BRIGHTON travel to Newcastle in the fifth round of the FA Cup with the backdrop of having won there twice in the competition in the 1980s – not to mention a 1-0 win in the Premier League this season.
The 1-0 third round win at St. James’ Park in January 1983 set Albion en route to that season’s FA Cup final – but Toon supporters of that era blamed the game’s unusually-named referee, Trelford Mills, from Barnsley, for their exit.
Think I’m exaggerating? Newcastle fans’ website themag.co.uk had this to say ahead of another FA Cup game between the two sides in 2013: “It is doubtful that anything could match the anger and frustration that many of us felt nearly thirty years ago.
“Wednesday 12 January 1983 will always be synonymous with the name Trelford Mills, etched into the consciousness of an entire generation of Newcastle fans, convinced he cheated us out of the FA Cup. Well, a chance of the fourth round anyway!”
Neil Smillie, goalscorer Peter Ward, Steve Gatting, Chris Ramsey and Andy Ritchie celebrate after the 1983 win.
Mills disallowed two Newcastle ‘goals’ while Albion nicked it courtesy of a penalty area pounce by Peter Ward, back at the club on loan from Nottingham Forest, on 62 minutes. They did it without captain Steve Foster who was suspended (as, of course, he would be for the final too).
The game was a third round replay four days after the sides drew 1-1 at the Goldstone Ground when Andy Ritchie’s mis-hit shot in the 56th minute put Albion ahead and Terry McDermott (below right, with Tony Grealish) equalised on 77 minutes.
Even though the Magpies were in the old Division Two at the time, they had Kevin Keegan and Chris Waddle in their line-up, and they fully expected to win because Brighton hadn’t previously won away that season.
Albion, competing in the top division for the fourth season in a row, with joint caretaker managers Jimmy Melia and George Aitken in charge, had goalkeeper Graham Moseley to thank for some heroic stops to keep them in the first game.
The replay at St. James’s Park was in front of a typically noisy crowd of 32,687 and Newcastle did everything but score: they had shots cleared off the line and hit the woodwork and, when they thought they’d scored, Mr Mills disallowed them – twice!
In the meantime, Ward made the most of a counter attack to put the Seagulls ahead. It turned out to be the last goal he scored for the Albion, although he was in the side that pulled off a shock 2-1 win at Anfield to knock out Liverpool in the fifth round.
“I remember Brighton went one up, then Imre Varadi went through on goal, but quite clearly controlled the ball with his wrist,” said Mills.
“I think the Brighton keeper realised this, just as most of the players did, and let the ball go into the goal just to waste a bit of time. I just restarted with a free kick. I have spoken to Imre since. I think he accepts my version now.”
Mills continued: “Jeff Clarke managed to win a ball in the penalty area, but only because he had his arm around the defender’s neck. Keegan bundled the ball into the goal, but I had blown up a few seconds before it went in.
“Keegan did his Mick Channon cartwheel arm in front of the Gallowgate end, but I just jogged across to where I wanted the free kick taken from and indicated as to why I had disallowed the goal.”
Mills also recalled how he and his fellow officials needed a police escort away from the ground after the match. “When we sat in the dressing room after the match, I remember chatting to one of my linesmen, John Morley, when this police officer turns up,” he said. The copper said to him: “You’d better hang on here a while, Trelford. There are 2,000 Geordies outside and they all want your autograph!”
Three years later, the status of the teams had been reversed with Newcastle promoted back to the top division in 1984 and Albion back in the second tier, relegated the same year as the cup final appearance.
While Keegan had retired, Willie McFaul’s side had a young Paul Gascoigne in midfield and Peter Beardsley in the forward line. Clarke, who’d played four games on loan at Brighton two years earlier, was still in the centre of United’s defence and it was his foul on Terry Connor in the first minute of the game that saw Albion take a shock early lead.
Danny Wilson floated in a free kick from 30 yards out on the right which found centre back Eric Young on the far edge of the penalty box. He hooked the ball into the Newcastle net with only 50 seconds on the clock!
Albion, wearing their change strip of red, had to endure a relentless series of attacks (Toon had 23 corners to Albion’s one!) and Perry Digweed in Brighton’s goal put in a man of the match performance between the sticks, notable saves keeping out shots from John Bailey, Beardsley and Billy Whitehurst.
With five minutes left of the game, against the run of play, a quick throw-in by Graham Pearce found Dean Saunders and he rifled home an unstoppable shot past Martin Thomas for his 10th goal of the season.
Manager Chris Cattlin summed up afterwards: “It was really tough and we had a little luck on our side, but to go away to a club who have won the cup no fewer than six times and come away winners was quite an achievement.
“With the Geordie fervour up there the noise their supporters created was something special, but our efforts speak volumes for everyone connected with our club.”
There would be no fairytale ending that season, though, with Albion being dumped out of the cup 2-0 by Southampton in a quarter-final tie at the Goldstone Ground.
John Barnes and Steve Harper were on pundit duty for ESPN for the 2012 match
Younger fans will doubtless recall two more recent FA Cup meetings between Brighton and Newcastle, in consecutive seasons during Gus Poyet’s reign, at the Amex in 2012 and 2013.
The Championship Seagulls beat the Premier League Magpies on both occasions – 1-0 in the fourth round in 2012 and 2-0 in the third round the following year.
Getting to grips with Will Buckley
A Mike Williamson own goal was enough to give Albion the edge over Alan Pardew’s side in the first of those games; Will Buckley’s 76th minute shot deflecting off the defender and looping over Tim Krul for the only goal of the game. Leon Best, who would later have a torrid time at Brighton, missed two good chances for the visitors.
The 2013 fixture was a more convincing win for Brighton against a weakened Newcastle side who had Shola Ameobi sent off. Andrea Orlandi gave Albion the lead on the half-hour mark and substitute Will Hoskins added a second late on.
Andrea Orlandi hooks in Albion’s first goal
Praise for Liam Bridcutt
“This was an impressive victory for Brighton, a result that will add to the optimism that surrounds this upwardly mobile club and strengthen their resolve to host Newcastle in next season’s Premier League,” wrote Ben Smith, for BBC Sport. “The cool passing game of Liam Bridcutt at the heart of their midfield was tremendous.”
The reporter added: “Sharper to the ball, and swifter to make use of it, the Seagulls toyed with their more celebrated opponents for much of the opening 45 minutes, producing some stylish attacking moves while tackling, battling and dominating territory in their uncomplicated and effective way.”
ONE OF West Ham’s less well-known ‘Boys of ‘86’ tried to boost his stuttering career on a month’s loan with the Seagulls.
Hammers fans still laud the achievements of John Lyall’s title-chasing side of the 1985-86 season because they finished third, the club’s highest-ever position in the top division.
The form of twin strikers Frank McAvennie (26 goals) and Tony Cottee (20) meant chances were few and far between for Greg Campbell, a youngster trying to get a break into the first team.
However, by virtue of one start and two substitute appearances early on in that famous season, Campbell can claim a place amongst the ‘Boys of 86’ whose achievements have since been captured in a book and in a video.
The group of ex-players, that included George Parris who later played for Brighton, regularly get back together for social occasions to raise funds for various charities.
It was in the season following West Ham’s close finish behind champions Liverpool and runners up Everton that Campbell sought to get some first team football at Brighton.
In his matchday programme notes, manager Barry Lloyd said: “He is a young player who has learned the game at West Ham and I believe he has something to offer as a conventional target man.”
Unfortunately for him he joined a club that was sliding inexorably towards relegation from the second tier, Lloyd having taken over as boss the previous month after the controversial sacking of Alan Mullery only six months into his return to the scene of past glories.
When Campbell joined, Lloyd had presided over five straight defeats in which 10 goals were conceded and Albion had dropped to second from bottom in the table.
The manager shook things up for the visit to West Brom on 28 February, dropping goalkeeper John Keeley, Darren Hughes and Terry Connor and putting Campbell, who had made his debut in the Reserves against Norwich, on the substitute’s bench (in the days of only one sub).
A dour 0-0 draw was ground out to earn a much-needed point but Campbell didn’t get on. He led the line for the reserves in a midweek 2-0 defeat at home to Fulham and had to wait until the following Saturday to make his first team debut.
Then, he was sent on as a substitute for Steve Penney in the home game against Derby County but to no avail as Albion succumbed to a 1-0 defeat. It was Dean Saunders’ last game for Brighton; shortly afterwards he was sold to Oxford United for just £60,000 (four years later, Liverpool bought him for nearly £3m).
Four days later, Campbell scored for the reserves in a 4-1 defeat at Swindon Town, but it still wasn’t enough to gain a starting spot. Away to Barnsley the following Saturday, once again Campbell found himself on the bench, the restored Connor and ex-Worthing striker Richard Tiltman preferred up top. Tiltman scored but once again Albion were on the losing side, going down 3-1.
When Ipswich Town visited the Goldstone on 21 March, only 8,393 turned up (700 down on the previous home game) and the increasingly frustrated faithful saw the Albion lose again, 2-1.
Campbell once more only got on as a substitute, replacing right-back Kevan Brown, and that was his last involvement in a Seagulls shirt.
Born in Portsmouth on 13 July 1965, Campbell had footballing footsteps to follow into: his dad Bobby Campbell (a great friend of Jimmy Melia’s) played for Liverpool and Portsmouth, coached Arsenal and QPR, and was manager of Fulham, Pompey and Chelsea.
Campbell and George Parris line up for West Ham’s youth team
After progressing through West Ham’s youth and apprentice ranks, the young Campbell was given his first team debut by Lyall, up front alongside Cottee and Bobby Barnes in a 3-1 home win over Coventry on 4 September 1984.
He made his second start just four days later, in a 2-0 home victory over Watford, but a broken jaw put paid to his involvement in that game.
The injury meant he had a long wait before he was next on first team duty, making a return as a substitute in a 1-0 home defeat to Luton Town on 24 August 1985.
He appeared from the bench again two days later in a 2-0 defeat at Manchester United before making his only start of the aforementioned 1985-86 campaign in a 1-1 draw at Southampton.
He started alongside McAvennie but was replaced by Cottee and that appearance at The Dell on 3 September 1985 was Campbell’s last in the Hammers first team.
After he was released by West Ham, he tried his luck in Holland, playing 15 games for Sparta Rotterdam in the 1987-88 season, during Hans van der Zee’s reign as manager.
On his return from Holland in November 1988, Campbell joined Plymouth Argyle where the former West Ham defender and Norwich City manager, Ken Brown (see picture below), was in charge.
As the excellent greensonscreen.co.uk website records, Campbell’s first match was against his dad’s Chelsea side in the Simod Cup at Stamford Bridge.
It wasn’t a happy return to English football, though, because Chelsea ran out 6-2 winners.
Nevertheless, he celebrated his Argyle league debut two weeks later with a goal in a 3-0 home win over Oldham Athletic.
Campbell spent 18 months with the Devon side and scored six times in 24 starts plus 15 games as a sub.
He moved on to Division Four Northampton Town, where former Cobblers stalwart Theo Foley had returned as manager.
Campbell (circled) lines up for Northampton Town
Campbell teamed up with former West Ham teammate Barnes, who went on to become a respected administrator for the PFA for more than 20 years.
Campbell scored seven goals in 47 appearances for the Cobblers before retiring from the game at the age of 27 in 1992.
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.
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.
IT seems extraordinary to think Robert Isaac had to wait FOURTEEN MONTHS to experience a win as a Brighton player after joining the club from Chelsea.
The young defender who had realised every schoolboy’s dream by playing for the team he’d always supported left a disgruntled dressing room at Stamford Bridge only to join a side sliding inexorably toward the relegation trapdoor of what is now the Championship.
“I must admit it was a bit depressing at first because we just couldn’t do anything right,” Isaac told Dave Beckett in an Albion matchday programme article. “We just had no luck at all; if we had I think we might well have survived in Division Two.”
Isaac also appears to have gone out of the frying pan into the fire. Telling thegoldstonewrap.com how he’d left Chelsea because the management was losing support of the players and he wanted regular first team football, he added: “When I joined Brighton in February 1987 they were in freefall. The dressing room was even more at odds with the manager than at Chelsea.
“Barry Lloyd dropped Dean Saunders, our only hope of surviving the drop. I found Barry rather rude. He’d blank me in the corridor and make me train on my own.”
The young defender made his Seagulls debut on 21 February 1987 in a 2-1 defeat at home to Oldham Athletic and featured in four draws and five defeats by the season’s dismal end.
Back at what was for so long Albion’s normal level of third tier football, Lloyd’s side did begin to pick up points – but Isaac wasn’t involved because of a groin strain and a troublesome hernia injury that sidelined him for months.
“I had stomach trouble quite a lot but no-one could put their finger on the problem until I saw a specialist in Harley Street,” he explained.
“After the operation, I was out of action for the best part of six months and at times I didn’t think I would get back to full fitness. I had around 40 internal stitches and even when I began playing again they would stretch and pull and I felt sick after games.”
It wasn’t until March 1988, with Albion in sixth spot, that Lloyd shook things up, initially drafting Isaac in at right-back in place of Kevan Brown, and then selecting him to replace suspended captain – and Isaac’s former Chelsea teammate – Doug Rougvie at centre back alongside Steve Gatting.
Isaac also stepped in when Rougvie missed a couple of games with a ‘flu virus and, although a win in Seagulls’ colours continued to elude him in his first three games back in the side (a defeat and two draws), he kept the no.5 shirt ahead of the rugged Scot. That elusive win finally came in a 2-1 away win at Notts County on 4 April.
Five wins and a draw followed and the successful run-in saw promotion gained as divisional runners-up behind Sunderland. Isaac was one of three former Chelsea players in that back four, with Gary Chivers (who’d arrived from Watford) at right-back and Keith Dublin at left-back.
Dublin had played for England under 19s with Isaac three years earlier. They both played four games in Dave Sexton’s side at the Toulon Tournament in the south of France in 1985 (England beat Cameroon 1-0 and Mexico 2-0, lost 2-0 to the USSR and succumbed 3-1 to France in the final at the Stade Mayol in Toulon).
Sadly, the subsequent fortunes of the two players went in opposite directions: Dublin went on to become such a success with the Seagulls that he was the 1989-90 Player of the Year and was sold to Watford for £275,000; the injury-beset Isaac had to quit the game after only 33 matches in a Brighton shirt.
After Albion bounced back to the second tier, the defender played in the first 11 matches of the 1988-89 season – eight of which were defeats – but his appearance in a 1-0 defeat away to Leicester turned out to be his last as an Albion player.
“I got injured at Leicester,” he recalled. “I didn’t feel it until the next day and then it really hit me. My knee just blew up. Come Monday morning I couldn’t even walk.”
He required an operation to repair the patella tendon in his left knee and, as he sought to regain fitness, spent a fortnight at the National Rehabilitation Centre at Lilleshall.
Meanwhile, Lloyd signed experienced central defender Larry May (whose own playing career would be ended by injury later that season) and, subsequently, Nicky Bissett.
A programme item in the 1989-90 season reminded supporters that Isaac was still around, although he hadn’t played at all throughout 1989.
Looking ahead to 1990, Isaac said: “I just hope I have a better year. I’d like to think that I deserve it after all the frustrations of the last few years with two major operations.”
Sadly, it didn’t happen and in August 1990, he was forced to quit football. After retiring, he worked as a chauffeur for the Maktoums, the ruling family in Dubai, before running his own vehicle business.
Born in Hackney on 30 November 1965, Isaac was Chelsea through and through from an early age.
“We lived in Chelsea and my great grandfather went to the first ever match at Stamford Bridge,” he told thegoldstonewrap.com. “My family have been going to matches home and away since. I went to see Chelsea play Stoke in the (1972) League Cup Final aged six.”
Isaac went on to join the club as a junior, made his reserve team debut at the tender age of 15 and was named Chelsea’s young player of the year in 1984.
It was on 9 October 1984 that his promising career could have been snuffed out before it had even begun: it’s a horrifying tale, told the following day on the front page of The Sun, and covered in detail by that1980sportsblog.
Three knife-wielding Millwall thugs slashed his back from his shoulder to the base of his spine in a dark alley near the south London club’s notorious old stadium, The Den.
Isaac needed 55 stitches to repair the damage and only the thickness of a leather coat he was wearing prevented the wound being potentially life-threatening.
Remarkably, later the same season, in March, he had recovered well enough to make his Chelsea first team debut in a 3-1 win at Watford, although Eddie Niedzwiecki, a Chelsea coach who later worked with Mark Hughes for Wales and at several clubs, told Kelvin Barker’s Celery! Representing Chelsea in the 1980s: “He was a young, up-and-coming apprentice at the time and luckily he managed to pull through, although he never really recovered from it.”
In the 1985-86 season, Isaac played two league cup games for Chelsea and three times in the league. The following season saw him get a mini-run in the side, playing four consecutive league games in November, but his fifth match – a 4-0 home defeat by Wimbledon in which Rougvie was sent off in the first 10 minutes for headbutting John Fashanu – proved to be his last.
The website sporting-heroes.net said of him: “A steady, reliable centre-half and occasional full-back, Robert did little wrong during his time in the Chelsea first-team, but was unfortunate to play for the club at a time when Colin Pates, Joe McLaughlin and, a little later, Steve Wicks, were all demonstrating their considerable talents at the heart of the defence.”
Isaac asked for a transfer after a disagreement with manager John Hollins and his assistant Ernie Walley, and that led to his transfer to Brighton for a £50,000 fee.
A JOURNEYMAN striker who fired blanks for Brighton and Sheffield United only found very occasional purple patches of goalscoring in a 12-club, 17-year career.
Billy Paynter didn’t manage a single goal in 10 games on loan for Gus Poyet’s Seagulls and carried with him from parent club Leeds United the somewhat unkind epithet ‘Barn door Billy’ for his proverbial inability to hit one with a banjo.
A subsequent half-season loan spell at Sheffield United under Nigel Clough yielded a similar zero in the goals scored column.
A journey around the message boards on supporter websites uncovers some brutal and unflattering comments about Paynter’s contribution for their team and yet it was a career that yielded 131 goals in 529 games – one in four.
And it all began promisingly under the guidance of former Albion captain and manager, Brian Horton.
Born in the Norris Green area of Liverpool on 13 July 1984, Paynter joined Port Vale’s academy at the tender age of 10 and turned professional soon after his 16th birthday.
Horton gave Paynter his first team debut when he was only 16 years and 294 days old on 3 May 2001 as a 61st-minute substitute at home to Walsall.
It was 10 months before he made a start, although he got a few more sub appearances, and Vale supporters had to wait until the start of the 2002-03 season for his first goal, after he’d replaced injured crowd favourite Steve McPhee in a home game against Wrexham.
Eventually, Paynter got into his stride and his popularity with the fans saw him voted Player of the Year in 2004-05.
His 34 goals in 158 games for Vale caught the eye of another former Albion manager, Peter Taylor, at then-Championship side Hull City.
Signed initially on loan, a fee of £150,000 took him on a permanent two-and-a-half-year contract to the KC Stadium in January 2006.
The following month Paynter turned out as a right-sided midfield player for a Football League Under-21 team (selected and managed by Taylor) in a game against an Italian Serie B side at the KC Stadium.
Taylor also experimented with him in the same position for Hull but, having scored only three times in 23 matches, Paynter was on the move again after only eight months.
He switched to Southend United, also in the Championship, for £200,000 in August 2006 and somewhat ironically, his only goal for the Shrimpers was scored against Brighton in a 3-2 League Cup win at Roots Hall in September 2006.
A lack of goals and a hamstring injury meant his stay in Essex was cut short and for the second half of the 2006-07 season he went on loan to League One Bradford City, where he managed four goals in 15 matches, including one on his debut.
On August deadline day in 2007, Paynter’s next move saw Paul Sturrock sign him for Swindon Town. Within a month he had netted a hat-trick against Bournemouth and added two more in a 5-0 win over Gillingham the following month.
It wasn’t all plain sailing for him, though, and after a two-month goal drought which had seen him lose his place, he told BBC Radio Swindon: “You can try and do too much and get caught up with it, but if you relax and get on with your game, I think it will come naturally.”
Paired with Simon Cox initially, Paynter got amongst the goals in support of the main man. But he stepped up a gear after Cox was sold to West Brom in the summer of 2009. His new strike partner was a young Charlie Austin and the pair enjoyed a rich seam of goalscoring form in the 2009-10 season under former Albion captain Danny Wilson.
Paynter had a spell where he scored 15 goals in 17 games and ended the season with 29 goals in 52 matches, his best goals-to-games ratio in a season. Swindon’s captain that season was none other than Gordon Greer, who remains a close friend of Paynter.
Four of Paynter’s goals had been scored against Leeds and, in the summer of 2010, he moved to Elland Road on a Bosman free transfer, with Wilson admitting to BBC Radio Wiltshire: “Anybody who scores nearly 30 goals in a season will be wanted by bigger clubs than us.”
Leeds boss Simon Grayson said: “He has matured as a player over the last couple of years and he had a fantastic season last season. He works ever so hard, holds the ball up well and he has proved he knows where the back of the net is.
“When we knew he was available we were desperate to get him. We feel he will be a good acquisition for the club, and I am delighted to have got him.”
Unfortunately, his time at Leeds didn’t start well when he picked up a shin stress fracture in a pre-season match in Slovakia, leading to him missing the start of the season.
It wasn’t until the second week of October that he was able to make his Leeds debut and starts were rare as Luciano Becchio and Davide Somma were Grayson’s preferred selection up front. Paynter didn’t register his first goal for Leeds until the following March, in a 2-1 win at Preston. It was his only goal in 23 matches that season.
As the 2011-12 season got under way, Grayson had added Mikael Forssell to his striking options and the manager encouraged Paynter to talk to other clubs, with Sheffield United and Brighton discussed as possible destinations.
Paynter preferred to stay and try to stake a claim for a place but, having only played once as a sub in the opening game of the season, he decided to make a three-month loan switch to Brighton at the end of October 2011.
On 29th October 2011, he made his Brighton debut as a 67th-minute substitute for Matt Sparrow in a 0-0 draw away to Birmingham City.
The first of his six starts came on 1 November in a 0-1 defeat at Watford. He came off the bench a further three times and, without troubling the scorers, returned to Elland Road in January.
Back at Leeds he had to wait until April before he was selected by new manager Neil Warnock for a home game against Peterborough United. Paynter scored twice in a 4-1 win and, when replaced by substitute Becchio in the final minute, left the field to a standing ovation. But he picked up an Achilles injury in the following game away to Blackpool and was made available for transfer at the end of the season.
Paynter earned a place in a planetfootball.com poll listing 13 of Leeds’ “worst and weirdest signings under Ken Bates” although he was good-humoured enough to acknowledge it in a 2018 Under the Cosh podcast.
“I’ve always said there’s some players that will be remembered for being good, there’s some players that will be remembered for being sh*te,” he said. “No one remembers the OK players. Take the positives out of a bad situation, in that way I will be remembered!”
It was former Brighton striker Dean Saunders who was responsible for Paynter’s next move, picking him up on a free transfer for League One Doncaster Rovers on 13 August 2012.
While Saunders left the Keep Moat Stadium in January 2013 to join Wolves, Paynter played his part in Rovers winning promotion back to the Championship under Brian Flynn, top-scoring with 15 goals as Rovers returned to the second tier as champions.
An anonymous Donny fan recalled: “He had some good games for us and made the pass from the missed penalty at Brentford that enabled (James) Coppinger to score and win us promotion. He is best played in the box. He causes all sorts of problems. He is a tough guy and takes no prisoners. I liked him but I would say League One is his limit.”
A familiar face in the shape of Brian Horton arrived as assistant manager to new Donny manager Paul Dickov (Flynn had been promoted to director of football) in the summer of 2013.
It must have given Paynter some satisfaction on 27 August 2013 when he scored in a League Cup tie at home to Leeds, although the visitors ran out 3-1 winners. However, that was his only goal and, after managing only one start and 11 appearances off the bench, up to Christmas, he was sent on loan to League One Sheffield United for the second half of the 2013-14 season.
An exiled Blades fan living in Leeds, ‘Blader’ said: “I am uninspired and don’t see this is a great signing. I’ve seen him play many a time and never seen him perform notably and he is a laughing stock in Leeds for how badly he performed.”
A blunt Blade
He made his debut as a sub against Notts County on 11 January 2014 but spent much of the time on the sub’s bench as manager Nigel Clough preferred to play with ‘a false 9’. Paynter made just six starts and came off the bench seven times but no goals were forthcoming. United finished seventh, one place off the play-off places, seven points adrift of sixth-placed Peterborough United.
Paynter was only a spectator as United remarkably reached the semi-final of the FA Cup, losing 5-3 at Wembley to Hull City, Jamie Murphy, later to play for Brighton, among the Blades scorers. A young Harry Maguire at the back for the Blades was named the League One player of the year.
The last three seasons of his playing career saw Paynter drop into League Two and he joined Carlisle United on the same day as former Albion midfielder Gary Dicker.
However, the season wasn’t even a month old when Graham Kavanagh lost his job as manager. His successor Keith Curle steered them to a fifth from bottom finish.
Paynter’s involvement was limited to 12 starts plus eight appearances off the bench and he and Dicker clashed with Curle when they sought PFA guidance after they were fined for allegedly failing to attend training sessions.
In the close season, Paynter headed 90 miles east to Hartlepool United, who’d just avoided dropping out of the league after finishing four points above Cheltenham Town.
The goal touch returned as Paynter top scored with 15 goals in 35 appearances as Hartlepool finished in 16th place courtesy of a decent run of wins in the spring under new boss Craig Hignett.
The managerial door revolved once more at Victoria Park the following season but Hignett’s successor Dave Jones (the former Southampton and Sheffield Wednesday boss) couldn’t prevent Hartlepool from heading out of the league, controversially parting company with the club with two games to go following an on-screen rant by United’s best known fan, Jeff Stelling.
Club captain Paynter, who had openly questioned Jones’ tactics in the local press, joined forces with fitness coach Stuart Parnaby to assist caretaker Matthew Bates for the final two fixtures.
It was one of those footballing fates moments that they needed a miracle against Paynter’s old club Doncaster in the final match and it was given a big build-up in the Mirror.
“Although we lost at Cheltenham last weekend, the lads had a lot more fight in them. I can understand it when players lose confidence or belief, but you can’t drop out of the Football League after 100 years without a fight,” he said.
“It’s one of those strange coincidences that we need to beat my old club to stand a chance of survival. I really enjoyed my time at Doncaster, and I’ll never forget that day we were promoted to the Championship, but I hope the supporters understand my loyalty is with Hartlepool now.”
Hartlepool hitman
Although Hartlepool won 2-1, they had been relying on other results going their way and Newport’s 2-1 win over Notts County 2-1 meant they stayed up and the North East side lost their league status. Having contributed just four goals in 26 matches, Paynter left the club.
While he attempted a brief extension to his playing career, training at non-league AFC Fylde, Southport and Warrington Town, he retired from playing in November 2017 and turned to coaching. He joined Everton’s academy in February 2018 before returning to his first club, Port Vale as professional development phase lead coach in October 2020.
On rejoining, he said: “It’s a joy to be back where it all started. Coming through PVFC’s Centre of Excellence from the age of 10, I know what the DNA of Port Vale is and what sort of players we should be producing.”
Pictures from various online sources and the Albion matchday programme.
ANDREW Crofts is one of that rare breed of player who had three separate spells at Brighton, although the latter time was only as player-coach with the under-23s.
The Welsh international midfielder returned to the Seagulls after only a month as player-coach at Yeovil Town when Liam Rosenior left the Albion to move to Derby County.
His signing as an over-age player as well as a coach was explained by technical director Dan Ashworth, who hailed the “innovative step” and told the club website: “The thinking behind the playing role is to have someone of his experience out there on the pitch alongside our younger players, and to impart that crucial knowledge he has gained from his time in the game.
“To have that experience out on the field, in the pressure situation of a game, will be of enormous benefit to our young players and have a positive impact on their collective and individual development.”
Crofts first joined the club in the summer of 2009 during Russell Slade’s managerial reign and, when Gus Poyet took over the managerial chair, he appointed Crofts as captain for his first game in charge.
The midfielder repaid the faith in that televised away game at St Mary’s on 15 November by scoring in Albion’s memorable 3-1 win. Crofts retained the armband through to the end of the season and his form had caught the attention of Championship side Norwich City.
Crofts made the switch to Carrow Road and played 44 games as Paul Lambert’s outfit won promotion to the Premier League in runners up spot.
In the top-flight, though, Crofts was no longer a mainstay of the midfield, starting just 15 matches in 2011-12, and coming off the bench on 10 occasions.
“Towards the end of the season I was in and out,” he told the Albion matchday programme in 2019. “Paul then went to Aston Villa and when the chance came up to return to the Albion I jumped at it.”
“It felt like coming home and I wanted to replicate what we had done with Norwich. It was a completely different club compared to the one I’d left, with the Amex Stadium and plans for the new training ground.”
Poyet wasted no time in seizing the chance to re-sign him, telling the club website: “When we knew about the possibility to bring him back we worked very hard to do that.
“I am delighted to have him back. He is going to be a very important player.
“He is coming back to a club that he knows and he was happy to come back – that shows his commitment,” said Poyet. “He leads by example and we want players like that on the pitch.”
Unfortunately, that season his playing time was limited by two long-term spells out injured, and the following season it got worse. After sustaining a serious cruciate knee ligament injury in January 2014, he was sidelined by an almost identical injury again in October 2014.
When the player suffered the first injury in an away game at Birmingham, Poyet’s successor, Oscar Garcia, said: “He will be a big loss and I feel sorry for Crofty. He has been excellent and has been a key player.”
Crofts battled over many months to regain fitness only to suffer a partial tear of his anterior cruciate ligament and a tear to the meniscus in a match against Watford in October 2014, putting paid to any involvement in the rest of the 2014-15 season.
Head coach Sami Hyypia told the club website: “We are all devastated for Crofty. He is an important member of our squad and worked incredibly hard to get back to full fitness after last season’s knee injury.
“Crofty is a very strong character and he will continue to receive the best possible care and treatment from our medical staff throughout his rehabilitation.”
Unfortunately for him, by the time he was fit again, another new manager was in place and Dale Stephens and Beram Kayal were firmly established as Chris Hughton’s preferred midfield pairing. So, in March 2016, Albion loaned him back to his first club, Gillingham, until the end of the season.
On leaving the Seagulls that summer, he moved to Charlton Athletic under his former Albion boss Slade, on a one-year contract, and made a total of 54 appearances for the Addicks.
Although born in Chatham, Kent, Crofts qualified to play for Wales because his grandfather hailed from the principality. He earned a total of 29 caps, spread over 13 seasons, initially under John Toshack, most coming under Gary Speed, before making his final appearance against Panama in November 2017, in Chris Coleman’s last game as Wales manager.
Crofts v Rooney in a Wales v England match
Welsh international
Crofts was on Chelsea’s books from the age of 10 to 15, going through the ranks with John Terry, with whom he shared digs. One of his coaches was ex-Albion and Chelsea defender Gary Chivers. After being released by Chelsea, he linked up with Gillingham as a trainee and worked his way through the youth and reserve sides, making a surprise first team debut against Watford in May 2001 when only 16.
It wasn’t until 2004 and 2005 that he became a first team regular. His first Gills goal was scored in the Championship clash at the Withdean Stadium on Boxing Day 2004 when the Seagulls won 2-1.
Crofts eventually took over the captaincy at Gillingham but, after the side were relegated to League One, manager Mark Stimson believed the role was too much of a burden on the player. After more than 200 appearances for the Gills, he was made available for transfer and, in 2008-09, went out on loan to Peterborough United and then Conference side Wrexham under former Albion striker Dean Saunders.
When he joined Albion on a free transfer in June 2009, boss Slade said: “He’s an international player so that’s not bad for a start. He’s got good pedigree and was an important player for a good Gillingham team at the time.
“He can sit in for you defensively or he can get forward. He has got a good work ethic and I’m pleased to get him.”
Towards the end of his league playing days, Crofts had spells at Scunthorpe United in 2017-18 then Newport County for the 2018-19 season, playing under his former Gillingham teammate Michael Flynn, who he played alongside at Priestfield between 2005 and 2007,
Flynn made his old pal captain and said: “He’s a gentleman and he’s somebody I trust a lot. So signing him was really a no-brainer.
“Andrew coming in is a massive signing for the club. He’s the ultimate professional and he’s in fantastic condition.”
Crofts himself said: “I played with Michael Flynn at Gillingham and he was a winner. I loved playing with him and I can’t wait to play for him now with him being my gaffer.”
Unfortunately, injury issues restricted Crofts to just 12 appearances for Newport and he was released at the end of the season.
On leaving County, Crofts moved to Yeovil Town as player-coach with manager Darren Sarll saying: “To bring a player of Andrew’s experience into the club at this time is a great coup.
“He still has a thirst and hunger for playing and winning promotions and it’s refreshing to be part of the very early stages of his coaching career.
“He’ll be a valuable asset to the squad both as a player and in terms of passing on his experience and knowledge to the younger members of the squad.”
But then the opening arose with the Albion and he didn’t hesitate to return. When Graham Potter left the Albion, Crofts temporarily took on the head coach position and was retained as a first team coach under Roberto De Zerbi and his successor, Fabian Hurzeler.
• In an interview with Andy Naylor of The Athletic in December 2020, Crofts talked at length about his career, his coaching ambitions and some of the big names he played alongside.
ARGUABLY the finest captain in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history went on to have a far less successful spell as the club’s manager having also been a boss at the highest level, at Maine Road, Manchester.
The £30,000 signing of tenacious midfielder Brian Horton from Port Vale on the eve of transfer deadline day in March 1976 proved to be one of the most inspirational moments of Peter Taylor’s managerial tenure at the Albion and for such a fee was widely hailed as “an absolute steal”.
Even though Taylor didn’t hang around long enough to reap the benefit of the man he instantly installed as captain, his successor Alan Mullery certainly did.
In the early days after his appointment, there was some suggestion Mullery would be a player-manager but the former Spurs and England captain reassured a concerned Horton that wouldn’t be the case, admitting that he wouldn’t get in ahead of him anyway!
“Fortunately, that next year went really well. It was my best year without a doubt,” Horton told Evening Argus reporter Jamie Baker. “I’d never met Alan Mullery, and he’d probably never heard of me, so I was delighted and surprised when he made me his captain.”
It was the beginning of a strong bond between captain and manager and Horton added: “We had that relationship for all the five years I was with him.
“That first season was great. We went 20 odd games unbeaten and I was scoring left, right and centre, and I was very proud to be voted player of the year.
“Suddenly everything was coming right for me, although we were disappointed not to beat Mansfield for the championship because we felt we were far better than them.
“You’ve got to hand a lot of our success down to Alan Mullery. He was a terrific motivator of players. He was a bubbly character and it used to rub off on players.
“He was new to the game of management but he brought fresh ideas, and he’d been under some top managers as a player.
“The team spirit during those first three years was incredible. When you are winning games every week it makes a hell of a difference and we had that for three years. You just couldn’t describe how good the team spirit was.
“My treasured memory will always be of the day we beat Newcastle to clinch promotion to the First Division. It was even greater because I scored the first goal. It had always been my ambition to play in the First Division and now I had achieved it.”
In an inauspicious start, Horton found himself in the referee’s notebook as Albion were hammered 4-0 by Arsenal as the season opened at the Goldstone. After a narrower defeat away to Aston Villa, the next game was away to Man City – and Horton had the chance to earn the Seagulls their first top level point.
On 25 August 1979, Albion were trailing 3-2 when Horton had the chance to equalise from the penalty spot with only eight minutes of the game left. But the normally reliable spot-kick taker fluffed his lines, meaning Albion succumbed to their third defeat in a row.
While the superior opposition was clearly testing the Seagulls, it was testament to the resilient skipper that he was continuing to lead them having started out in the third tier and, on 20 December 1980, before a 1-0 home win over Aston Villa, he received a cut-glass decanter from chairman Mike Bamber to mark his 200th league appearance for the Seagulls.
As the 1980-81 season drew to a close, Albion were perilously close to the drop but four wins on the trot (3-0 at Palace, 2-1 at home to Leicester, 2-1 at Sunderland and 2-0 at home to Leeds) took them to safety. What Horton didn’t realise was the Leeds game would be his last for the Albion (as it also was for Mark Lawrenson, Peter O’Sullivan and John Gregory).
“I’d bought a house in Hove Park off Mike Bamber and I was sunbathing that summer when there was a knock at the door. It was Alan Mullery come to tell me he’d just resigned,” Horton told interviewer Phil Shaw in issue 26 of the superb retro football magazine, Back Pass.
Mullery told him how he’d quit over the proposed Lawrenson transfer, how O’Sullivan and Gregory were off as well, and that the club wanted to sell him too, for £100,000.
Although Mullery advised him to sit tight because he still had a year left on his contract, new boss Mike Bailey – with a swap deal involving Luton’s Republic of Ireland international, Tony Grealish, lined up – told him he’d have to fight for his place and would have the captaincy taken from him.
“I said I didn’t want to go, that I loved the club and the fans, that I’d bought a house, and, at 31 I thought I had two or three good years left.
“I spoke to Mike Bamber and he said: ‘I don’t want you to go but I have to back the manager’.” Horton felt he had no option but to make the move.
He chose the platform of the Argus to thank the supporters for the backing they’d always given him and said his one disappointment was that he didn’t get the chance to lead Albion at a Cup Final. “That I would have really loved.”
Looking ahead, he added: “The Luton move gives me a new challenge. You can get in a rut if you stay at one club too long. Six years at Port Vale and five and a half at the Albion is enough. It will probably put a little sparkle back into my game.”
And so, Horton went to Kenilworth Road and under David Pleat the Hatters won the 1981-82 Second Division championship by eight points clear of arch rivals Watford. Looking back in his interview with Back Pass, Horton reckoned two of his Luton teammates, David Moss and Ricky Hill, were up there alongside Lawrenson as the best players he’d played alongside.
An all-too-familiar tale of struggle in the top division saw Luton needing to win at Maine Road in the last game of the season to ensure their safety, and Raddy Antic scored a winner six minutes from time that preserved Town’s status and sent City down.
Television cameras memorably captured the sight of Pleat skipping across the turf at the end of the game and planting a kiss on Horton’s cheek.
After one more year at the top level, he began his managerial career as player-manager of Hull City in 1984, working for the mercurial Don Robinson, and steered them to promotion to the old Division Two at the end of his first season in charge. He is fondly remembered by Hull followers, as demonstrated in this fan blog.
When he parted company with the Tigers in April 1988, his old Brighton teammate Lawrenson, by then manager of Oxford United, invited him to become his assistant. United at the time were owned by Kevin Maxwell, son of the highly controversial Robert Maxwell.
When Dean Saunders, who Brighton had sold to Oxford for £70,000, was sold against Lawrenson’s wishes – astonishingly he went to Derby for £1million – Lawrenson quit. Horton took over as manager and stayed in charge for five years, during which time he recruited former Albion teammate Steve Foster to be his captain.
Horton’s managerial break into the big time came in August 1993 when Man City sacked Peter Reid as manager four games into the 1993-94 season. Horton didn’t need to think twice about taking up the role, even though City fans were asking ‘Brian who?’
In Neil McNab, Horton recruited to his backroom team a former playing colleague who’d been a City favourite. “I played with McNab at Brighton and knew his strengths and knew he was well liked here,” he told bluemoon-mcfc.co.uk.
Horton brought in Paul Walsh, Uwe Rossler and Peter Beagrie and City managed to stay up.
The new boss acquired the services of Nicky Summerbee (to follow in the footsteps of his famous father Mike) along with Garry Flitcroft and Steve Lomas and at one point City were as high as sixth in the table.
It was Horton’s bad luck that when City legend Francis Lee took over the club from previous owner Peter Swales, he was always looking to install his own man in the hot seat, and Lee eventually got his way and replaced Horton with Lee’s old England teammate Alan Ball.
Ball took City down the following season while Horton embarked on a nomadic series of managerial appointments either on his own or in tandem with Phil Brown.
Initially he was boss of Huddersfield Town; then he was a popular appointment when he took over as Albion boss during their exile playing at Gillingham, but, because he wanted to live back in the north, he left in February 1999 to join another of his former clubs, Port Vale.
He led Vale for five years and pitched up next at the helm of Macclesfield Town, where, on 3 November 2004, he marked his 1,000th game as a manager. It was at Macclesfield where one of his players was the self-same Graham Potter whose stewardship of Swansea City came mightily close to upsetting City in the 2019 FA Cup quarter-finals.
A bad start to the 2006-07 season saw him relieved of his duties in September 2006 but, by the following May, he was back in the game as Brown’s no.2 at Hull City. In March 2010, he was briefly caretaker manager following Brown’s departure, until the Tigers appointed Iain Dowie.
In June 2013, he was appointed assistant manager to Paul Dickov at Doncaster Rovers, a role he filled for two years before linking up with Brown once again during his tenure at Southend United. Horton was his ‘football co-ordinator’ but left the club in January 2018. He followed Brown to Swindon Town but, in May 2018, decided not to continue in his role as assistant manager.
Born in the Staffordshire coal-mining village of Hednesford on 4 February 1949, Horton went to its Blake Secondary Modern School. Spotted playing football for the Staffordshire Schools side and the Birmingham and District Schools team, the Wolves-supporting youngster was awarded a two-year apprenticeship at Walsall when he was 15.
But, at 17, his hopes of a professional career were dashed when he wasn’t taken on. He ended up finding work in the building trade while continuing his football with Hednesford Town in the West Midlands (Regional) League.
He played at that level for four seasons and it was there he acquired the moniker Nobby because he gained a reputation for World Cup winner Stiles-like aggression. It was a nickname that stuck.
At the time, he was playing up front and scoring a lot of goals so he caught the attention of a few league clubs, but only Gordon Lee at Port Vale made a move. Lee sealed the deal by buying the Town secretary a pint of shandy and promising to take Vale to play Hednesford in a friendly.
Vale had little money so the squad was made up of free transfer signings but Horton said it made them strong collectively with “a fantastic spirit” and it wasn’t long before he was made their captain.
Vale legend Roy Sproson took over from Lee as manager and in March 1976 the cash-strapped Potteries outfit were forced to sell their prize asset.
When Vale headed to Selhurst Park that month, Crystal Palace player-coach Terry Venables got a message to Horton before the game urging him to sit tight until the summer and they’d sign him then. But Albion stole a march on their rivals and Sproson told him: “I’m sorry but we’re selling you to Brighton for thirty grand. We need the money.”
Funnily enough, the previous summer Horton had a chance holiday encounter in Ibiza with Albion’s Peter O’Sullivan. He later told the Argus: “Sully asked me if I fancied a move. Little was I to know that I would be joining him soon after. There was a wealth of ability in the Albion side when I joined them and it was outrageous that we didn’t go up that year.
“I felt they had to go places and I wanted to be part of it. I’d never been in a promotion side but then to be made captain of it was really the icing on the cake.”
Albion’s gain was certainly a loss to two other clubs who’ve since encountered similar troubles in their past. Horton explained: “I knew clubs were interested although Roy Sproson said he wouldn’t let me go to another Third Division team. I think he released me to Brighton because at the time they looked certain for promotion.
“Also, it was the highest bid they’d had. Hereford and Plymouth had offered £25,000 and I would have been happy to have gone to either club.”
DARREN Hughes won the FA Youth Cup with Everton but it was lower down the league where he built a long career which included a season with second tier Brighton & Hove Albion.
Born in Prescot on Merseyside on 6 October 1965, left-back Hughes played for Everton in two successive FA Youth Cup finals.
He was on the losing side against Norwich City in 1983 (when among his Everton teammates was centre forward Mark Farrington, who later proved to be a disastrous signing for Barry Lloyd’s Brighton).
The tie went to a third game after it was 5-5 on aggregate over the first two legs. The Canaries won the decider 1-0 at Goodison Park. The following year, Hughes was a scorer, and collected a winners’ medal, as Everton beat Stoke City 4-2 on aggregate.
Meanwhile, the young Hughes had broken into Everton’s first team as an understudy to stalwart John Bailey, making his Everton debut two days after Christmas in 1983.
Unfortunately, the game ended in a 3-0 defeat away to Wolverhampton Wanderers, for whom former Albion winger Tony Towner was playing.
It wasn’t until May 1985 that Hughes next got a first team opportunity, featuring in a 4-1 defeat to Coventry City at Highfield Road and a 2-0 defeat to Luton Town – manager Howard Kendall resting some of the first-choice players after the League title had already been won and ahead of the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final against Rapid Vienna.
With the experienced Bailey and Pat Van Den Hauwe in front of Hughes in the pecking order, Kendall gave the youngster a free transfer at the end of the season, and he joined Second Division Shrewsbury Town, where he made 46 appearances.
Hughes played against Albion for Shrewsbury at Gay Meadow on 16 September 1986, and, two weeks’ later, Alan Mullery, back in charge of the Seagulls for a second spell, signed the 21-year-old for a £30,000 fee.
Not for the first time, hard-up Albion had devised a scheme to raise transfer funds from supporters, and the money for the purchase of Hughes came from the Lifeline fund which also helped Mullery to buy goalkeeper John Keeley for £1,500 from non-league Chelmsford and striker Gary Rowell, from Middlesbrough.
Hughes made his Albion debut in a 3-0 defeat at home to Birmingham in the Full Members Cup on 1 October 1986 and his first league match came in a 1—0 home win over Stoke City three days later.
“I was quite happy at Shrewsbury,” Hughes told matchday programme interviewer, Tony Norman. “But when the manager told me Brighton were interested in signing me I thought it would be another step up the ladder. It’s a bigger club with better prospects and it’s a nice town as well.”
The single lad, whose parents were living in Widnes, moved into digs in Hove run by Val and Dave Tillson. He was later joined there by Kevan Brown, another new signing, from Southampton.
Brown, in a similar programme feature, said Hughes had been a big help in him settling into his new surroundings. “He has been showing me around the area and we’ve become good friends,” he said. “I’m glad I wasn’t put in a hotel on my own.”
Unfortunately for Hughes, life on the pitch didn’t go quite according to plan.
Mullery was somewhat controversially sacked on 5 January 1987 and, although Hughes played 16 games under successor Lloyd, those games yielded only two wins and the Albion finished the season rock bottom of the division.
The only consolation for Hughes was scoring in a 2-0 home win over Crystal Palace on 20 April. His final appearance in a Seagulls shirt came in a 1-0 home defeat to Leeds when he was subbed off in favour of youngster David Gipp.
Having played only 29 games, mostly in midfield, for Brighton, Hughes joined Third Division Port Vale in September 1987, initially on loan, before a £5,000 fee made the deal permanent.
It must have given him some satisfaction to score for his new employer in a 2-0 win against Brighton that very same month.
Hughes spent seven years with the Valiants, helping them to win promotion from the Third Division in 1989, making a total of 222 appearances, mainly as a left back.
His time with Vale was punctuated by two bad injuries – a hernia and a ruptured thigh muscle – and they released him in February 1994.
However, he gradually managed to restore his fitness and in 1995, between January and November, he played 22 games for Third Division Northampton Town.
He then moved to Exeter City, at the time managed by former goalkeeper Peter Fox, where he made a total of 67 appearances before leaving the West Country club at the end of the 1996-97 season.
He ended his career in non-league football with Morecambe and Newcastle Town but could look back on a total of 388 league and cup appearances for six clubs over a 14-year career.
After his playing days were over, according to Where Are They Now? he set up a construction business.
MICK FERGUSON was a prolific goalscorer for Coventry City but the goals dried up in spells with Everton and Brighton & Hove Albion.
Ferguson’s arrival at the Goldstone in the early autumn of 1984 was certainly not amid a great fanfare. The Albion, under new chairman Bryan Bedson, were wrestling with debt and, to bring in some much-needed funds, sold striker Alan Young to Notts County for £50,000 and full-back Mark Jones to Birmingham for £30,000.
Needing a cut-price replacement for Young, and with Ferguson unwanted at Birmingham having been responsible for getting them relegated (see below), he came to the Goldstone as part of the deal that took Jones to St Andrews.
In modern-day football, loan players don’t generally play against their parent clubs but, amazingly, at the end of the previous season, Ferguson was allowed to play against Birmingham while on loan at his old club Coventry, and ended up scoring a goal that kept the Sky Blues in the top division but sent Birmingham down.
As the article explains, shortly before the player’s 30th birthday, manager Ron Saunders offloaded him to Brighton, where the manager was Ferguson’s former Coventry teammate, Chris Cattlin. Just to prolong Saunders’ agony, Ferguson made his Seagulls debut in a 2-0 home win… over Birmingham! This time he didn’t score. And, for Brighton, that state of affairs existed for several months.
I remember his second game quite vividly. It was a midweek league cup tie away to Fourth Division Aldershot and I went to the game with my pal Colin Snowball, who at that time was living in nearby Bagshot. There wasn’t anything subtle about Albion’s tactics that night. Goalkeeper Graham Moseley would kick the ball long for Ferguson to get on the end of it.
But, as the striker tried to lay it off, all he succeeded in doing was heading it into touch – repeatedly. The new signing did not impress! Despite their superior status in the league, Albion succumbed 3-0 in what was a pretty humiliating exit. Ferguson was remarkably selected for the following Saturday’s game, an away defeat to Oxford, after which he was omitted for four games. Cattlin gave him another chance with a four-game spell but still the dismal form continued and he didn’t get another look-in for four months.
Freelance journalist Spencer Vignes did a retrospective article about Ferguson for the Albion matchday programme and discovered the striker didn’t have a high opinion of his former playing colleague. “Several of the players just didn’t get along with him, and I was one of them,” he said. “His man-management skills left a lot to be desired. As a manager you need to have the players on-side. Chris certainly didn’t have us on-side.”
Ferguson admitted to being frustrated by Cattlin chopping and changing the side and said there were times he turned out when only 80 per cent fit, which didn’t do justice to himself, the team or the supporters. “My ankles weren’t great and towards the end I did struggle with my back, but I felt when I was fit I could certainly do a good job.”
The striker felt with the ability in the squad at the time they should have achieved more but pointed the finger at Cattlin for it not happening. “Some people aren’t cut out for management and I don’t think Chris was. It doesn’t surprise me that he never worked as a manager again.”
The history books (many thanks to Tim Carder and Roger Harris) recall him as the goalscorer in a 1-1 draw away to Portsmouth on 6 April 1986 but, having been to that game too, I seem to recall it was a rather desperate claim for what looked more like an own goal by Noel Blake.
The start of the following season saw the arrival of former £1m striker Justin Fashanu from Notts County and Dean Saunders, a free transfer from Swansea City, so Ferguson’s prospects of a starting place looked bleak.
However, the 1985-86 season was not very old before Cattlin had a striker crisis on his hands. Gerry Ryan was out long-term with the horrific leg break from which he never recovered, Terry Connor and summer signing Fashanu were also sidelined with injury and a big man was needed to play alongside Alan Biley.
Cattlin had little choice but to bring back the previously mis-firing Ferguson, and to everyone’s surprise and delight his goal touch returned, albeit briefly.
“I was virtually forced into the team through injury,” Ferguson admitted in a matchday programme interview. “But, fortunately, things turned out quite well. It was nice to get a goal against Blackburn in my first match back. That seemed to pave the way.”
The programme article had tried to give some perspective to the dismal form when he had first arrived. It said: “Mick’s confidence was affected by his loss of form, but he never lost an inner belief that he would pull himself out of the bad patch. And what a difference the goals make. He has shown great character this season and did a marvellous job for the team while Justin Fashanu was out with injury.”
Ferguson himself said: “It took us quite a while to settle down. We were in a flat at first and I was having a lot of problems, one way and the other, so it wasn’t an easy time.”
Eventually Ferguson, his wife and two daughters settled into a house in Hove, and the striker admitted: “When you’re having a bad time there is a tendency to bring your problems home. It’s unfair on your family. I didn’t notice at the time, but, looking back, I think I probably was a little snappy with my wife and children.
“I think you can reach the stage where you really start to wonder, but I always knew I could score goals for Brighton. I’ve scored goals everywhere else I’ve played. It was just a question of time and waiting for the right break.”
Indeed, Ferguson scored in three successive matches in September 1985, prompting Cattlin to give him a special mention in his programme notes for the league cup game at home to Bradford City. “The form of Mick Ferguson is bound to improve even more with the confidence he is gaining through his three goals in three games,” wrote the manager. “His header against Wimbledon was a true indication of his ability; it was of the highest class.”
The renewed confidence saw him add another consecutive pair the following month – before on-loan Martin Keown took over the no.9 shirt and demonstrated he could score goals as well as defend!
Sadly, the revival in Ferguson’s fortunes were not to last. When Fashanu was fit again, Ferguson was dropped and only stepped in a couple more times. His goal in a 4-3 home win over Huddersfield on 16 November was the last he scored for the club.
Apart from a lone outing in January, in a 3-0 defeat at Sheffield United, Ferguson was on the outside looking in until, to everyone’s astonishment, after a five-week absence from first team action, he was selected by Cattlin to lead the line in a FA Cup Sixth Round tie against First Division Southampton on 8 March 1986.
Ferguson, sandwiched between Kevin Bond and Jimmy Case, is foiled by Southampton goalkeeper Peter Shilton in what turned out to be the striker’s final Brighton game.
A crowd of 25,069 packed into the Goldstone – when the average attendance at the time often dipped below 10,000 – but it ended in a disappointing 2-0 defeat and the manager admitted he had made a mistake with his selection. It turned out to be Ferguson’s last game for the club.
Just over three weeks later, he moved to fourth-tier Colchester United – whose manager Cyril Lea was promptly sacked!
United’s reserve team manager, Mike Walker (who would later manage Everton) took over the first team as caretaker and, as the team went on an unbeaten run of eight games, Ferguson scored seven times, the first of which came in a 4-0 win over Leyton Orient on 8 April.
The following season he played 19 games and scored four times before leaving on 7 November 1986 to join non-league Wealdstone.
It was quite a fall from the heady days of the early Seventies.
Born in Newcastle on 3 October 1954, Ferguson was picked up by Coventry City’s youth scheme in 1970 and, although he made his debut in 1975, shortly after the sale of Scotland international Colin Stein, it wasn’t until the start of the 1976-77 season that he became a Highfield Road regular.
The article reckoned he was strongly tipped for international honours at one point but injury and loss of form affected him over the next two seasons. Forest, Villa and Ipswich were all supposedly keen to sign him, with Brian Clough agreeing a £500,000 deal, then pulling out.
However, in the summer of 1981, he finally left City having scored 57 goals in 141 games (plus eight sub appearances) all in the top flight when Everton paid £280,000 for him. Ferguson scored six times in his first eight games – but the goals dried up after that and he was gone within less than a year having made only made 10 appearances (plus two as a sub).
Manager Howard Kendall initially loaned him to Birmingham City, before making the deal permanent, but injury disrupted his chances at St Andrews, hence the loan move back to Coventry.
After retiring from playing in 1987, Ferguson stayed in the game working in community development roles for Sunderland – for 10 years, until he fell out with manager Peter Reid – Newcastle United and Leeds United, where he was head of Football in the Community.
Pictures from Albion matchday programes and, via YouTube, from Coventry City’s Sky Blues TV.
ARGUABLY the finest captain in Brighton & Hove Albion’s history went on to have a far less successful spell as the club’s manager having also been a boss at the highest level, at Maine Road, Manchester.
DARREN Hughes won the FA Youth Cup with Everton but it was lower down the league where he built a long career which included a season with second tier Brighton & Hove Albion.
Ferguson, sandwiched between Kevin Bond and Jimmy Case, is foiled by Southampton goalkeeper Peter Shilton in what turned out to be the striker’s final Brighton game.
In parallel lines 