‘LOANSOME’ Sam Vokes joined Brighton temporarily on the eve of transfer deadline day in January 2012.
He was 22 at the time and had already had five loan spells away from Molineux since joining Wolverhampton Wanderers in the summer of 2008. Vokes told BBC Sussex: “I need to settle down in my career and it’s a fantastic chance for me to come here and play some football.
“It’s a matter of playing games and, as a striker, scoring goals.”
Vokes had been troubled by injury and had found it difficult to establish himself in the Wolves side. The season before, he had been out on loan at Bristol City, Sheffield United and Norwich, and earlier in the 2011-12 season had scored two goals in nine appearances on loan at Burnley.
Eddie Howe, who’d managed Vokes during his first spell at Bournemouth, had taken him to Turf Moor to partner Jay Rodriguez. But when his deal with Burnley expired in mid-January, Albion boss Gus Poyet stepped in and persuaded him to join the Seagulls.
Vokes was invited to the Amex to watch the side’s FA Cup fourth round tie against Newcastle and, two days after the 1-0 win, put pen to the loan deal.
“I don’t want to sit around – I love playing,” said Vokes. “Brighton have a great way of playing football that is different to a lot of teams in the Championship.”
The young striker told the Albion matchday programme: “I’m a southern boy. I know the area well, and I know what football means to people down here.
“It’s been difficult for me to settle anywhere, moving from place to place on loan, but now I just want to play football. I love the game. I need to play, it’s all I want to do.
“I would like to stay and if all goes well we will see what happens in the summer, but my main aim at the moment is to start playing football again and scoring goals.”
Poyet told the media: “Sam was one of the players we’ve been following for a long time but it’s been difficult to get him.
“The idea was to bring someone who will give us that presence and strength in the air that we don’t have.
“We’ve got the time to explain how we play, and what he needs to do for us. The quicker he adapts, the easier for us. I’m delighted to have him and I hope it works for him.
“He’s been trying to find that place that he can stay for a few years.”
As it turned out, Vokes struggled to dislodge incumbent strikers Ashley Barnes and Craig Mackail-Smith, and he made just seven starts plus five substitute appearances.
Although he scored on his full home debut in a 2-2 draw v Millwall, he only got two more goals, a last-minute equaliser in another 2-2 draw, at home to Cardiff City, and Albion’s lone strike in a 1-1 draw away to Nottingham Forest.
In July 2012, it was reported Wolves were demanding £500,000 for the player’s signature on a permanent basis, and that Brighton and Burnley were both keen to sign him.
Howe had always been keen to get the player back to Burnley and, although officially undisclosed, it’s believed a £350,000 fee took him to Turf Moor where he finally settled down and, over the next seven years, scored 62 goals in 258 appearances.
Born in Southampton on 21 October 1989, Vokes was brought up in Lymington and was a Southampton fan at an early age. He even had a trial with them when he was just 10 but wasn’t taken on.
It was when he was playing football for local sides in the New Forest that he was spotted by Bournemouth and joined them in 2005. He was only 17 when he made his first team debut in December 2006 (in a 2-0 win over Nottingham Forest) and although he scored 12 goals in the 2007-08 season, the Cherries were relegated from League One.
Wolves stepped in to sign him that May and he came off the bench in the opening game of the following season to score an equaliser in a 2-2 draw at Plymouth Argyle. However, Chris Iwelumo and Sylvan Ebanks-Blake were the main men scoring goals as Wolves won the Championship that year, and Vokes’ involvement was mainly off the bench.
With his parent club in the Premier League, Vokes was loaned out to League One Leeds United on a three-month deal, although he only scored once in eight games. One of those matches was against the Albion at Withdean and Vokes recalled picking up his first footballing scar when an Adam El-Abd elbow caught him in the face.
Once Vokes finally settled down at Burnley after his various loan moves, it can’t have helped his cause when the man who signed him quit Turf Moor to return to Bournemouth.
Indeed, when Sean Dyche replaced Howe, his go-to centre forward at first was Charlie Austin, but when Austin was sold Vokes got more of a chance to show his worth alongside Danny Ings.
The partnership that began to evolve surprised Burnley fans who’d wondered whether Vokes was only ever destined to be a bit-part player.
“Everyone was concerned to be honest,” said Tony Scholes on uptheclarets.com. “We’d seen some potential in Ings but there wasn’t much confidence that Vokes could become a regular, goalscoring striker at Championship level.
He went on: “Our shortage of strikers was highlighted by the fact that he played the full 90 minutes in all of the first 26 league games that season, but he wasn’t just filling in. He was turning in some outstanding performances, linking up really well with Ings and both were scoring goals aplenty.”
Unfortunately, a cruciate knee injury sidelined him for a lengthy spell and Burnley bought Ashley Barnes from Brighton as they sought to bolster their forward options.
A fit Vokes eventually reclaimed his place and formed a useful partnership with big money signing Andre Gray when Barnes himself was also hit by a cruciate injury.
In the early part of last season, Vokes often found himself on the bench, with Barnes and Chris Wood starting ahead of him, and, in January, he decided to drop back down to the Championship, joining Nathan Jones’ new regime at Stoke City, with former England international Peter Crouch going in the opposite direction.
As is often the way these days, the fee was ‘undisclosed’ but was rumoured to be in the order of £7m, and Stoke offered Vokes a three-and-a-half-year contract.
His popularity at Burnley was reflected in a thoughtful parting message thanking the club and the Clarets fans, in which he said: “You made the club a ‘home’ for myself and all my family and for that I’m eternally grateful.”
He added: “It’s been an incredible journey that we’ve been on over the past seven years, with promotions, relegation, survival and even European football through the Europa League.
“There have been so many highlights and every step along the way has been a joy, but now I am looking forward to a new challenge.”
Dyche, meanwhile, told the Stoke Sentinel: “Sam has been an absolutely fantastic servant, not just as a player but as a person.
“There was a bit of frustration that he hasn’t played as much as he’d like and this presents a fresh challenge, so, with all that factored in, it became a win-win deal.
“We feel we’ve got a good deal financially for the business and Sam has got a fresh chance somewhere different.”
Since July 2021, Vokes has been leading the line for League One Wycombe Wanderers.
Vokes may have been born and brought up in England but, thanks to having a grandfather born in Colwyn Bay, he became eligible to play for Wales and has earned more than 60 caps since making his debut in 2008, including their most recent game against Belarus.
A stand-out moment for his adopted country came during the Euro 2016 tournament when he came on as a substitute and (pictured above) sealed Wales’ 3-1 win over Belgium with an 85th-minute goal to reach the semi-finals.
- Pictures from various online sources.
REPUBLIC of Ireland international midfielder Keith Andrews was something of a revelation during a season-long loan at Brighton & Hove Albion.
He registered one goal during that time, an 89th minute equaliser at home to Sheffield Wednesday in October.
In parallel lines 