in the Independent following McGrath’s death at 60 on Christmas Day 1998, he reckoned his “lurid public persona was something between Desperate Dan and Attila the Hun”.
Although McGrath had begun the 1972-73 season in the Saints side, the emerging Paul Bennett had taken his place, so a temporary switch to the Albion offered a return to first team football.
Albion had conceded eight goals in three straight defeats and hadn’t registered a goal of their own, so, even though the imposing centre-half was approaching the end of a playing career that had begun with Bury in 1955, it was hoped his know-how defending against some of the best strikers in the country might add steel in the heart of the defence, and stem the flow of goals.
In short, it didn’t work. McGrath played in three matches and all three ended in defeats, with another eight goals conceded.
In his first match (above left), Middlesbrough won 2-0 at the Goldstone. At least the deficit was slimmer in his second game: a 1-0 loss away to George Petchey’s Orient in which Lewes-born midfielder Stan Brown played the last of nine games on loan from Fulham.
McGrath’s third match saw Albion succumb to a thrashing at Carlisle United. By then, Brighton had lost five in a row and still hadn’t managed to score a single goal. Stalwart Norman Gall was dropped to substitute to allow the returning Goodwin to line up alongside McGrath, and Bert Murray led the side out resplendent in the second strip of red and black striped shirts and black shorts.
Carlisle hadn’t read the script, though, and promptly went 5-0 up. To compound Albion’s agony, with 20 minutes still to play, goalkeeper Powney was carried off concussed and with a broken nose.
In those days before substitute goalkeepers, Murray (who’d swapped to right-back that day with Graham Howell moving into his midfield berth) took over the gloves. Miraculously, Albion won a penalty and because usual spot kick taker Murray was between the sticks, utility man Eddie Spearritt took responsibility having relinquished the job after a crucial miss in a game in 1970.
Thankfully, he buried it, finally to make a much-awaited addition to that season’s ‘goals for’ column.
No more was seen of McGrath, however. Gall was restored to the no.5 shirt and was variously partnered by Goodwin, Piper and, towards the end of the season, Spearritt.
After another heavy defeat, 4-0 at Sunderland, which had seen another rare appearance by Dovey in goal, he was transfer-listed along with Gall and Bertie Lutton, as Saward pointed the finger. Lutton got a surprise move to West Ham but Gall stayed put and Dovey was released at the end of the season without playing another game.
The run of defeats eventually extended to a total of 13 and was only alleviated after a big shake-up for the home game versus Luton Town on 10 February.
Powney, who’d conceded five at Fulham in the previous game, was replaced by Aston Villa goalkeeper Tommy Hughes on loan; out went experienced striker Barry Bridges in favour of rookie Pat Hilton and exciting teenage winger Tony Towner made his debut. Albion won 2-0 with both goals from Ken Beamish, and the monkey was finally off their backs.
Although the following two games (away to Bristol City and Hull) were lost, results did pick up, but it was all too little too late and Albion exited the division only 12 months after their promotion.
Born in Manchester on 23 August 1938, McGrath sought unsuccessfully to get into the game as an amateur with Bolton Wanderers but at 17 he joined Bury who were in the old Division Two at the time.
Although they were subsequently relegated, McGrath was part of the 1961 side that went on to win the Third Division Championship. By the time they lifted the trophy, though, he had moved on to Newcastle United for a fee of £24,000, with Bob Stokoe (later renowned for steering Second Division Sunderland to a famous FA Cup win over Leeds United in 1973) a makeweight in the transfer.
It was a busy time for the young defender. On 15 March 1961, he made his one and only England Under-23 appearance against West Germany at White Hart Lane, Tottenham, playing alongside future World Cup winners George Cohen at right-back and the imperious Bobby Moore.
Also in the young England side for that 4-1 win was Terry Paine, who would later become a teammate at Southampton.
Newcastle had hoped the defender would prevent their relegation from the top flight, but it didn’t happen as they went down having conceded 109 goals; their worst ever goals against tally.
Joe Harvey eventually succeeded Charlie Mitten as manager as Newcastle adapted to life back in the Second Division, and McGrath (below left and, in team picture, back row, far left) played 16 matches in a side in which full-back George Dalton (below, back row, far right) had started to emerge.
Future Brighton captain Dave Turner was one of the successful FA Youth Cup-winning side Harvey inherited, but his first team outings were rare and he was sold to the Albion in December 1963.
Meanwhile, McGrath really established himself, featuring in 41 games in 1963-64 (Dalton played in 40) as Newcastle finished in a respectable eighth place.
The 1964-65 season saw McGrath ever-present as Toon were promoted back to the First Division, pipping Northampton Town to the Second Division championship title by one point. McGrath – “a monster of a centre-half, who was as tough as he was effective” was “the cornerstone” of the promotion side, according to newcastleunited-mad.co.uk.
McGrath retained his place in Toon’s first season back amongst the elite but the arrival of John McNamee and the emergence of Bobby Moncur started to restrict his involvement.
That pairing became Harvey’s first choice, and young Graham Winstanley was in reserve too, so, after playing only 11 games in the first half of the 1967-68 season, McGrath, by then 29, was sold to Southampton for £30,000. He’d played 181 games for United.
In Ted Bates’ Saints side, McGrath was a rock at the back alongside Jimmy Gabriel, although, as saintsplayers.co.uk records, he wasn’t too popular with opposing managers: Liverpool’s Bill Shankly accusing Southampton of playing “alehouse football”.
He went on to make 194 appearances (plus one as a sub) for Saints, before becoming youth coach at the club, part of the first team coaching staff when Southampton won the FA Cup in 1976, and then reserve team manager.
Not content with a backroom role, McGrath took the plunge into management and made his mark with two clubs in particular: managing Port Vale on 203 occasions and Preston North End in 205 matches.
According to Rob Fielding he became a cult hero at Vale Park with his unorthodox ways, once putting FIFTEEN players on the transfer list…which resulted in a six-match unbeaten run!
Winger Mark Chamberlain, who went on to play for Stoke and England, and later Brighton, was one of the young players McGrath introduced.
Long-serving Vale defender Phil Sproson, who was originally signed by former Albion midfielder Bobby Smith, rose to prominence under McGrath and said: “I’ll always be grateful because he taught me how to play centre-half.”
Fielding reckoned McGrath’s finest hour was steering Vale to promotion from the old Fourth Division in 1982-1983, even though by then he had sold Chamberlain to Stoke.
Against a backdrop of player unrest and what were perceived to be ill-judged moves in the transfer market, McGrath was sacked in December 1983 and replaced by his assistant, John Rudge.
He wasn’t out of work for long, though, and took the reins at basement side Chester City where he was in charge for just under a year. Most notably in that time, he gave future Arsenal and England defender Lee Dixon his first taste of regular football.
While success eluded him at Chester, his arrival at Preston in 1986 proved fruitful, North End striker Gary Brazil recalling: “It needed a catalyst and it needed a change and very fortunately for the club and for the players, John McGrath came walking through the door who was like a Tasmanian devil. He came in and the world changed really, really quickly for the better.”
McGrath led Preston to promotion from the bottom tier in 1987 with a squad built around Sam Allardyce and veteran Frank Worthington.
Manager McGrath and Frank Worthington celebrate promotion
“Frank Worthington was a delight to have around and set a real high standard for a lot of us in terms of how we train,” said Brazil. “He just stunned me how he was always first out training.”
The turnround McGrath oversaw, with Deepdale crowds rising from below 3,000 to more than 16,000, rejuvenated the club and the city.
Brazil reminisced: “It was the best year of my football life that year that we got promoted. It wasn’t just an experience playing but an experience of a group of players and how well they could bond and John was integral to that. He was a very, very clever man.”
Indeed McGrath was viewed as having saved North End from the ignominy of losing their league status, the club having had to apply for re-election the season before he arrived at Deepdale.
Edward Skingsley’s book, Back From The Brink, features a black and white photograph of McGrath on its cover and tells the story of North End’s transformation under his direction.
Describing his appointment as “a masterstroke” he reckoned the club owed him a massive debt for masterminding their resurgence and subsequent stability.
“Without him, it is debatable whether Preston North End would even exist today, never mind play in the latest fantastic incarnation of Deepdale,” said Skingsley. “Thank goodness he caught Preston North End before it died.”
McGrath left Preston in February 1990 and had one last stab at management, this time with Halifax Town. He succeeded Saints’ FA Cup winner Jim McCalliog and was in charge at The Shay for 14 months but left in December 1992. Five months later they lost their league status, finishing bottom of pile.
The silver-tongued McGrath was subsequently a popular choice on the after-dinner speaking circuit and a pundit on local radio in Lancashire but died suddenly on Christmas Day 1998.
GAI ASSULIN played for his country aged just 16, was hailed as ‘the new Lionel Messi’ and appeared in Pep Guardiola’s Barcelona first team at 18.
Two years later he had two starts and five substitute appearances for Brighton in the Championship, on loan from Manchester City, but couldn’t agree terms for a permanent move.
He subsequently flitted from club to club, country to country, and in the autumn of 2021 was playing local five-a-side football in Cheshire.
Where did it all go wrong? Was it a case of too much too soon?
Assulin was only 12 when he uprooted from his Israel home to pursue the chance of a career with Barca. He spent seven years there, playing for the youth side before reaching the renowned B team in 2007 where he was coached by Guardiola.
“I learnt a lot from him,” he said. “He helped me develop as a player but then so did all the coaches I played for at the club. From the age of 12 to 17 you learn the philosophy of the first team; how to play, what to do, and that never changed.
“Whatever age group you are in, the system you play is the same as the senior side so, if you do get called into the first team, it is not a big, big difference to what you are used to.”
When Guardiola stepped up to first team coach, Assulin was among the youngsters he blooded involving the winger in the Copa del Rey game against Cultural Leonesa in October 2009 and then some pre-season friendlies, including against Tottenham at Wembley.
“Playing in those games was a good experience,” he told the Albion matchday programme. “As the manager likes his younger players, he gave me an opportunity but the competition for places was really, really tough so it was hard to break into the team.
“I also had a few problems with my knee which didn’t help either and my time with the club eventually came to an end.”
Ahead of Guardiola eventually making the same move, Assulin signed for Manchester City under Roberto Mancini in December 2010, explaining: “I wanted to continue my football education at another top club and Manchester City has many top, top players.”
He has since publicly castigated Mancini for not giving him the opportunity to break through at City, telling ITV in 2016: “He didn’t give anyone a chance, he didn’t care about any young players, especially me.
“I didn’t even do the pre-season, when it was a good time to give someone a chance and see if they do well (or) if they are not doing well. But I didn’t get a chance, which was frustrating. It was a shame as I always felt good when I trained with the first team, but sometimes he chose his own sons over other players and I don’t think it was fair.
“It is very important for me to tell people as a lot of City (fans) don’t know what happened with me at City. People always ask me why I didn’t get a chance, and it’s obvious that the manager was the problem.
“I loved playing there, I loved the city and I wish I had a chance there. (City execs) Brian Marwood and Garry Cook loved me and really wanted me to stay, but Mancini didn’t and that was the problem.”
When Assulin joined Brighton in February 2012, Gus Poyet admitted he hadn’t been planning to take him on because at the time he was only interested in getting City midfielder Abdul Razak on loan.
A window opened up when forward Will Hoskins went to Sheffield United on loan, and Poyet told the Argus: “We were not looking to bring in another player after Razak. This was something that came along that I thought was very interesting. When there is something unique and unexpected like this I think it’s a no brainer.
“Gai was one of the top young talents in the world four or five years ago and he was very unlucky with an injury.
“He is still very young. He has got an incredible amount of quality and he can really make a difference but for any young player he needs to be playing and right now at Man City that is very difficult.
“He is an offensive player without any doubt, not a midfielder. He can play up front, wide or behind the striker.”
Assulin made his Brighton debut on 22 February against Hull City, going on as a substitute for Razak in the 77th minute of a 0–0 draw. He made his first start against Cardiff City at the Amex on 7 March but was substituted after 59 minutes of a 2–2 draw.
Although Razak returned to City after falling out with Poyet, Assulin’s loan was extended to the end of the season. However, he only made one more start – in the 6-0 drubbing dished out by West Ham at the Boleyn Ground, again being subbed off when Kazenga LuaLua replaced him on 53 minutes.
His last action in an Albion shirt was as a 61st-minute substitute for Will Buckley in a 0-0 draw at Barnsley’s Oakwell ground. As an aside, Barnsley had future Albion back-up ‘keeper David Button in goal, and ex-Seagulls Jim McNulty in defence and Craig Davies up front.
Rather like the situation at City, there was plenty of competition for places at Brighton with Buckley, Craig Noone and LuaLua the wide choices and the incomparable Vicente playing just off the strikers.
Supporters commenting online recognised Assulin’s talent but felt he was too slight for the robust sort of treatment meted out by Championship defenders.
There was some speculation at the end of the season that a permanent move from City might materialise but terms couldn’t be agreed and Assulin moved instead to Racing Santander back in Spain.
He also had spells with Granada, Hercules and Mallorca and Israeli side Hapoel Tel Aviv. He returned to Barcelona to join third-tier side Sabadell in August 2016 but in January 2018 his contract was cancelled by mutual consent after an 18-month spell hampered by injury.
Next stop was Kazakhstan Premier League team Kairat but he played only once and mutually agreed to tear up the two-year contract he’d signed. He also went to Romanian outfit FC Politehnica Iași and, until the end of the 2020-21 season, he was playing for Crema in Italy’s Serie D.
Without a club, Assulin returned to his home in Cheshire with his partner and eight-year-old daughter, and, while searching for his next move, was doing the school run, coaching, playing five-a-side and helping with his partner’s children’s clothes shop, he told football reporter Will Unwin in a November 2021 interview.
“On an indoor pitch at an industrial estate in nearby Cheadle Hulme, it is not hard to spot the man with La Masia education among those from Moston and Moss Side,” Unwin observed.
“I grew up as a kid in Israel, in a small town and my dream was to play first-team football for a professional club,” Assulin told the reporter.
Born in Nahariya, Israel, on 9 April 1991, Assulin’s family supported Maccabi Haifa, and young Gai went to watch them from an early age.
How did he end up at Barcelona? “My dad (Eli) took me to a club in Israel called Natanya and they had a manager who had contacts with Barcelona,” he explained. “I was invited to Andorra for a ten-day trial with other players from many different countries and I did really well. A scout from the club then invited me to Barcelona and I did really well at a trial there too. They then offered me a contract.”
Only 12 at the time, he said: “It was a big change obviously at that age, as you are not used to being in a different country and a different culture, but I did the right thing. I love football, it is my life and my family were with me when I needed them.
“My dad came over with me to live in Barcelona and then the rest of my family – my mum, one brother and two sisters – came over for a year before returning to Israel. They used to come and visit every couple of months. The experience has made me a more mature person.”
Unwin noted that Liverpool’s Thiago Alcântara once described Assulin as “the most talented player I’ve ever seen in La Masia”, the two players having progressed alongside each other.
“We grew up together at the club and played in the same team for seven years,” said Assulin. “I would see him every day, and we went to school together.”
In a 2018 interview with Unwin for Planet Football, Assulin said: “Training with Barcelona’s first team was the best experience I’ve had in my career.
“I learned so much. I’m proud to say I was training with such big players. I’ve learned from Messi, Henry, Zlatan. They’re all different types of players, so it was great to see how they operate and pick up little things from them.”
Likewise at Man City, especially from David Silva. “He’s such a good player and different from anything you will see,” said Assulin. “He’s just so intelligent on the pitch and a great guy too.
“I had a good relationship with almost everyone. I was talking more to the Spanish guys – Silva; Carlos Tevez was there at the time; Yaya Toure I knew from Barcelona; Kolo Toure was a really nice guy.
“I had a great relationship with everyone, but especially those guys. Every time I went to train with the first team, they helped me, and they liked me.”
That one full international appearance for Israel happened in a friendly match against Chile in 2008, his appearance as a 78th minute substitute coming 14 days before his 17th birthday. He subsequently made 22 appearances for Israel’s under 21 side over the next five years, but didn’t win another full cap.
Unwin observed: “The early pressure of being synonymous with Lionel Messi was not a tag Assulin particularly enjoyed as he looked to come out of the Argentinian’s shadow.”
The player himself explained: ‘They like to compare in football; it is something they do all the time and for me it is a big compliment, but Messi is the greatest footballer in history. ‘Sometimes it is not good if you take it in the wrong way, as the expectation is for you to go on to the pitch and do the same as Messi all the time. Whichever club I went to, they saw I was compared with Messi, so they thought I was going to be Messi and score 50 goals a year, so that comparison at the time was not as positive.
‘Right now, after being at so many clubs, I see it as something positive and I take it as something that hasn’t been said about so many players. Messi is the best in history, so it’s nice to be compared to him for something that I did right at the time.’
TRICKY playmaker Mark Yeates spent five years as a Tottenham Hotspur player but it was with Brighton that he played his first competitive football.
Yeates looked like a useful loan signing when he joined new manager Mark McGhee’s Albion squad in November 2003. He drew plenty of admirers and featured in 10 games over two months.
It wasn’t long before McGhee was talking about the possibility of signing him on a permanent basis, but Spurs had other ideas. He eventually had to leave north London to pursue his career but he ultimately made nearly 500 professional appearances.
Eighteen-year-old Yeates arrived on the south coast shortly after Zesh Rehman had also signed on loan (from Fulham), Albion having lost midfield duo Charlie Oatway and Simon Rodger to injuries.
The diminutive Irishman made his debut in McGhee’s first match in charge: a 4-1 defeat to Sheffield United at Withdean.
The matchday programme’s assessment was thus: “The second half was better. Mark Yeates moved into the centre of midfield and so had an opportunity to show what he can do. He could beat players, look up, and try a perceptive through ball. Wide on the left in the first half, he’d been exposed and given the ball away too often.”
On the day England won the Rugby World Cup, Yeates was one of six Albion players booked as the Seagulls beat Notts County 2-1 at Meadow Lane; an eventful game which saw Adam El-Abd make his league debut, Leon Knight score twice and John Piercy sent off for two bookable offences.
After only his third game, Yeates was off on international duty, playing for the Republic of Ireland under 19s away to France.
It was in early December that McGhee spoke about wanting to take Yeates on a permanent basis, telling the club’s website: “I’ve said already that I knew before he came here what a good player he is and I imagined he would do well in this team, and he has done that.”
McGhee told the Argus: “He has a kind of Gaelic confidence. Robbie Keane had it and Mark is similar in that respect.
“His character is perfect really for the way he plays. It goes with the ability and flair.”
Yeates hailed from the same Tallaght district of Dublin as Keane – a player McGhee knew well having given him his English football debut at 17 when manager of Wolves.
After extending his stay at the Albion to a second month, Yeates told the Argus: “Before I came here I had never really played in the centre of midfield. I usually play up front off a big man.
Yeates takes control watched by Adam Hinshelwood
“The gaffer tried me up front in the first half at QPR (in the LDV Vans Trophy) but we didn’t get the ball into mine and Leon’s feet, and with two little men you are not going to get much joy.
“At Tottenham we play with wingbacks and two holding midfielders and I am allowed a free role.
“I have to be a bit more disciplined here. Sometimes I can go running about a bit, it’s just up to the lads to call me back in to help out.”
Yeates appreciated the opportunity Albion had given him to taste senior football, telling the newspaper: “It’s great for me just to be getting first team football, plus the reason I am staying here is because they are a good bunch down here.”
He observed: “It’s a lot more fast and furious because everyone is playing for their living. You have to give a bit more and get more out of yourself which you probably wouldn’t get in a reserve game.
“In reserve football, players are going through the motions. It’s just a matter of playing a game.”
After he’d played his final game on loan, a 0-0 home draw with Oldham Athletic, the matchday programme observed: “Yeates showed some neat touches and was Albion’s most creative outlet once again.”
When Albion struggled to beat Barnsley 1-0 in the FA Cup, the matchday programme noted: “The passing abilities of Mark Yeates, and his desire to get into the penalty area, were sorely missed.”
Back at Spurs, Yeates had to wait until the very last game of the season to make his Premier League debut. He’d previously been an unused substitute when Glenn Hoddle’s Tottenham were thrashed 5-1 by Middlesbrough at the end of the 2002-03 season.
But in May 2004, David Pleat selected him to start in a side also featuring Ledley King, Jamie Redknapp, Christian Ziege, Jermain Defoe and Robbie Keane.
The fixture at Molineux ended in a 2-0 win for the visitors and Yeates helped Spurs take the lead against the run of play, laying on a cross for Keane to score against his former club. Defoe netted a second to seal the win.
Born in Tallaght on 11 January 1985, Yeates was the eldest son of former Shelbourne, Shamrock Rovers, Athlone Town and Kilkenny City striker Stephen Yeates, who died aged just 38 following a tragic accident, just as Mark was making his way through the youth ranks at Spurs.
The young Yeates first played competitive football with Greenhills Boys, a club who his grandfather and father had been involved with, and then moved on to Cherry Orchard, a Dublin side renowned for producing a number of players who went on to have successful professional careers.
In an extended interview with Lennon Branagan for superhotspur.com, Yeates recalled how Tottenham scout Terry Arber did a two-day coaching course at Cherry Orchard, after which he, Willo Flood (later to play for Manchester City and Dundee United) and Stephen Quinn (who went on to play for Sheffield United) were invited to London for a trial with Spurs.
Yeates was only 15 but he was taken on and had to up sticks from home and move into digs in London.
“As a skilful dribbler who was regularly a source of assists and goals in the youth set-up, Yeates quickly demonstrated to the coaching staff at Tottenham that he possessed the raw materials required to graduate to the next level,” wrote Paul Dollery in an October 2021 article for the42.ie.
Sadly, his progress through the youth ranks was interrupted by the shock news of his father’s death in an accident. Yeates told Dollery how it could have all gone the wrong way, but he thankfully remained focused.
“It was really tough, but you’d ask yourself what else you could do if you didn’t keep going – go home to your estate in Tallaght, drink cans every weekend and get roped into whatever else?
“I could have done that, or I could look at the three-year contract that was on the table at Tottenham and get my head down to go after that.
“It was hard, but a bit of willpower and the desire to be a footballer – which I had since I started kicking a ball – got me through it.”
In his interview with Branagan, Yeates said: “I started to train with the first team at a decent age and really being involved quite a bit as well as being a regular with the reserves group with Colin Calderwood and Chris Hughton at the time.
“I’ve just got so many unbelievable things to say when I look back now and I can only say so many good things about Spurs because it sort of built me and gave me so much.”
It was in January 2005 when Yeates next appeared for the Spurs first team, Martin Jol sending him on as a sub in the third round FA Cup tie against Brighton at White Hart Lane when Tottenham edged it 2-1.
The following week he once again replaced Pedro Mendes as a sub when a star-studded Chelsea side won 2-0 on their way to winning their first Premier League title under Jose Mourinho. He also got on in the next game, as Spurs crashed 3-0 at Crystal Palace,
While he could have continued to bide his time at Spurs, he preferred to go out on loan again to get some games under his belt. He played four times for League One Swindon Town and then had a season-long loan at Colchester United, helping them to promotion from League One in 2005-06 in a squad which included Greg Halford and Chris Iwelumo.
Further loan spells followed at Hull City and Leicester City but, in the summer of 2007, he joined Colchester on a permanent deal.
Yeates scored 21 goals in 81 games for United drawing him to the attention of future England manager Gareth Southgate who took him to Middlesbrough (who had just been relegated from the Premier League) for a £500,000 fee.
On signing a three-year deal, Yeates said: “This is massive for me. There was interest from other clubs but there was only one thing on my mind once my agent told me Middlesbrough had been in touch.
“This club belongs in the Premier League, the fans deserve to be there and I can’t wait to play in front of them. It’s a Premiership club in my mind – all you have to do is look around the facilities, the training ground, the stadium, everything is spot on.”
Yeates reckoned his versatility would suit Boro. “I can play on the right or the left,” he said. “I played a full season’s Championship football on the right for Colchester, while I played most of last season on the left. But then, in probably eight of the last 10 games, I played behind the front two.
“For a winger, I think my goals record is quite good,” he added. “I got 14 last season and nine by Christmas the season before I got injured.
“I like to get on the ball and take on defenders. The number one job of being a wide man is creating chances and I certainly like to do that, but scoring goals isn’t a bad habit to have either. I promise the fans I’ll give 110 per cent. I’m hungry to prove that I deserve to be here.”
Fine words but it didn’t pan out well for him because Southgate was sacked in October 2009 and his successor Gordon Strachan shunned the Irishman. By January 2010, Yeates was on the move again, this time to Sheffield United.
Blades boss Kevin Blackwell told the club’s website: “He’s a player we have looked at before, I’ve had my eye on him for a year or two but we couldn’t agree terms with Colchester. I’m delighted to finally get my man, although I was surprised that Boro would let him go.”
Yeates was reunited with Stephen Quinn and another former Albion loanee, Darius Henderson, was up front for the Blades. Yeates reckoned he had his best ever spell playing under Blackwell’s successor, Gary Speed.
“He was just an unbelievable man and, going back to when I was at Tottenham as a young lad, he was the prime example of the player you should aspire to be like,” he said. “He had faith in me.”
Unfortunately, when Speed left to manage Wales, former Albion boss Micky Adams took charge and the pair didn’t see eye to eye, as he explained to watfordlegends.com.
“I was at Sheffield United and it was the season when we went from the Championship to League One. Micky Adams was the manager and we weren’t getting on. In the summer Micky was sacked and Danny Wilson came in as manager.
“I trained for the full pre-season with the club, but I was aware that there were a couple of clubs keeping an eye on my situation throughout the summer. It was Blackpool and Watford who put in offers for me, and I spoke with both clubs, but when I met Dychey (Sean Dyche) I decided to sign for Watford.
“I still had a house in Loughton so overall it was a good opportunity to get back down south, and everything that Sean said to me on the phone really appealed to me.”
Yeates was at Watford for two seasons, initially under Dyche and then Gianfranco Zola, but his contract wasn’t renewed in the summer of 2013 and he decided to link up once again with his former Colchester and Hull boss, Phil Parkinson, at League One Bradford City.
He was one of the goalscorers for Bradford when they completed a massive upset by beating Premier League table toppers Chelsea 4-2 at Stamford Bridge in the fourth round of the 2015 FA Cup.
However, released that summer, he switched across the Pennines to join Oldham Athletic and six months later was on the move again, this time to Blackpool.
“Since leaving Hull it’s been a bit up and down,” he told Branagan. “I was on a short term deal at Oldham which went alright before then deciding to go to Blackpool because of a longer contract which was put in front of me which I don’t regret, as I’ve been living around the St Annes area now for five years and my children have grown up here and are at school and it’s a great area to raise a family in.”
His final league club as a player was Notts County, who he joined on a short-term deal in January 2017, and he appeared in 11 games plus three as a substitute as new manager Kevin Nolan’s side turned what at one point looked like relegation from the league into a 16th place finish (although two years later County lost the league status they’d held for 157 years).
After playing non-league for Eastleigh, in 2019 Yeates moved closer to home and signed for AFC Fylde. In September 2021, he became an academy coach at Fleetwood Town, although he continued to keep his hand in as a player at Bamber Bridge.
Reflecting on the player’s career, Dollery wrote: “With a ball at his feet, Yeates was one of the most technically accomplished Irish players of his generation, cut from the same cloth as the likes of (Wes) Hoolahan and Andy Reid.
“That such a claim isn’t backed up by international achievements can perhaps be partly explained by his own admission that he didn’t marry his talent with a devotion to other aspects of the game that were beginning to play a more prominent role in the life of a professional footballer.
“If fitness coaches scheduled a gym session, Yeates felt his time would be better spent by staying on the training pitch to perfect his free kicks. A predilection for crisps, fizzy drinks and nights out didn’t aid his cause either.”
Yeates recognised he could have done things differently and said: “The reality was that I didn’t live like a saint.
“Everyone who knows me would know that that’s just not my personality. I’ve always been a fella who likes a bit of craic; just a normal Irish lad from an estate who happened to love playing football.”
• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme and various online sources.
A GOALKEEPER with film star looks signed for Brighton from Arsenal just after England lifted the World Cup.
Tony Burns had kept goal for the Gunners in 31 top-flight matches and Albion boss Archie Macaulay, who had played for Arsenal himself, went back to his old club to sign a no.1 to challenge the emerging local lad, Brian Powney.
It wasn’t difficult for Burns to settle at the Goldstone because the dressing room included Northern Irish full-back Jimmy Magill and winger Brian Tawse, familiar faces from his time in north London who’d also made the switch to Brighton.
It also wasn’t long before female fans who admired his smouldering good looks were sending in letters to the office inquiring about his eligibility!
Burns relived his career in detail in 2020 when interviewed by 17-year-old would-be journalist Jed Vine, who watches games at the Amex with his mother, and games at the Emirates with his dad.
Born in Edenbridge, Kent, on 27 March 1944, Burns first showed his goalkeeping prowess during his schooldays in the town before he joined Southern League club Tonbridge (now Tonbridge Angels) who he returned to twice more and later managed three times.
He made his Southern League debut against Yiewsley (later to become Hillingdon Borough) in February 1963 and only his third game for Tonbridge was as an 18-year-old against Arsenal at Highbury.
With long term custodian Jack Kelsey retiring, Arsenal were looking around for likely successors and, liking what they saw of Burns, offered him a contract.
“In his early days at Highbury, he showed immense potential and, after benefitting from Kelsey`s coaching, made encouraging strides,” a 2020 Pitching In piece for the Southern League recalled.
Manager Billy Wright gave him his senior Arsenal debut in a friendly against Enschede in Holland in August 1963, with Magill in defence, and he got his first taste of South Africa on a five-game tour the following May when he was in goal for Arsenal’s 5-1 win over a Western Province XI and their 6-0 win over an Eastern Province XI.
But his big breakthrough came when he made his league debut in a 3-2 home win over Burnley in October 1964 (three days earlier he’d played in goal in a 7-0 friendly win over non-league Corinthian Casuals).
“I felt on top of the world. I had always wanted to play for the Gunners and here I was keeping goal for them, and on the winning side at that,” he told the Albion matchday programme. “There’s only one first match and I’ll never forget this one.”
Once he got the shirt, he had a run of 26 games (32 including friendlies) from October 1964 through to the end of March 1965.
He generally played in front of a defence featuring the likes of Don Howe, Frank McLintock and Ian Ure with John Radford and Joe Baker up front.
During the first half of the 1965-66 season, Burns appeared in seven league games and three friendlies, but his final Gunners first team appearance came on 27 December 1965 in a 4-0 defeat away to Sheffield Wednesday.
Jim Furnell was Wright’s preferred first choice, and, as the season wore on, the emerging Bob Wilson was getting the nod ahead of him as stand-in (although it wasn’t until 1968 that Wilson finally ousted Furnell).
Disappointed to leave, Burns nonetheless went in search of regular football by joining Third Division Brighton for £2,000 in July 1966.
He made his first appearance for the Albion on 17 September 1966, when he took over from the injured Powney, but Brighton went down 2-0 to Grimsby Town.
Powney returned the following week and Burns had to wait until January for his next games – two FA Cup ties against Aldershot.
Burns in action versus Chelsea
He kept his place for the big fourth round FA Cup game against First Division Chelsea at the Goldstone which finished 1-1 when his former Arsenal teammate Tawse controversially had what he thought was a cracking late winner ruled out for a foul by Kit Napier.
Unfortunately, Burns conceded four in the replay at Stamford Bridge as the superior Chelsea side made the most of home advantage to ease their way through comfortably, 4-0. That was the season they went all the way to the final only to lose 2-1 to Tottenham Hotspur, whose ranks included Alan Mullery and Joe Kinnear.
By the end of the season, Burns had played 18 matches against Powney’s 37. But Burns had the upper hand in 1967-68 featuring in 29 games compared to Powney’s 21.
He also started the 1968-69 season as first choice but his 54th and final game for the Albion was in the 2-1 home defeat to Northampton in the second round of the FA Cup on 20 December 1968.
New manager Freddie Goodwin brought in former Wolves and Aston Villa ‘keeper Geoff Sidebottom to challenge Powney and let Burns leave on a free transfer in March 1969.
He joined Charlton Athletic, where he made 10 appearances in their unsuccessful tilt at promotion, but declined what he saw as a derisory contract offer. He returned to Tonbridge briefly and in January 1971 headed off to play in South Africa, initially for Durban United, and later, Maritzburg.
In his interview with Jed, he recalls playing in an English All Stars team managed by Malcolm Allison who invited him to return to England with Crystal Palace when his contract was up.
Burns made the move in October 1973 after previous Palace no.1 (and later Albion youth coach) John Jackson had moved to Orient.
He shared goalkeeping duties with Paul Hammond, playing a total of 90 matches between the sticks for Palace over the next four years under Allison and his successor Terry Venables.
In 1977, Burns played half a dozen games on loan for Brentford before heading off to the States like a lot of ageing players did at that time.
The ‘keeper played a dozen games for Memphis Rogues in the North American Football League. They were coached by former Chelsea defender and manager Eddie McCreadie although Burns had gone there to team up with former boss Allison who was sacked without a ball being kicked because he hadn’t signed enough players!
Burns played for Memphis Rogues in the USA
Among Burns’ teammates were a young Neil Smillie, who’d been struggling for games at Palace, Phil Beal, who had left Brighton the year before, John Faulkner, the one-time Leeds and Luton defender, and the flamboyant Alan Birchenall, beloved by Leicester City supporters of many generations.
Back in the UK in 1978, Burns joined Plymouth Argyle as cover for Martin Hodge, and ended his league playing days in this country appearing in 11 games in the first half of the 1978-79 season.
However, he left Home Park to rejoin Tonbridge Angels for a third time and he also played for Hastings United and Dartford.
After his playing days were over, Burns had three spells in charge of Tonbridge, from August 1980 to December 1982, August 1989 to May 1990, and in a caretaker role from November 2001 to May 2002 (by which time he was goalkeeping coach at Millwall, who he joined in 1992 under Mick McCarthy.
Burns served as goalkeeper coach under several Millwall managers. Picture: Brian Tonks.
He also spent seven years as manager of Gravesend and Northfleet (who became Ebbsfleet United) between 1982 and 1989.
But it was at Millwall where he finally found a permanent home, working under no fewer than 18 different managers, including Steve Gritt and Mark McGhee.
He was even at the helm himself for a while, working as co-caretaker manager with former Lions boss Alan McLeary after Dave Tuttle’s departure in April 2006, when Millwall’s relegation had already been confirmed.
The appointment of Nigel Spackman the following month led to Burns’ departure in July 2006, when he took up a similar role at his old club Palace, working under former Albion boss Peter Taylor coaching Julian Speroni and Scott Flinders.
Goalkeeping coach at Palace under Peter Taylor
He left Selhurst in November 2007 when Taylor lost his job, and Speroni told yourlocalguardian.co.uk: “It was sad to lose Tony Burns because we worked well with him. During last season when I wasn’t playing regular football, Tony was the one who kept me going which was very important.”
Burns moved with Taylor to Conference side Stevenage Borough but later returned to Millwall under Kenny Jackett before stepping down in 2012, when he was succeeded by Kevin Pressman.
Still, he wasn’t finished with the game, though, and at the age of 70, in the summer of 2014, he teamed up with Taylor yet again to become goalkeeping coach at Gillingham. He joined them on a part-time non-contract basis as a replacement for Carl Muggleton.
JUSTIN FASHANU, renowned for an iconic televised Goal of the Season for Norwich City against Liverpool in 1979, played 20 games for Brighton in the 1985-86 season.
Those bald facts tell only a fraction of the story of the short and complex life of a bustling centre forward who burst onto the football scene as a teenager, scoring 40 goals in 103 games for the Canaries.
Several books have been written about him, acres of newspaper column inches filled covering colourful tales of what happened to the first £1m black footballer, and there is no shortage of articles across the internet. There’s even been a theatre play about his life: Justin Fashanu in Extra Time.
Here I will focus mainly on the football, and, in particular, that time at Brighton, although some context is needed to explain how a player who only three years earlier had helped England win the UEFA Under 21 Championship ended up with the then second tier Seagulls.
Fashanu’s signing for Brighton in June 1985 seemed like a major coup for manager Chris Cattlin as the Seagulls sought to return to the elite level they’d been relegated from two years previously.
Why was he so convinced Fashanu would be a hit at Brighton? In an interview with Spencer Vignes for the matchday programme, he said: “We’d put a good side together with a tight defence, an exciting midfield and a forward line that included Dean Saunders and Terry Connor.
“I knew all about Justin and I went to see him play for Notts County against Manchester City and he was simply amazing. He battered the best defender in the league at that time – Mick McCarthy – and I mean he really battered him. I thought: ‘That’s our fella!’ With those three up front, we were going to have one hell of a chance of winning promotion.”
In his programme notes for the opening game of the season, Cattlin wrote: “With the right service I expect Justin to be the best centre-forward this club has had in a very long time.”
At the end of a season when Albion missed out on promotion by finishing sixth, Frank Worthington at 36 had demanded a signing-on fee to stay a second season with the Albion – money Cattlin said wasn’t available. There was no such demand from Fashanu, who at only 24 was trying to rebuild a career that had gone off the rails.
To make his own personal assessment of a player who had already attracted plenty of negative attention, Cattlin even had the player to stay at his house for four days before signing him.
Only the previous season, Fashanu’s aggression on the pitch for Notts County had put both Albion centre backs Eric Young and Jeff Clarke in hospital. He’d previously had an altercation with Albion’s former Canaries defender Andy Rollings while playing for Norwich at the Goldstone, resulting in Rollings’ dismissal for throwing a punch at the striker.
Nottingham Forest boss Brian Clough, who’d persuaded the board of the two-times European Cup winners to part with £1m to sign the 20-year-old from Norwich in 1981, had numerous clashes with the player when he was unable to replicate his previous goalscoring form (more of which later), and, after just 15 months, he cut the club’s losses and sold him to neighbours County for only £150,000.
More crucially, though, Fashanu had sustained an injury to his left knee on New Year’s Eve 1983 inflicted courtesy of the studs of Ipswich, and later Brighton, defender Russell Osman. The wound had become infected and the medics at the time were clearly concerned. It meant insurers inserted an exclusion clause into their cover. Any claim for subsequent injury would only be covered if he’d previously played 12 consecutive League games.
After his stay chez Cattlin, a fee of £115,000 was paid to Notts County, who’d just been relegated to the old Third Division, and the manager said: “Justin had a reputation of being a bit of a problem player with his other clubs but that is all in the past.
“In my dealings with him I’ve found him to be a smashing person and the sort of player our supporters will take to.”
He told the Evening Argus that Justin was “a dedicated player who has been asleep for a couple of years”, adding “I’m sure, with us, he will bring his talents to fruition”.
Meanwhile, Fashanu told The Times: “I only took this step after a good deal of thought and prayer. I am convinced Chris Cattlin can get the very best out of me.”
He got off to a great start when scoring twice as Albion thrashed Aldershot 5-0 in a pre-season friendly at the Recreation Ground on 29 July 1985.
Stiffer competition was promised in the shape of three Goldstone friendlies in a week against First Division sides Arsenal, Liverpool and Nottingham Forest. Arsenal won 2-1 on 2 August and Liverpool 4-1 on 5 August. Two days later, Fashanu netted one of Brighton’s successful spot kicks in a 5-4 penalty shoot-out against Oxford United at the Manor Ground which saw them win the Oxfordshire Benevolent Cup.
Fashanu (front row, third from left) all smiles after Albion won a trophy in Oxfordshire
The pre-season fixtures were rounded off on 9 August when second tier Albion walloped Forest 5-2, and the matchday programme captured the mood with some delight.
“The match was a real thriller for the fans, and no-one except perhaps for Brian Clough and his team, went home unhappy,” the programme crowed. “Justin Fashanu had an outstanding game against his former teammates.”
Fashanu was involved in setting up three of Albion’s goals and of the fifth the programme recorded: “The final goal came after just about the most powerful shot seen at the Goldstone for years. Fashanu connected from 15 yards out. Segers could only parry the ball, and (Gary) O’Reilly tapped it over the line.” Tellingly, Clough declined to be interviewed after the game.
Fashanu started in the no.9 shirt and was sent off in only his third game, a 2-1 home win over Bradford City. Cattlin was quick to leap to his defence, using his programme notes to tell supporters: “I understand that the referee sent him off for dissent after committing a cautionable offence. All Justin said was ‘Surely you’re not booking me for that ref’…and if that either brings the game into disrepute or deserves any punishment at all, surely there’s something wrong in the game.
“Justin has joined us this season and is a great professional. One hundred per cent effort is appreciated by the fans and our supporters know they are getting just that. There was nothing malicious in anything he did on Saturday.
“Justin is a ‘gentle giant’. He never swears and he tries all the time…that is just the sort of player we need in the game. I would like to go firmly on record as saying his sending off was a complete injustice.”
Disciplinary action took a little longer to come into effect back then and Fashanu didn’t have to serve his suspension until the sixth game of the season.
However, it turned out he would have missed the game anyway because he’d undergone surgery.
It emerged that during pre-season training, Fashanu had taken a whack on his knee and it was six weeks and several matches later before he underwent a procedure at the Royal Sussex County Hospital. Cattlin admitted: “Mr Fearn, the club surgeon, had to work on the bone.”
In hindsight, Cattlin’s programme notes about the injury could be viewed, at best, as insensitive. “I would like to explain the problem of Justin Fashanu,” he wrote. “He jarred his knee pre-season, there is apparently a floating body there somewhere….probably a piece of black pudding or something!”
Cattlin already had Gerry Ryan out long term injured and he also lost Fashanu’s strike partner Connor to injury in those opening weeks. That absence presented an opportunity for Mick Ferguson to stake a claim and he responded with three goals in three games – until he too got injured, as did Alan Biley. In the emergency, loanee Arsenal defender Martin Keown was put up front to play alongside Saunders.
Gerry Ryan, Chris Hutchings, Fashanu and Terry Connor were all out injured
In the programme for the 19 October home game against Charlton, Cattlin was pleased to report Fashanu had resumed training and was busy building up his thigh muscles after his period of inactivity.
He finally made his comeback in an away League Cup match at Liverpool and, as Albion were sent packing 4-0, Fashanu was booked after clashing with Craig Johnston.
However, at least he was back in the no.9 shirt and, after leading the line in a home 1-1 draw against his old club Norwich, he scored his first goal for the Seagulls the following week when Brighton lost 2-1 at Shrewsbury Town.
Defending Fashanu after yet another booking in a 2-1 defeat away to Sunderland, Cattlin said: “Justin is anything but a dirty player. He is certainly strong, but if he was dirty I can assure everyone he would not be wearing the blue shirt of Brighton. I can see all sorts of trouble in the game if referees cannot differentiate between dirty play and wholehearted endeavour.”
Later the same month, Fashanu scored his second and only other league goal for Brighton, at home to Hull City on 30 November, when the Albion won 3-1 (Danny Wilson and Connor also on the scoresheet).
That match came during an 11-game unbroken run at centre forward, including an influential display in a 2-1 Boxing Day win over Portsmouth (below) which gave Albion their first league victory at Fratton Park in 62 years.
Fashanu set up Saunders for Albion’s first and, 18 minutes from time, Fashanu’s close-range shot was parried by Alan Knight only to Connor, who buried the winner.
Although the shortage of goals was bad news for him personally, it was good news for Shoreham butcher Roy Parsons who promised the striker 2lb of steak for every goal he scored for the Albion!
After missing two matches at the start of February, Fashanu returned to the side for the memorable FA Cup fifth round tie against Peterborough on a snow-covered pitch at London Road. Substitute Steve Jacobs went on for him for the second half and scored Albion’s second equaliser to take the tie to a replay, Saunders having got Albion back in the game to cancel out the home side’s lead. But it proved to be Fashanu’s last game in an Albion shirt.
The striker had to undergo further surgery on his knee although, at the time, it wasn’t made to sound career-ending. The matchday programme for the game against his brother John’s Millwall side on 22 March 1986 said merely: “Our popular striker had a minor operation this week and we hope this will finally clear up his knee problem.”
Subsequent reports had it that Fashanu’s right knee had been nearly shattered and the prognosis from the medical people was that he would have to give up the game. The player got an insurance payout but he was reluctant to give up the game and spent money in the UK and America trying to get the knee fixed.
“I had been told by doctors and surgeons in England that I’d never walk again properly – let alone play,” Fashanu told the Los Angeles Times in July 1988. “They were proposing an operation to remove the lining from the inside of my knee.”
Fashanu was born in Hackney, London, on 19 February 1961, the son of a Nigerian barrister and a Guyanese nurse. The parents split up when Fashanu and brother John were five and four. Unable to support them, their mother, Pearl, sent them to a Barnardo’s children’s home.
The boys were eventually fostered and raised by Alf and Betty Jackson in the small rural Norfolk village of Shropham, near Attleborough.
Norwich City’s youth scout Ronnie Brooks identified 14-year-old Fashanu as a prospect while visiting Norfolk schools looking for talent. He was invited to train with the club during his holidays and then signed as an apprentice.
In a 2011 article, writer Juliet Jacques recounted: “Having persuaded Fashanu to play football rather than box (he was twice an ABA junior heavyweight finalist, aged 14 and 15), Brooks spent time with him in the gym at Norwich’s training ground at Trowse, wanting him to become less one-footed and learn how to strike the ball in the air.
“Endlessly, Brooks would throw a ball over Fashanu’s shoulder, demanding that he turn, volley it against the wall with one foot and then hit it back with the other.”
That practice would pay off big time, Jacques capturing in words the moment the 18-year-old Fashanu connected so sweetly from distance to draw Norwich level, 3-3, with Liverpool at Carrow Road on 9 February 1980, and, in the days of limited football coverage on TV, featured on BBC’s Match of the Day.
“With the impudence of youth, he flicked the ball up with his right foot, turned, and volleyed it into the tiny space between Ray Clemence’s head and the post. The strike was perfect – and so was the celebration. There was a split second while the crowd, and the commentator, processed its brilliance: as the fans roared, Fashanu stood alone, one finger raised to the skies as if to announce his genius,” she wrote.
“Norwich eventually lost 5-3, but the goal overshadowed the result: it made the perfect televisual image, coming as a generation of black footballers were breaking through at England’s top level, leaving Fashanu poised to become their leading light.”
One of his teammates back then, Greg Downs, recently told The Athletic: “We took the mickey out of Justin at the time because we maintained he miscontrolled it. We swore it bounced up and hit him on the ankle, which is why he then hit it.
“With all due respect to Justin, his greatest attribute wasn’t his feet. His strength was in the air. He was a magnificent header of the ball. I think that was why it surprised everybody.
“It was a magnificent strike. You couldn’t have hit a better shot. Ray Clemence had no chance. I don’t think any other keeper anywhere would have had any chance with it. Justin just caught it sweet.
“I got on great with Justin. I remember going to his 18th birthday in Attleborough with his family. He was a nice fella.
“He was so popular at Norwich. He was also probably the first local black footballer we had. He was famous, this lad from Norfolk, he had a personality, he was eloquent. I knew his parents and they raised him with very high morals, and he was a lovely lad.”
England under 21 cap
Two months after that Liverpool game, Fashanu scored England’s only goal in a 2-1 defeat to East Germany in a 1980 UEFA under 21 championship semi-final at Bramall Lane, playing alongside future full internationals Gary Bailey, Kenny Sansom, Bryan Robson, Russell Osman, Terry Butcher, Glenn Hoddle, Garry Birtles and Gordon Cowans.
In September the same year, he went on as a substitute for Paul Goddard as England beat Norway in a friendly at The Dell, Southampton. The following month he was a starter as England were thrashed 4-0 away to Romania in a 1982 UEFA under 21 championship preliminary match but on 18 November at Portman Road he was on the scoresheet as England swept aside Switzerland 5-0 in the same competition.
He featured as a sub in a 1-0 friendly win over the Republic of Ireland at Anfield in February 1981, then was on the scoresheet as England beat Hungary 2-1 in a friendly in Keszthely.
His seventh cap came as a starter in the 0-0 draw away to Norway in September and two months later he opened the scoring for England in another 1982 UEFA under 21 championship preliminary match when England beat Hungary 2-0.
The following March he started again as England won a quarter final away leg in Poland 2-1 and was in the semi-final second leg line-up that drew 1-1 with Scotland at Maine Road, Manchester.
In the first leg of the final of that competition, played at Bramall Lane, Sheffield, on 21 September,1982, Fashanu went on for David Hodgson and scored as England beat West Germany 3-1, although he didn’t feature in the second leg away when England lost 3-2 but ran out 5-4 aggregate winners.
At that time, Fashanu was on loan at Southampton having endured a nightmare time at the City Ground under Clough. The stories of what happened are legendary and varied.
Unfortunately for Fashanu, he joined Forest as the European Cup-winning side was being broken up and there were rumours of disagreements between Clough and his sidekick Peter Taylor, who eventually quit the City Ground. Clough had some health issues at the time too.
Peter Ward, who had moved to Forest from Brighton for £500,000, sometimes played alongside Fashanu and witnessed first hand the difficulties the manager had with him. He described various incidents in some detail in Matthew Horner’s He Shot, He Scored biography.
“It must have been very hard for Fashanu; he had signed for a lot of money and he really struggled to score goals,” said Ward. “In a way, it was similar to my situation but he had the added complication of his social life and constant rumours about his sexuality.
“Cloughie found it difficult to live with Fashanu’s lifestyle and he later admitted he wished that he had treated him differently.”
Forest were £1m in debt; three directors quit because they didn’t like the terms of a guarantee for the bank overdraft, and the Nottingham public weren’t turning up in sufficient numbers to help the club break even.
“At the heart of it was Fashanu, who was effectively the physical embodiment of that £1m overdraft,” wrote Jonathan Wilson in his Brian Clough biography, Nobody Ever Says Thank You.
“Goal statistics often don’t tell the full story, but in this case his record of three league goals in 31 appearances did. He was offering little to the team and, had he not been signed, Forest’s bank balance would have been a comforting nil. By the end of his unhappy 15 months at the club his confidence was so shot he almost scored an own goal from the halfway line in a reserve team game.”
Clough blamed Fashanu’s arrival for the breakdown in his relationship with Taylor. According to Wilson: “Clough said: ‘He used to burst into tears if I said hello to him’ and ‘He had so many personal problems a platoon of agony aunts couldn’t have sorted him out.’
Wilson details incidents such as Fashanu insisting on using his own towels rather than ones provided by the club amongst a number of issues that irritated the manager.
Clough maintained that the player’s homosexuality didn’t bother him (although the manager’s use of the word ‘poof’ might suggest otherwise), instead he said: “It was just that his shiftiness, combined with an articulate image that impressed the impressionable, made it difficult for me to accept Fashanu as genuine and one of us.”
Accusations of ill discipline prompted Clough to ban the player from training. When he turned up anyway there was more trouble and the manager called in the police to remove him from the training ground.
Those circumstances led to Fashanu being loaned to Southampton where he scored three goals in nine games under Lawrie McMenemy, but they couldn’t afford to make it a permanent deal.
Eventually in December 1982, Forest cut their losses and Fashanu was transferred across the Trent to Notts County for £150,000, being signed by former Brighton winger Howard Wilkinson, who had taken over as manager at Meadow Lane that August.
At least Fashanu got his goal touch back, netting 20 in 64 matches, but they weren’t enough to prevent back-to-back relegations. It probably didn’t help his reputation that he was sent off in a derby game against Forest for retaliating to a Paul Hart tackle just 11 minutes into the second half.
After heading to America in his battle to overcome his knee problem, Fashanu failed to recapture the spark that had made him such a huge talent in his teens and early 20s.
The record books show he played for 22 clubs in seven different countries. A brief attempt to recover past glory under Lou Macari at West Ham is remembered by Dan Coker on West Ham Till I Die.
He was playing at Leyton Orient when he went public about his sexuality and he later scored 15 goals in 41 games for Torquay United. He also played in Scotland for Airdrieonians and Hearts (below).
What led to him taking his own life in a deserted lock-up garage in Shoreditch in May 1998 is well documented, such as in this footballpink.net piece written by Paul Breen.
Fashanu’s memory certainly lives on in many ways. In February 2020, a tribute to his outstanding goal against Liverpool was unveiled in the form of a 20-metre long banner produced by supporters groups Along Come Norwich and Barclay End Norwich, led by Proud Canaries: the first club-affiliated LGBT+ fan group in the country.
“Two years ago I drew a massive artwork for Norwich Pride of LGBT+ icons nominated by the community,” said banner designer David Shenton. “The most voted-for person was Justin: a man so treasured in this city, especially by the football club for his artistry as a player, and by the LGBT+ community for his courage in not hiding who he was.”
• Pictures from Albion’s matchday programmes, the Argus, and various online sources.
MARK LEATHER spent six years as the first team physiotherapist at Anfield having previously been Brighton’s physio in the early days of Barry Lloyd’s reign as manager.
Leather tended the injured when Albion were promoted from the old Third Division in 1987-88 and half of the 1988-89 tier two campaign before moving back to his native north west.
Roy Evans added Leather’s specialist knowledge to the backroom team at Anfield in 1994 but the physio was controversially sacked by his successor Gerard Houllier following a row over the then teenage striker Michael Owen’s fitness.
A sign of the way Leather expected to work with managers came in an interview for Albion’s matchday programme. “Barry Lloyd will respect the decision if I say a player needs more time to get back to fitness,” he told interviewer Dave Beckett. “From that point of view, he is sadly in the minority.
“If it was different, I wouldn’t hang around, but it still amazes me that some clubs don’t realise that if we all stick to what we know things will run more smoothly.”
Leather, who’d spent three years studying for a diploma, and gained experience in the National Health Service, added: “We’re getting away from the old ‘bucket-and-sponge’ image.”
Ahead of his arrival at the Goldstone, Leather had combined his studies with helping out Exeter City, Leek Town, Port Vale and Sheffield Wednesday. And during the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986, Leather provided specialist medical support for the weightlifters and wrestlers.
He revealed a funny story against himself in a matchday programme article. Asked to reveal his ‘most embarrassing moment’ he said: “During the Port Vale and Scunthorpe match in 1985, when Port Vale scored, I jumped up out of the bench hitting my head on the dugout roof and needed smelling salts and a cold sponge.”
Perhaps predictably nicknamed ‘The Fizz’, Leather sought to give an insight to his role in his matchday programme interview. “I try to be friends with all of the lads and the management too, but sometimes you really do have to sit on the fence,” he said.
“There’s pressure sometimes from both sides to say a player’s ready to return, but you have to stand back from the situation and give a professional opinion.”
The Albion gave him a regular slot in the matchday programme which he used to give readers updates on the progress of injured players, and in recent times he has become a regular source for the media seeking expert comments on football injuries.
Leather now has his own physiotherapy business and back in the day at Brighton he and his physiotherapist wife Lucy ran a sports injury clinic for the general public two evenings a week.
Born in Bolton on 24 June 1961, Leather left the Seagulls halfway through the 1988-89 season to return to more a familiar part of the country and took a job in the NHS in Chorley, Lancashire.
Leather had been an ardent Bolton Wanderers fan from an early age and his all-time favourite player was Frank Worthington, who had played for the Seagulls during the 1984-85 season.
When Evans stepped up to take charge of Liverpool, Leather was one of his first appointments (along with goalkeeping coach Joe Corrigan, whose playing career had ended with the Seagulls).
Leather and Corrigan together in Liverpool backroom team
An insight into Evans’ decision-making was given in the book Men In White Suits, by Simon Hughes. “With Mark Leather’s arrival, there was an end to the running repair jobs carried out by a succession of unqualified coaches mid game,” he wrote.
“Regularly injured players had long been treated with suspicion at Liverpool. (Bill) Shankly maintained his side were the fittest in the league, with pre-season geared towards building stamina and therefore preventing muscle tears.
“It was a difficult theory to argue against. Liverpool won the 1965-66 title using just 14 players all season. Anyone who suffered an injury was almost bullied into feeling better. ‘Otherwise you really were persona non grata,’ Alan Hansen said.
“Leather’s recruitment meant that (Ronnie) Moran could focus on drilling the first team in the Liverpool way rather than writing what Evans describes as ‘little scribbles’ on an old ledger, charting training patterns.”
Endorsements to Leather’s attributes appear on his website from the likes of Robbie Fowler and Jamie Redknapp, who is quoted as saying: “Mark Leather has been brilliant with me. He has kept me going and it’s because of him really that I’m back to full fitness as soon as I am.”
In 1999 media reports said Houllier was facing “a furious players’ backlash after his escalating row with Liverpool physio Mark Leather took a dramatic twist”.
Leather was left in the UK when Liverpool went to Oslo for pre-season games, a move which was said to be causing disquiet in the dressing room.
Leather clashed with Houllier over the condition of injured Michael Owen
“Leather is one of the game’s top physios and he was publicly praised by Robbie Fowler after helping the striker make a miraculous recovery from a cruciate knee ligament injury last season,” said one report in the Scottish Daily Record. “Other stars, including Michael Owen and skipper Jamie Redknapp, are known to have a close bond with the medic.”
Houllier was angry at the length of time it was taking for Owen to return to full training after a hamstring injury and sent him to a specialist in Germany for a course of treatment.
In 2013, when Owen’s many injuries finally forced him to his retire from the game, he recalled bad decisions in the past that ultimately affected his career.
“I was compromised because I played too much too soon as a youngster at Liverpool. In my opinion, had I been managed differently I would have been at my best for longer as opposed to being a better player,” he said in The Mirror.
“I basically run on two hamstrings on my right leg and three on the other. I lost a third of the power.
“If I hadn’t, 90 per cent of the other injuries wouldn’t have happened and I would have been the all-time leading scorer for England.”
The Mirror article continued: “If there was a defining moment in his career, then it was a snapped hamstring when his then-manager Houllier ignored the advice of his physio and insisted Owen be brought back from injury quickly because he needed his goal threat so desperately.
“The French coach fell out so badly with the physio, Mark Leather, he forced him out, but Houllier later admitted to the mistake, which Owen believes led to the moment that changed his career – on a cold March evening at Elland Road, Leeds, in 1999. ‘My hamstring snapped in two and it was at that point that my ability to perform unimpeded was finished,’ said Owen.
Leather wasn’t finished with football, however, and he moved to his beloved Bolton Wanderers as Sam Allardyce’s physio for a year, before joining former Trotter Peter Reid at the Stadium of Light.
“From a personal point of view, I’ve had the privilege of working with two guys I used to support from the terraces at Burnden,” Leather told the Bolton News ahead of a match between Bolton and the Black Cats in September 2001. “There’s only one team I’ve ever supported and leaving them last year was purely a professional decision,” he said. “Financially and from a facility point of view, it was the right move for me, but I’ll never stop supporting the Wanderers.”
Leather spent four years (2000-2004) as the head physio at Sunderland straddling the managerial reigns of Reid, Howard Wilkinson and Mick McCarthy.
It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing for Leather on Wearside, as the Republic of Ireland winger Kevin Kilbane, now a TV pundit on the BBC, mentioned in his autobiography (Killa: The Autobiography of Kevin Kilbane; Aurum Press Ltd, 2014).
The player was determined to play for his country but the physio obviously didn’t feel he should because he was still trying to recover from an ankle injury.
Leather had already put him through some tough routines to test the strength of his ankle and when they were then on opposing sides in a two-a-side hockey match, Leather caught Kilbane on the tender joint with his hockey stick.
“After a few times and much pain, I finally snapped, and I gave him a left hook and decked him, leaving him with a fat lip and a very surprised look on his face,” Kilbane admitted.
Although he told the assistant manager Bobby Saxton what had happened, nothing more was done about it. Kilbane said: “I later apologised to Mark Leather but was disappointed he didn’t reciprocate. Things were never right between us after that, although we didn’t let it interfere with our professional relationship.”
After Sunderland, Leather switched sports and took on a similar position with Wigan Warriors rugby league side before moving into the world of academia. He spent seven years at Edge Hill University as a senior lecturer in sports therapy and programme leader for the Football Rehabilitation MSc course.
In October 2006,Leather joined Chester City as club physio, with City chairman Stephen Vaughan declaring: “He is a fully qualified physio and has a wealth of experience at Premier League level, so it’s something of a coup to bring him to the Deva Stadium.”
In 2013, he returned to Bolton, spending three years as Head of Sports Performance.
He had also set up his own physiotherapy business in 2008 and, since 2016, has been a senior lecturer and course leader for the Football Science and Rehabilitation MSc course at the University of Central Lancashire.
• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme and various online sources.
EXPLOSIVE pace, a feint of the shoulder, and a thunderbolt shot were trademarks of Kazenga LuaLua’s contribution to Brighton’s rise from the third tier.
Not to mention a somersault flipping goal celebration that delighted supporters but gave managers kittens as they could only see an injury in the making.
Sadly, that explosive pace came at a price — hamstrings that were all too often easily damaged, resulting in lengthy spells on the treatment table and in recovery. Ankle, knee and groin injuries also sidelined the pacy winger for long periods.
Left-sided LuaLua had three spells on loan to Brighton from Newcastle United before joining permanently, and his six seasons in Brighton colours were rarely dull. He was undoubtedly a crowd-pleaser when he was on top of his game, leaving full backs trailing in his wake to lay on chances or cutting inside and netting some memorable goals.
However, he invariably made most impact when entering the fray from the substitutes’ bench, although the ‘supersub’ moniker frustrated him.
“You don’t just want to come on as a sub,” he told the matchday programme. “Obviously it’s good in one respect as it means the team needs you, but as a footballer you want to be in the starting 11 in every game.
“I don’t view myself as just an impact player and I know that I can play 90 minutes of football.”
Albion fans first saw the Congolese game-changer in February 2010. Manager Gus Poyet had been tipped the wink about LuaLua by his former Swindon and Leeds managerial partner, Dennis Wise, who had been executive director at Newcastle.
Ashley Barnes celebrates with Albion’s speedy loanee winger
LuaLua started nine games (and went on as a sub twice) as Albion consolidated their position in League One. His impact on the side was appreciated by his teammates, as defender Tommy Elphick explained to the Argus in March 2010. After the 19-year-old winger had run Exeter full-back Steve Tully ragged, Elphick said: “He’s unbelievable for us. He really does stretch the game for you.
“It’s that raw pace and power which I personally think we have been missing for the last two years. Benno (Elliott Bennett) gives you something totally different. He is more technical. Kaz reminds me of Bas Savage in the sort of job he used to do for us in stretching the game and getting us up the pitch.
“It gives the defenders a chance to get to the halfway line and defend a bit higher.”
When Poyet secured his services for a second loan spell for the opening half of the 2010-11 season, he was delighted. “Kazenga is unique. He is pure power and speed,” said the manager. “That nowadays in football is very important and we didn’t have that.
“I don’t think there is another player like him in the division. He gives us something totally different.
“We are very pleased to have him. We know what we are getting and that is the key. He will fit in as a player, and in the dressing room.”
Poyet added: “He made a very big impact during his time here last season and I am hoping he can do the same and add a few goals to his game this time around.”
No sooner said than done; LuaLua marked his second debut with a 25-yard rocket of a free-kick to give Albion the lead in a 2-0 home win over MK Dons.
LuaLua departs the action injured
Sadly, after just seven starts plus four appearances off the bench, his involvement in that promotion season came to an end in November 2010 when a bad tackle in a 3-1 away defeat at Hartlepool left him with a broken ankle.
Born in Kinshasa, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), on 10 December 1990, LuaLua came to England as a small child with his father and famous older brother, Lomana.
It was from Lomana that he perfected the thunderbolt shot — and the celebratory somersault.
“I have always had a hard shot on me,” he told the Albion matchday programme. “I think a lot of it comes from when I was a boy back in Newcastle and I would play with my brother.
“He would always strike a ball hard and I would try to copy him.”
It was football all the way from a young age, LuaLua recalled. “When I was growing up in Kinshasa, I remember skipping school to play football with my friends,” he said. “We were football mad and, as my brother had already moved to England, I wanted to follow in his footsteps.
“Lomana got me in at Newcastle. He moved to London with our dad some time earlier, but once he’d broken into football and moved from Colchester United up to Newcastle, then the rest of the family came over from our homeland.
“I had only been in the country a couple of months when Lomana arranged for me to have a trial at Newcastle and I was taken on straight away. It was fantastic for me and also for him; we’d go into training together and he was always there for advice when I needed it. He has been a massive influence on my career.”
The winger continued: “It was tough to begin with; I was in a new country and had to go to a new school, which was hard in itself given where I’d come from, and then I was brought into a professional football club and one of the biggest in the country.
“But Newcastle were very helpful. All the coaching staff were great towards me, and helped me find my feet. I learned such a lot from them and I quickly made new friends. I was close to Nile Ranger, Sami Adjei, Sami Ameobi, many players, and I learnt so much in terms of coaching and how to conduct myself as a professional.”
Kazenga progressed through the Toon academy and was part of the Toon youth team that reached the semi-finals of the FA Youth Cup in 2005-06. He even earned a first-team squad call-up while still only 16, although he didn’t get to play.
LuaLua’s Newcastle chances were limited
Eventually, he got his first team chance as a substitute for Damien Duff in a 0-0 FA Cup third round match at Stoke in January 2008, right at the end of Sam Allardyce’s reign on Tyneside. It was Michael Owen’s first FA Cup game for Newcastle.
The game was being shown live on TV so LuaLua’s extended family back home in the DR Congo were able to see the moment. “I was one of the club’s youngest debutants at 17,” he said.
He also went on (for Charles N’Zogbia) in the replay at St James’s Park which Toon, under caretaker boss Nigel Pearson, won comfortably 4-1. “To play in front of 52,000 people took my breath away,” he said.
He made his Premier League debut three days later, going on as an 80th-minute sub for Duff at St James’s Park, in Kevin Keegan’s first match back in charge — a disappointing 0-0 draw with Bolton Wanderers.
Although a non-playing sub on other occasions, he got on in the last game of the season, replacing Jose Enrique in the 79th-minute as United went down 3-1 to Everton at Goodison Park.
Against the backdrop of the tumultuous 2008-09 season, when Toon were relegated from the Premier League after a veritable managerial merry-go-round, LuaLua made just four substitute appearances (three in the league and one in the FA Cup), and in January 2009 he was sent out on loan to Doncaster Rovers, then in the Championship, where he played four matches in six weeks under Sean O’Driscoll.
Once Toon settled on Chris Hughton to get them promoted from the Championship, LuaLua found chances hard to come by.
He started in a Carling Cup second round match at home to Huddersfield Town, when Toon edged it 4-3, but picked up a groin injury playing in the next round, a 2-0 defeat at Peterborough in September 2009 (future Brighton teammate Craig Mackail-Smith was one of the Posh scorers).
Three months later, with his fitness restored, he was itching to be given a first team chance and told the Chronicle: “I want to be part of this team. My aim has always been to play for the first team at Newcastle United.
“I’ve been here a long time, and last season I was involved in the first team before going out on loan.”
“I have been playing for the reserves for a while now, and I’m keen to play football at first team level.
“I would go out on loan if they let me.”
That opportunity finally came a couple of months later when Hughton sanctioned the move to Brighton. LuaLua told Albion matchday programme reporter Luke Nicoli: “They are a big club and are using a lot of experienced players at the moment, so it’s been difficult for me to break into the team.
“I’ve been playing reserve team football a lot and I just want to be playing games that mean something again. I want to be playing for points and I want to be learning all the time. I want to be in a position where I can return to Newcastle a better player.”
Immediately before re-joining the Seagulls for his second loan spell, LuaLua made only his second start for Newcastle in a 3-2 Carling Cup win over Accrington Stanley and was selected by Sky Sports as the Man of the Match.
After that broken ankle at Hartlepool had taken him back to Newcastle to recuperate, he recovered to make a Premier League appearance in the penultimate game of the season, a 2–2 draw away to Chelsea. Hughton’s successor, Alan Pardew, sent him on as a 69th minute substitute for Shane Ferguson and it was LuaLua’s run and cut inside around Branislav Ivanovic that won Toon a corner from which Steven Taylor scored a late equaliser.
Nevertheless, Poyet wasn’t giving up on taking LuaLua back to the Seagulls once more and, in July 2011, he took him on another six-month deal with a view to a permanent move.
Poyet told the club website at the time: “Kazenga was one of our main summer targets and I am delighted we have finally come to an agreement with Newcastle. I am sure the fans will be equally delighted to see him back at the club.”
The permanent move went through a month before the loan was due to expire and LuaLua told the club website: “Since I came to the club it has always been my intention to sign a permanent deal so this is a really happy day for me.
“When you are on loan you are never quite sure what the future will hold, but now I’ve signed this contract I can put my mind at rest and focus completely on my football.
“I have come here because I feel Brighton is the place where I can really kick on with my career. At Newcastle I wasn’t really involved in the first-team squad and at my age I want to start playing regular football.
“From the first day I came to the club on loan, everyone was so friendly and that helped me settle very quickly. Now I want to pay that back with my performances on the pitch.”
Albion famously suffered an ignominious 6-1 drubbing in the fifth round of the FA Cup at Anfield in February 2012, but it was LuaLua who temporarily gave the Seagulls parity after Martin Skrtel’s early opener for Liverpool.
LuaLua unleashed an unstoppable 25-yard shot past ‘keeper Pepe Reina and BBC Sport’s Neil Johnston said: “It was a goal worthy of winning a Wembley FA Cup Final.”
Few doubted LuaLua’s ability but inconsistency was one of his demons which often led to him being introduced as an impact substitute rather than starting games.
Poyet wasn’t afraid to explain his selection policy and in March 2012, when he gave the winger a start against high-flying Derby County, he was rewarded with a 2-0 win at the Amex.
“I thought it was the game for Kazenga,” Poyet told the Argus. “I know he played well in his first spell and my first season here, but I don’t remember a better performance from Kazenga for Brighton.
“It was his best performance against a team that has been in the Premier League and in the top ten in the Championship. That shows what he can do. It was his game and he’s a happy boy.
“He has probably been a little annoyed not to be playing, but that is natural and he is always very respectful and always talking to me.”
A troublesome knee affected LuaLua’s involvement
LuaLua ended up playing under four different Albion managers and Oscar Garcia quickly realised the limitations he faced when in September 2013 he told the Argus: “Kaz has a problem on his knee and he cannot play many minutes in all the games. We knew before if he had played for the whole game then maybe on Tuesday we cannot use him.
“Sometimes he has pain, sometimes not, but, if he plays many minutes, he has pain. He’s had this from the start of the season,” he said. “Sometimes he has to rest, he cannot train. We have to manage this.”
The following February, LuaLua was still troubled by knee tendon soreness but was contributing as a substitute.
For example, he went on to set up Leonardo Ulloa to score the only goal of the game at home to Leeds and Garcia told the Argus: “We thought in this game he could come off the bench and make an immediate impact and he did it.
“He is a player who can change a game. We are very happy with him, because every game when he has to come off the bench he comes on with the right attitude and plays really well.”
Happy days with Beram Kayal and Joe Bennett
Even though Sami Hyypia’s time in charge was short-lived, the winger impressed the new boss until a knee injury sidelined him in November 2014.
“He has the ability to hurt people one v one and maybe one v two as well sometimes,” said Hyypia. “He’s done well this season, he has been very concentrated all the time.”
By the time LuaLua returned to fitness, his old Newcastle coach and manager, Hughton, was at the helm.
LuaLua told the matchday programme: “It was difficult for me when he first came here because I was injured, but he was great with me, always stopping to talk to me about the injury, making sure I was okay, and he told me not to rush things. That’s what I’ve done and hopefully I can now show him what I can do on the pitch now that I’m fully fit.”
Although it was a few months before that happened, arguably LuaLua’s best spell with the club came at the start of the 2015-16 season, which coincided with a change of squad number for the player.
The returning Bobby Zamora resumed the no.25 that he’d worn during his first spell at Brighton, and at other clubs, and LuaLua admitted: “I had to give the number 25 to Bobby. There was no way I was going to refuse. He’s a legend at the club and it’s nice to have him back in the squad.”
With 30 on his back, LuaLua scored four goals in the opening seven games and won the Championship Player of the Month award (above). Hughton was simultaneously Manager of the Month and said: “Kaz thoroughly deserves his award, he’s had a wonderful start. The area where he has excelled in his game is where he has got on the ball and provided an end product.”
Once again, though, injury brought the purple patch to an end. LuaLua sustained a groin injury in training that eventually needed surgery. Coach Nathan Jones told the Argus in December: “There is no real timescale on it because someone like Kazenga is so important to the squad and what we do. You can’t rush him and he is such a potent athlete, that’s the problem.”
Hughton also lost Solly March to injury that autumn but Rajiv van La Parra was brought in as a temporary solution. He already had Jamie Murphy as a wide option and then Anthony Knockaert and Jiri Skalak were added, so, by the time LuaLua had recovered, competition for places was intense.
The run-in to the end of the season saw him mainly in a watching brief from the bench, although he did play in successive matches in April – 2-1 wins away to Birmingham and Nottingham Forest.
LuaLua’s Albion days were clearly numbered as the 2016-17 season got under way. He started two League Cup games in August – the 4-0 win over Colchester United and the 4-2 victory over Oxford United, when he scored Albion’s second goal. But he only managed three league appearances as a substitute. By January, it was time for a change of scene, and he was sent on a half-season loan to QPR.
At least he got some games in Ian Holloway’s Championship side, appearing 11 times and scoring once. Having missed out on Albion’s promotion to the Premier League at the end of that season, it was no surprise that he returned on loan at Loftus Road at the start of the 2017-18 season.
However, he left west London at the beginning of December 2017, Rangers boss Holloway telling the Argus: “I don’t feel he was doing as well as some of my lads who I’ve brought here.
“Unless he rips it up and shows me – and he’s trying to – I think the loss of confidence and loss of his father has really hit him.”
In January 2018, LuaLua finally cut his ties with the Albion when he joined Chris Coleman’s Sunderland on a free transfer on a deal until the end of the season. By then 27, the winger told the Sunderland website: “I’m excited to be here and get back out on to the pitch because it’s been a long time without playing football.
“I know the North East well and I know Sunderland are one of the big clubs, not just in the North East but England, so I’m really excited to get started.”
An unfortunate turn of phrase because he didn’t start a game as Sunderland fell through the Championship trapdoor. He made just six substitute appearances.
Released at the end of that season, his former Brighton coach Jones revitalised what looked like a flagging career by signing him for promotion-chasing League One side Luton Town.
Jones told the club website: “He’s a fantastic talent. He has something that not many have, totally different from what we have here.
“He’s a quick, powerful, potent attacking player which is something that is in rare supply – and is something we felt we needed.
“The fact that we’ve been able to get him in and persuade him to come here is a good coup for us.”
And the player said: “I know Nathan from Brighton, and he’s a very good coach. He’s good at what he does, so it made it so easy for me to come in and train with the boys here.”
LuaLua spent three years at Kenilworth Road and clearly enjoyed a good relationship with their supporters. After he signed a new deal with the club following their promotion to the Championship, he told the club website: “The supporters have made me feel welcome since the moment I arrived here.
“When they get behind you, like they did since I have arrived, it gives you a massive buzz. It’s a really nice feeling. It was a really special season. I think they liked the way I play, they got behind me and I really appreciated it.”
Once again, though, his involvement was more as a substitute than a starter (37 starts plus 50 appearances off the bench) and when his contract came to an end in the summer of 2021, he decided to continue his career in Turkey, once again following in the footsteps of brother Lomana, who played for a number of Turkish clubs.
“It was the right time for me to move on with my football career,” he said. “I always wanted to go abroad before I stopped playing football.
“Before signing, I was worried. I’ve never played abroad before. But it has been good. There’s a lot of boys here who speak English, including the manager, which helps a lot. I’m enjoying it.”
LuaLua then switched from Turkey to Greece and spent 18 months with Levadiakos before returning to the UK in March 2024 when Nathan Jones signed him for Charlton Athletic on a short-term deal, although he made just five substitute appearances for the League One side.
It was back to the north east for a third time in November 2024 when he signed for National League Hartlepool United under Brighton-born Lennie Lawrence, a former Luton and Charlton manager.
ANY Brighton player who scores twice in a win over Crystal Palace is generally revered forever. The sheen John Gregory acquired for that feat was somewhat tarnished when he was manager of Aston Villa.
Gregory’s brace in a vital 3-0 win over Palace on Easter Saturday 1981 helped ensure the Seagulls survived in the top-flight (while the Eagles were already heading for relegation).
In 1998, though, he was caught up in a wrangle over Brighton’s efforts to secure a sizeable fee for their input to the early career of Gareth Barry, who’d joined Villa while still a teenage prodigy.
Albion’s chairman Dick Knight pursued the matter through the correct football channels and eventually secured a potential seven-figure sum of compensation for the St Leonards-born player, who spent six years in Brighton’s youth ranks but refused to sign a YTS deal after Villa’s approach.
The Football League appeals tribunal met in London and ruled the Premiership side should pay Brighton £150,000 immediately, rising to a maximum £1,025,000 if he made 60 first-team appearances and was capped by England. Brighton were also to receive 15 per cent of any sell-on fee.
“It was what I had hoped for, although I hadn’t necessarily expected the tribunal to deliver it,” Knight said in his autobiography, Mad Man – From the Gutter to the Stars. “Villa certainly hadn’t; Gregory was furious and stormed out of the building.”
Gregory mockingly asserted that Knight wouldn’t have recognised the player if he’d stood on Brighton beach wearing an Albion shirt, a football under his arm and a seagull on his head.
“For a former Albion player, Gregory surprisingly seemed to take it as a personal affront,” said Knight. “His position was patronising and the behaviour of Aston Villa scandalous.”
Although Villa paid the initial instalment, they didn’t lie down and go with the ruling and ultimately Knight ended up doing a deal with Villa chairman, ‘Deadly’ Doug Ellis, for £850,000 that gave Brighton a huge cash injection in an hour of need.
Barry, of course, ended up having a stellar career, earning 53 England caps, making 653 Premier League appearances and captaining Villa during 11 years at the club.
Knight’s settlement with Ellis meant Brighton missed out on £1.8 million which they would have been entitled to when Barry was sold on to Manchester City in 2009.
But back to Gregory. He had a habit of returning to manage clubs he had previously played for. Villa was one (between February 1998 and January 2002). He also bossed QPR, who he played for after two years with the Albion, and Derby County, who he’d played for in the Third, Second and First Divisions.
His first foray into management had been at Portsmouth. He then worked as a coach under his former Villa teammate Brian Little at Leicester City (1991-1994) and Villa (1994-1996) before becoming a manager in his own right again during two years at Wycombe Wanderers.
The lure of Villa drew him back to take charge as manager at Villa Park in February 1998 when he was in charge of players such as Gareth Southgate, Paul Merson and David Ginola.
During his near four-year reign, Villa reached the 2000 FA Cup Final – they were beaten 2-0 by Chelsea – but won the UEFA Intertoto Cup in November 2001, beating Switzerland’s Basel 4-1.
Although his win percentage (43 per cent) was better at Villa than at any other club he managed, fan pressure had been building when league form slumped as the 2001-02 season went past the halfway mark and a ‘Gregory out’ banner was displayed in the crowd.
Gregory eventually bowed to the pressure and tendered his resignation, although chairman Ellis said: “John’s resignation is sad. It was most unexpected but has been amicable.”
He stepped out of the frying pan into the fire when he took charge of an ailing Derby County, who were bottom of the Premier League, and, after a winning start, he wasn’t able to keep them up.
County sacked him in March 2003 for alleged misconduct but in a protracted legal wrangle he eventually won £1m for unfair dismissal. However, the ongoing dispute meant he couldn’t take up another job and he spent much of the time as a TV pundit instead.
It was in September 2006 that he finally stepped back into a managerial role, taking over from Gary Waddock as QPR manager, and while he managed to save them from relegation from the Championship, ongoing poor form the following season led to him being sacked in October 2007.
It only emerged in 2013 that five years earlier Gregory had discovered he was suffering from prostate cancer. Nevertheless, he continued working, managing two clubs in Israel and one in Kazakhstan.
He had one other English managerial job, taking charge of Crawley Town in December 2013, although ill health brought his reign to an end after a year and former Albion striker Dean Saunders replaced him.
Two and a half years after leaving Crawley, Gregory emerged as head coach of Chennaiyin in the Indian Super League. With former Albion favourite Inigo Calderon part of his side, he led them in 2018 to a second league title win, and he was named the league’s coach of the year.
Born in Scunthorpe on 11 May 1954, Gregory was one of five sons and two daughters of a professional footballer also called John who had started his career at West Ham.
The Gregory family moved to Aldershot when young John was only two (his dad had been transferred to the Shots) but then moved to St Neots, near Huntingdon, when his father took up a job as a security guard after retiring from the game.
Young Gregory went to St Neots Junior School and his first football memories date from the age of nine, and he was selected as a striker for the Huntingdonshire County under 12 side.
He moved on to Longsands Comprehensive School and played at all age levels for Huntingdon before being selected for the Eastern Counties under 15 side in the English Schools Trophy.
Northampton Town signed him on apprentice terms at the age of 15 and he progressed to the first team having been converted to a defender and remained with the Cobblers for seven years.
It was in 1977 that Ron Saunders signed him for Villa for £65,000, which was considered quite a sum for a Fourth Division player.
Gregory famously played in every outfield position during his two years at Villa Park and he welcomed the move to newly promoted Albion because it finally gave him the chance to pin down a specific position.
Chris Cattlin had been right-back as Albion won promotion from the second tier for the first time in their history but he was coming to the end of his career and, in July 1979, the Albion paid what was at the time a record fee of £250,000 to sign Gregory to take over that position. Steve Foster joined at the same time, from Portsmouth.
“I wore every shirt at Villa,” Gregory told Shoot! magazine. “I never had an established position. I was always in the side, but there was a lot of switching around. When Alan Mullery came in for me, he made it clear he wanted me to play at right-back.”
The defender added: “I respect Alan Mullery as a manager and I like the way he thinks about the game.
“Brighton are a very attacking side. There’s nothing the boss loves more than skill. That comes first in his mind. He wants all ten outfield players to attack when they can. That attitude, more than anything else, played a big part in me coming here.”
Gregory started the first 12 games of the season but was then sidelined when he had to undergo an appendix operation.
He returned as first choice right-back in the second half of the season and had a good start to the 1980-81 campaign when he scored in the opening 2-0 home win over Wolves.
His second of the season came against his old club, a header from a pinpoint Gordon Smith cross giving Albion the lead at Villa Park against the run of play. But it was to be an unhappy return for Gregory because the home side fought back to win 4-1.
In November 1980, it looked like Gregory might leave the Goldstone in a proposed cash-plus-player swap for QPR’s Northern Ireland international David McCreery, but the player, settled with his family in Ovingdean, said he wanted to stay at the Goldstone.
“The offer Gregory received was fantastic, but he prefers to stay with us,” chairman Mike Bamber told the Evening Argus. “I regard this as a great compliment.”
The following month, he got the only goal of the game in a 1-0 Boxing Day win at Leicester but in March, with Albion desperate to collect points to avoid the drop, Mullery put Gregory into midfield. He responded with four goals in seven matches, netting in a 1-1 draw away to Man City, grabbing the aforementioned pair at Selhurst Park on Easter Saturday and the opener two days later when Leicester were beaten 2-1 at the Goldstone.
Little did he know it would be his last as a Brighton player because within weeks Mullery quit as manager and Bamber finally couldn’t resist QPR’s overtures.
“I know Alan Mullery turned down a bid but a couple of days after he resigned chairman Mike Bamber accepted QPR’s offer,” Gregory recalled in an interview with Match Weekly. “I hadn’t asked for a move so the news that I was to be allowed to go was quite a surprise.”
He added: “It was a wrench. I found it difficult to turn my back on the lads at Brighton.
“I enjoyed two years at the Goldstone Ground and made many friends, but the prospect of a new challenge at Rangers appealed to me.”
Gregory admitted he used to watch Spurs as a youngster and ironically his two favourite players were Venables and Mullery – and he ended up playing for them both.
Although he dropped down a division to play for QPR, he said: “Rangers are a First Division set up and I’m sure we’ll be back soon.”
Not only did he win promotion with Rangers in the 1983-84 season but, at the age of 29, he earned a call up to the England set-up under Bobby Robson.
He won six caps, the first three of which (right) came against Australia when they played three games (two draws and an England win) in a week in June 1983, in a side also featuring Russell Osman and Mark Barham.
Gregory retained his midfield place for the European Championship preliminary match in September when England lost 1-0 to Denmark at Wembley but he was switched to right-back for the 3-0 away win over Hungary the following month.
His sixth and final cap came in the Home International Championship match in Wrexham in May 1984 when he was back in midfield as England succumbed to a 1-0 defeat to Wales, a game in which his QPR teammate Terry Fenwick went on as a substitute to earn the first of 20 caps for England.
Gregory continues to demonstrate his love for the game, and particularly Villa, via his Twitter account and earlier in the 2021-22 season, his 32,000 followers saw a heartfelt reaction to the sacking of Dean Smith.
“Dean Smith gave Aston Villa Football Club the kiss of life when the club was an embarrassment to Villa fans and he rekindled the love and passion and success on the field where so many others had failed hopelessly,” said Gregory.
• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme, Shoot! magazine and various online sources.
In parallel lines 