Tag: Howard Wilkinson

Toon scourge Ian Baird no stranger to red cards

A GOALSCORING scourge of Newcastle United once pulled on the famous black and white stripes – and was booked in three of the five games he played for them!

Baird, who notoriously got himself sent off in the crucial last ever game Brighton played at the Goldstone Ground, led the line in an infamously fiery New Year’s Day derby between Newcastle and Sunderland when the Toon won 3-1 courtesy of a hat-trick by Peter Beardsley.

Jeff Clarke, who’d previously spent seven years at Sunderland and had five games on loan at Brighton at the start of that season, was at the back for Newcastle and future Albion veteran Clive Walker was in attack for the visitors.

A crowd of 36,529 watched the First Division fixture on 1 January 1985 when Sunderland were reduced to nine men through the sendings off of Howard Gayle and Gary Bennett. Baird was one of five bookings made by ref David Scott.

It was Baird’s fourth match for Newcastle after England World Cup winner Jack Charlton signed him on loan from Southampton. He made his debut three days before Christmas 1984 in a 4-0 defeat away to Aston Villa when his former England Schoolboys strike partner Paul Rideout scored a hat-trick. Baird’s only goal for United came in a Boxing Day 2-1 defeat at West Brom.

Three days later, as United lost 3-1 at home to Arsenal, Baird’s involvement was from the bench as a sub for David McCreery. His last game, on 12 January, was another tonking, 4-0 away to champions-in-waiting Everton.

Five years after his Toon cameo, Baird twice stymied Newcastle’s hopes of promotion from the second tier, scoring against them for Leeds in a 1-0 win in December 1989 (it turned out to be his last goal for them) and, after he’d fallen out with manager Howard Wilkinson and been transferred to Middlesbrough in January 1990, netted twice for Boro as they beat Newcastle 4-1 in the last game of the season.

Baird nets for Boro against the Toon

Leeds finished that campaign as second tier champions (Newcastle, who by then had Mark McGhee up front, were five points behind in third place) and Baird’s goals in Boro’s win put paid to the Magpies’ hopes of automatic promotion. To add salt to the wound, Newcastle lost to Sunderland in the semi-final of the play-offs.

Six years later Baird was Brighton’s captain in the penultimate must-win game of the season, when Doncaster Rovers were the visitors.

Albion needed all three points to give themselves a chance of avoiding relegation out of the league when they travelled to Hereford the following week for the final fixture of that tumultuous season.

What they really didn’t need was for the captain to get himself sent off after just 18 minutes of the match!

Talking to The Athletic about it in a 2022 interview, Baird recalled: “I was fired up for it. Darren (Moore) had come right through me, literally in the first minute. The referee didn’t give anything.

“Then he came through me again, and the referee gave a foul. The third time, I lost it. I just turned around and tried to wallop him. There was a big melee. Everyone knew what was at stake.”

Both players were dismissed (it was one of 11 sendings off in Baird’s career) and thankfully Stuart Storer’s memorably-scrambled goal in the 67th minute settled the game in Albion’s favour, although Baird admitted: “It was nerve-racking. I felt guilty that I’d let my team-mates down, let everybody down by getting sent off. It was a massive relief when we won.”

Thankfully, disciplinary rules were different back then (bans were only applied 14 days after the offence) and Baird was able to play his part in the match at Hereford when a 1-1 draw ensured Albion stayed up and The Bulls went down.

Baird’s exploits for the Albion highlighted in the matchday programme

Brighton were the tenth and last league club Baird had played for and he had only ended up with the Seagulls because of a pre-season falling out with Plymouth Argyle manager Neil Warnock.

Living near Southampton, only a 15-minute drive from Brighton manager Jimmy Case, a move east along the coast made good geographical sense, and a £35,000 fee took him to the Goldstone at the start of the 1996-97 season.

“Whenever I’d played against Brighton, I seemed to score,” Baird told The Athletic. “I loved the Goldstone Ground and there was the lure of playing for Jimmy.”

Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, Baird had moved to Southampton with his family, via Glasgow, when he was a young lad, his father having sailed from the port when he worked on the Queen Mary.

After surviving meningitis as a six-year-old, Baird’s footballing ability saw him turn out for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools. He joined Southampton on schoolboy terms after he’d been spotted in the same boys’ team, Sarisbury Sparks, as Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.

Baird won two England schoolboy caps: he was in England’s Victory Shield team that beat Wales 2-1 at Wrexham’s Racecourse Ground on 27 April 1979, playing alongside Rideout and winger Mark Walters, who went on to star for Aston Villa, Rangers and Liverpool.

In the same competition, he also played at St James’ Park – two days after Brighton had won 3-1 on the same pitch to win promotion to the top division for the first time in the club’s history.

On 7 May 1979, young England drew 1-1 with Scotland and 14-year-old Rideout’s goal was enough to enable England to retain the Victory Shield. The following month, Baird was an unused sub when England drew 2-2 with West Germany at Wembley.

A Saint with hair!

Baird was offered pro terms by Swindon, but he chose instead to sign for his adopted home town club. However, with McMenemy preferring the more experienced Frank Worthington and Joe Jordan, Baird was restricted to 21 starts and three sub appearances for Saints, and, after that loan spell at Newcastle, he moved to Leeds.

His two spells at Leeds (sandwiched either side of an unhappy time at Portsmouth) produced 50 goals in more than 160 appearances and he was in the Leeds side alongside Mervyn Day and Micky Adams that lost the 1986-87 Division Two play-off final to a Charlton Athletic team that included his future Brighton boss Steve Gritt and teammate John Humphrey.

Baird scored 19 goals that season for Billy Bremner’s side, four of them in the FA Cup as United reached the semi-final where they were beaten 3-2 by eventual cup winners Coventry City.

He had taken Saints’ teammate Jordan’s advice to move to Leeds and his next move was to Scotland where Jordan was in charge of Hearts. He later played under the Scottish international striker at Bristol City too.

The Pilgrim who fell out with Neil Warnock

Baird scored six in 29 appearances for Plymouth before that move to Brighton. Discipline might have been a problem but Baird scored eight goals in 10 games from January 1997 as nine wins and a draw at the Goldstone went a huge way to enabling Albion to escape the drop.

As Albion began the 1997-98 season in exile at Gillingham, Baird began the campaign with a three-match ban for that red card against Doncaster — and it wasn’t long before he was seeing red again!

It came in the 13th game of the season and it was certainly unlucky for Baird, well, unlucky in that a linesman spotted his off-the-ball headbutt on a Chester defender. Gritt publicly condemned Baird’s “out of order” behaviour and stripped him of the captaincy.

The following month, with another knee operation required, a surgeon advised him to pack in the game and he left Brighton in December that year having scored 14 goals in 41 appearances in 16 months.

“At least we kept Brighton up,” he told The Athletic. “There were a multitude of problems, it was a weird period, but it was a big thing.”

Post-Brighton, Baird ended up coaching in Hong Kong and was put in charge of the national side for three Asian Cup qualifiers, playing in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people. “It was certainly an experience, that is for sure,” he said.

Baird eventually returned to Hampshire, developed business interests in the vehicle sales and leasing and sports gear industries, while keeping his football links going in non-league circles: at Eastleigh, Sutton United and Havant & Waterlooville.

Baird certainly never ducked a challenge

Stadium lure too distant for promotion winner Peter Taylor

PETER TAYLOR steered Albion to promotion from the third tier in 2002 – a feat his namesake as Brighton boss fell short of achieving back in 1976.

The younger Taylor, who played for and managed arch rivals Crystal Palace, had quite an extraordinary managerial career – from taking charge of the England international side, when he appointed David Beckham as captain, to taking the reins at Isthmian League side Maldon & Tiptree at the age of 69.

He took the helm at third-placed third-tier Brighton in October 2001 after being sacked by Premier League Leicester City – who had created the Albion vacancy by recruiting manager Micky Adams to work as no.2 to newly-appointed Dave Bassett.

Starting at the Albion

Taylor revealed that it was on Adams’ advice that he accepted Albion’s offer. “Micky said they were a close bunch, a confident group and happy with each other,” Taylor told The Guardian. “My job now is to carry on the good work he has started.”

In dropping down two divisions Taylor returned to the level of a previous success, when he guided Gillingham to the First Division via (via a play-off final win over Wigan Athletic). In less than two years he went from the Second Division to the Premiership – managed England for one game along the way – and back again.

“I’ve not lost any self-belief after what happened at Leicester,” said Taylor. “I don’t feel I have anything to prove. Leicester is in the past now as far as I am concerned. I am not worried about the level I am managing at. Brighton has fantastic potential, particularly in size of support, and it is my job now to fulfil it.”

Albion press officer Paul Camillin wrote in the matchday programme: “Micky’s replacement is a man whose coaching ability is unquestionable. Here is a man who not so long ago was taking England training sessions under the gaze of Sven Goran Eriksson,”

Taylor’s knowledge of the game spanned all four divisions and beyond and Camillin pointed out: “He was the overwhelming choice of the board of directors.”

Indeed, chairman Dick Knight said: “Peter Taylor’s management experience at both Nationwide and higher levels of football make him ideal for the Albion.

“He quickly identified with the ambition and potential here and I’m very pleased he has chosen to join us.”

Top scorer Bobby Zamora was also delighted, telling The Guardian: “When I heard the list of who was being put forward, Peter Taylor was the name that stood out. He has proven his ability and has got an obvious wealth of experience.”

In young Zamora, Taylor inherited a magnificent key to unlock defences. One player he did bring in who also made a difference was a lanky goalscoring midfielder called Junior Lewis (remarkably Taylor also signed him for four of his other clubs – Dover, Hull, Gillingham and Leicester) and his contribution certainly helped to cement the title.

Working alongside Bob Booker

“Junior did exactly what he had done for me at Gillingham, which is make the team play more football,” Taylor told Nick Szczepanik.  “He wasn’t easy on the eye, but he was always available to get the ball from defenders and got it to the strikers and was very useful.”

While Taylor’s eight months as manager of Brighton culminated in promotion, he was never really credited with the success because many said he achieved it with Adams’ team.

“Micky had done the hard work because he signed all the squad before I got there, and they had done well so the last thing I was going to do was to change too much,” Taylor told Szczepanik, in an interview for the club website. “He had built a team with a great spirit.

“You could see why we went on to win the division because the squad was full of incredible characters – not just experienced professionals but good professionals who were desperate to do well for the club.”

Citing the experience and ability of Danny Cullip, he made special reference to “the greatest asset” Zamora, saying: “He was an incredible player and miles too good for that level.

“Simon Morgan was another one. What a great defender – and yet he could hardly train because he had two bad knees. Whenever he played, he was such a good organiser at the back that we were always solid.”

Unfortunately, Taylor didn’t help to endear himself to Albion’s public when he quit within days of the victory parade along the seafront, but deep down not too many people could blame him considering the limitations prevailing at the time.

“People will think I was stupid to leave the club after we won the league but I think everyone understands the reasons, which were because of the budget I thought I’d need to keep them up and the new stadium not being as close as Dick promised in my interview,” Taylor explained.

“Some people assumed I must have a new job lined up, maybe at Palace, but no, I didn’t. My plans had been to win promotion at Brighton, move into the new stadium with a big budget and then try eventually to get them to the Premier League.”

Nevertheless, Knight said: “It’s a great shame that Peter has chosen to resign. He has done a terrific job for the club in leading the Albion to the Second Division title, and it’s sad that he doesn’t wish to continue.”

The captain at the time, Paul Rogers told The Argus: “It’s a big shock to me and I’m sure it will be a big shock to the other lads as well. He’s done really well here. Since he came in the lads took to him straight away.

“He is a good coach. His sessions were a lot more technical than we were used to and he’s improved some of the players during his time at the club.”

Six months after he left Brighton, Taylor took over at Hull City, who were about to move into the 25,000 all-seater KC Stadium and in four years he guided them from the bottom tier of football through to the Championship.

I recall a visit to the KC when Albion’s travelling supporters taunted him with a ‘Should have stayed with a big club’ chant, to which he responded by opening wide his arms to point out the plush new surroundings he was working in.

Born in Rochford, Essex, on 3 January 1953, Taylor was a Spurs supporter from an early age and had an unsuccessful trial with them – including playing in a South East Counties league match.

Looking back in an interview with superhotspur.com, he recalled that he didn’t perform well in his trial match at Cheshunt because he was up against Steve Perryman (who later became a close friend) and Graeme Souness in the Tottenham midfield.

Taylor also had an unsuccessful trial with Crystal Palace, so it was somewhat ironic that both clubs who rejected him as a youngster ended up paying handsome fees to sign him.

Taylor had first drawn attention while playing for South-East Essex Schools and Canvey Island but it was nearby Southend United who took him on as an apprentice in 1969.

The winger turned professional with the Shrimpers in January 1971 and scored 12 goals in 75 league matches for the Essex side.

It was the flamboyant Malcolm Allison who signed him for Palace in October 1973, paying a £110,000 fee. Allison told the player he had been trying to sign him for some time, including when he was in charge at Manchester City.

“He made me feel like a million dollars and I couldn’t thank anyone more than I would thank Malcolm for the career that I have had,” said Taylor. “He knew his stuff and he was an exciting coach, far ahead of his time, but the most important thing for me was that he made me feel that I was the best player in the world.”

Taylor went on to be Palace’s player of the season, although they were relegated to the third tier.

His time at Selhurst Park was his most successful as a player, he reckoned, and he scored 33 goals in 122 league games for the Eagles. But his notable performances when Palace made it through to the semi-finals of the FA Cup in 1976 led to Keith Burkinshaw signing him for Spurs for £400,000.

“I was desperate to play for Tottenham, because they were the team that I supported, so it was a wonderful move for me,” said Taylor.

Earlier that year, he had made his debut for England while playing in the third tier of English football, going on as a substitute in the second half of a Welsh FA centenary celebration match at the Racecourse Ground, Wrexham, and scoring the winner in a 2-1 victory.

He was the first Third Division player to be capped since Johnny Byrne in 1961, and also the first player to score while making his debut as a substitute. He went on to win four caps.

Two months later, against the same opponent, but at Ninian Park, Cardiff, in the Home International Championship, he scored again – this time the only goal of the game as Don Revie’s England won 1-0.

Taylor’s third cap came in the 2-1 defeat to Scotland at Hampden Park on 15 May 1976. And he went on as an 83rd minute sub for Kevin Keegan as England beat Team America 3-1 in America’s Bicentennial Tournament. Bobby Moore was Team America’s captain and the great Pelé was playing up front.

Although he scored 31 times in 123 league matches for Spurs, he was hampered by a pelvic injury during his time at White Hart Lane but superhotspur.com writer Lennon Branagan said: “A player with a real eye for goal, Peter Taylor was a really fine all-round winger, who also had good defensive qualities to his game.

“He was a very important player during his second season at Spurs, as he helped them to win promotion from the old Second Division, following their relegation to that division during the previous season.”

Taylor moved on from Spurs after four years when Burkinshaw couldn’t guarantee him a starting spot, leaving for £150,000 to join second tier Leyton Orient, where Jimmy Bloomfield was manager.

He scored 11 goals in 56 league games for the Os and had four games on loan for Joe Royle’s Oldham Athletic in January 1983. He then went non-league with Maidstone, apart from a brief spell back in the league, that he didn’t enjoy, playing under Gerry Francis at Exeter City.

Having returned to Maidstone to carry on playing, he eventually got his first managerial job at Dartford in 1986 as a player-manager.

He moved on to Enfield in a similar role, telling superhotspur.com: “I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I was learning all the time about coaching players, and then Steve Perryman asked me to be his assistant at Watford in 1991, and I had two fantastic years there of coaching and learning. So that was the start of my managerial career.”

His first league manager’s job then followed at his old club Southend, between 1993 and 1995, but he quit having not been able to raise them above mid-table in League One. Curiously, his next outpost was non-league Dover Athletic but he left when his former Spurs teammate Glenn Hoddle invited him to coach the England under 21 team.

A successful spell in which he presided over 11 wins, three draws and only one defeat came to an abrupt end when Taylor was controversially relieved of his duties by the FA and replaced by former Albion winger Howard Wilkinson.

Gillingham offered him a return to club management and, with Guy Butters at the back and the aforementioned Junior Lewis in midfield, he steered the Kent club to that play-off win, taking them into the top half of English league football for the first time in their history.

That achievement prompted Leicester to poach him and he got off to a great start with the Foxes, even earning a Premier League manager of the month award in September 2000.

It was during his time at Leicester that he rode to England’s rescue two months later by taking caretaker charge of the England national side for a friendly against Italy in Turin. England lost 1-0 but the game is remembered for Taylor handing the captain’s armband to Beckham for the first time. He also included six players still young enough for the under 21s: Gareth Barry, Jamie Carragher, Kieron Dyer, Rio Ferdinand, Emile Heskey and Derby’s Seth Johnson (it was his only full cap).

Describing it as the proudest moment of his long career, Taylor told Branagan: “I never dreamt that opportunity would happen to me. I knew that it was only going to be for one game, but it’s on my memory bank, and no one will ever change that.” 

Back at Leicester, it all went pear-shaped towards the end of the season and when City were beaten 5-0 at home by newly promoted Bolton Wanderers in the new season opener, and then recorded a further four defeats, two draws with a solitary victory, Taylor was sacked.

He combined his job at Hull with once again coaching the England under 21 side between 2004 and 2006, and early into his reign called up Albion’s Dan Harding and Adam Hinshelwood (Jack Hinshelwood’s dad) for a home game v Wales and an away fixture in Azerbaijan. Harding started both matches and Hinshelwood was an unused sub.

Taylor oversaw nine wins, two draws and five defeats, selecting players such as James Milner, Darren Bent and Liam Ridgewell.

After promotion success with Albion and Hull, where he spent three and a half years, in the summer of 2006 Palace, in the Championship, stumped up £300,000 in compensation to take the Tigers boss back to Selhurst Park to succeed Iain Dowie.

Telling the BBC it had to be “something special” for him to leave Hull, Taylor added: “When I got the call from Simon (Jordan) there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to be at Selhurst Park.”

Talking to cpfc.co.uk some years later, he said: “I was very confident as a manager. Very confident. I felt as though I would succeed.

“I didn’t look at my reputation too much. I looked at: ‘How can I get these into the top division?’ Even if I was worried about the reputation I had, I still would have taken the job.”

On the Palace bench with Kit Symons

After a promising start, results went awry and Palace finished the season in mid-table. When the Eagles managed only two wins in their first 10 games of the 2007-08 season, Taylor was sacked and replaced with Neil Warnock.

Undeterred, he stepped outside of the league for his next position, taking charge of then Conference team Stevenage Borough – recruiting Junior Lewis as his first signing!

Lewis followed him into his next job as well, this time as first team coach at Wycombe Wanderers, where Taylor succeeded Paul Lambert in May 2008. Taylor’s promotion-winning knack once more came to the fore when the Chairboys won promotion from League Two.

However, a poor start to life in League One cost him his job and Wycombe owner Steve Hayes told BBC Three Counties Radio: “We started the season reasonably well, but truthfully, six points from 33 is very worrying.

“We need a change. [Peter’s] body language in the last few weeks has not been great and he doesn’t seem to be as happy as he was last year.”

Taylor was approaching his fifth month out of the game when, in mid-February 2010, League Two Bradford City gave him a short-term deal to replace Stuart McCall. Once again, loyal Lewis joined him.

Hoping his stay at Valley Parade would ultimately be longer, he told the Yorkshire Post: “I remember what happened at Hull when I went in there (in 2002) with the club sitting 18th in the bottom division.

“We went on to enjoy a lot of success and I see similar potential here at Bradford. Certainly if we can go on a run then there is a potential of putting bums on seats.

“I still believe we can do something this year. But if that does not prove to be the case, then definitely next year.”

Taylor signed a contract extension and stuck at it even when he was offered the chance to become no.2 to Alan Pardew at Premier League Newcastle United at the beginning of January 2011.

“It’s flattering to be offered the position to work alongside Alan Pardew,” Taylor told BBC Radio Leeds. “I wasn’t comfortable leaving Bradford earlier than I need to, I know what the game is about, I can easily get the sack in a month’s time, I understand that, but I don’t really feel I want to leave at this particular time.”

Saying Bradford had “really switched me on”, he added: “I’ve always had a special feeling about the club, and I’ve still got that feeling.” Six weeks later he left City by mutual consent.

In the summer that year, Taylor headed to the Middle East and spent 15 months in charge of the Bahrain national side, leading them to success in the 2011 Arab Games in Doha when they beat Jordan 1-0. He was sacked in October 2012 after Bahrain lost 6-2 to the United Arab Emirates in a friendly.

The following summer, he was given a short-term contract to take charge of England’s under 20s at the Under 20 World Cup in Turkey. Hopes may have been high after a 3-0 win over Uruguay in a warm-up match but England were eliminated at the group stage after only managing to draw against Iraq and Chile and then losing to Egypt. The England side included the likes of Sam Johnstone, Jamal Lascelles, John Stones, Eric Dier, Conor Coady, James Ward-Prowse, Ross Barkley and Harry Kane.

Taylor found himself back in club football that autumn when Gillingham welcomed him back on an interim basis after they’d sacked Martin Allen. Handed a longer term deal a month later, he stayed with the League One Gills until halfway through the next season when, after only six wins in 23 matches, he was sacked on New Year’s Eve.

Another posting abroad was to follow in May 2015 when he was appointed head coach of Indian Super League side Kerala Blasters, taking over from former England goalkeeper David James.

But his time in India was brief. Despite winning five of six pre-season friendlies and the opening league fixture, the Blasters lost four and drew two of the next six matches and Taylor became the league’s first managerial sacking in October that year.

The New Zealand national side recruited Taylor to work with the country’s UK-based players in 2016-17 and a third spell at Gillingham followed in May 2017. He was named director of football at Priestfield where Adrian Pennock was head coach and he was briefly interim head coach when Pennock lost his job in September 2017.

That turned out to be his last job in league football. He joined National League Dagenham & Redbridge in June 2018 and spent 18 months in charge, leaving the club after a spell of nine defeats in 11 games.

Welling United, in the sixth tier of English football, appointed Taylor manager in September 2021 but with only six wins in 25 matches he left in March the following year. His final job was at Isthmian League Maldon & Tiptree, from December 2022 to August 2023.

Fiery Ian Baird saw red in crucial last Goldstone game

FIERY Ian Baird was no stranger to yellow and red cards – in five games for Newcastle United he was booked three times!

And in Brighton’s last ever game at the Goldstone Ground, against Doncaster Rovers, Baird was sent off long before the game had even reached half time.

Something of a disciple of Joe Jordan, the tenacious centre forward who starred for Leeds United and Manchester United, Baird was his teammate at Southampton and played under the Scot at Hearts in Scotland and at Bristol City.

Baird didn’t fear incurring the wrath of supporters, happily playing for arch-rival clubs in his pursuit of goals. Indeed, on Teesside he earned a place in fans’ folklore by scoring two goals in an end-of-season clash that not only kept Middlesbrough up but prevented their noisy north-east neighbours Newcastle from getting automatic promotion to the elite (to make matters worse, they then lost a play-off semi-final to Sunderland).

Baird scored twice in that 4-1 win over United on the final day of the 1989-90 season at Ayresome Park, and earlier the same season he’d scored a winner for Leeds United against Newcastle at Elland Road.

Baird played on the south coast for both Southampton and Portsmouth before making the Albion his 10th and last English league club. He joined for £35,000 from Plymouth Argyle when the club was in turmoil off the field and floundering at the bottom of the basement division. But he went on to net 14 goals in 41 games.

He spoke about the move to Tim Ashton of the Sutton and Croydon Guardian in July 2016. “I was at Plymouth, and Jimmy Case took me on and explained all the problems to me about the likes of (David) Bellotti,” he said.

“To be honest, as a player, all you are bothered about is making sure you get your wage, and you’re not really taking any notice of what he is saying.

“I played at Brighton on many occasions, I have been there with Leeds and Middlesbrough, and it was always a favourite place of mine to go – and as soon as I got there as a player, I knew the importance of survival.”

Baird continued: “Brighton are a big club, and I could not believe what was happening. It took a strain on Jimmy, that’s for sure, and he was not the man he was normally with all the pressure.

“Then he was sacked and we were 12 points adrift at Christmas – they brought in Steve Gritt, and he brought a different kind of management.

“It got to February and March time, then all of a sudden Doncaster Rovers and Hereford were sucked into it – we had to beat Doncaster in the final (home) game.”

Sent off 11 times in his career, it was his dismissal just 18 minutes into that game in 1997 that threatened the very existence of the club – and he was captain that day!

Baird later told portsmouth.co.uk: “It was just a natural thing really. Sometimes my enthusiasm got the better of me. There were plenty of times I chinned someone or got into trouble.

“The most stupid one was when me and Darren Moore had a fight. He was playing for Doncaster and I was playing for Brighton in the last game at their old Goldstone Ground.

“He came through the back of me, there was a bit of afters and I ended up trying to give him a right hook, and there was a bit of a ruck.

“We had a bit of rough and tumble and I was just lucky he didn’t chase me up the tunnel because he’s huge!”

Thankfully, Albion famously still won that match courtesy of Stuart Storer’s memorable winner. Because red card bans were delayed for 14 days back then, Baird was able to play in what has since been recognised as the most important game in the club’s history: away to Hereford United.

As the history books record, it was Robbie Reinelt, on as a sub, who stepped into the breach to rescue a point for the Albion, enough to preserve their league status and to send the Bulls down.

In November of the following season, Baird still had six months left on his Brighton contract, but a surgeon told him he should not play pro football any more because of a troublesome knee, so he decided to retire.

But, when he had turned 35, he said: “I had a phone call from Mick Leonard (former Notts County and Chesterfield player) who played in Hong Kong, and he said they were desperate for a striker.

“I went for a month’s trial and ended up signing an 18-month deal. My knee flared up again and they offered me a coaching role, and it ended up with me managing the side.”

He added: “Then I was put in charge of the national side for the Asian Cup qualifiers and we played in Jakarta in front of 75,000 people, and then in Cambodia in front of 1,200 people – it was certainly an experience that is for sure.”

Over the 17 years of his league career, Baird commanded a total of £1.7m in transfer fees; £500,000 Boro paid Leeds being the highest.

Although born in Rotherham on 1 April 1964, the family moved first to Glasgow and then Southampton when Baird was small, his father having sailed from the south coast port when working on the Queen Mary.

The always comprehensive saintsplayers.co.uk notes the young Baird survived meningitis as a six-year-old and later came to the attention of Southampton when appearing in the same boys team, Sarisbury Sparks, as their manager Lawrie McMenemy’s son, Sean.

The excellent ozwhitelufc.net.au details how Baird’s footballing ability saw him play for Bitterne Saints, St. Mary’s College, Southampton, Southampton and Hampshire Schools, before earning England Schoolboy caps in 1978-79 alongside the likes of Trevor Steven and Mark Walters.

He was offered terms by Swindon Town but he chose to stay closer to home and Southampton took him on as an apprentice in July 1980. He turned professional in April 1982 but McMenemy’s preference for old stagers Frank Worthington and the aforementioned Jordan limited his opportunities and he made just 21 appearances for Saints, plus three as a sub, scoring five times.

He was sent out on loan a couple of times: to Cardiff City in November 1983, where he scored six goals in twelve League games, and that spell at Jack Charlton’s Newcastle in December 1984 where aside from a booking in each of his four starts and one appearance from the bench, he scored once – in a 2-1 defeat at West Brom on Boxing Day.

Taking the advice of former teammate Jordan, Baird signed for Eddie Gray at Second Division Leeds in March 1985 and undoubtedly his most successful playing years were there, in two separate spells.

He played more than 160 matches and scored 50 goals. In the 1986-87 season, Gray’s successor, Billy Bremner, made him captain. The Yorkshire Evening Post spoke of “the powerhouse striker’s fearless commitment, no-holds-barred approach and goalscoring ability”.

In the blurb introducing his autobiography Bairdy’s Gonna Get Ya! (written by Leeds fan Marc Bracha) it says “he’s best remembered for his spells at Leeds, where goals, endless running, will to win and fearless approach ensured he was adored by the fans”.

In the 1987-88 season, though, he was wooed by the prospect of playing at the higher level he had just missed out on with Leeds (they’d lost in end-of-season play-offs) and signed for Alan Ball at Portsmouth for £250,000; he later described it as “the worse move I ever made”.

The season was disrupted by injury and disciplinary problems, and he returned to Leeds the following season, being named their Player of the Year in 1989.

But when ex-Albion winger Howard Wilkinson, then manager of Leeds, signed Lee Chapman, Baird sought the move to Boro. He told Stuart Whittingham in 2013 for borobrickroad.co.uk:

“I felt a little aggrieved and basically I spat the dummy out and asked for a move.

“He (Wilkinson) said that he didn’t want me to go but I insisted and within 24 hours I was speaking to Bruce Rioch and Colin Todd and I was on my way to Middlesbrough.”

Curiously, though, when Leeds won promotion at the end of the season, Baird picked up a medal because he had played his part in the achievement.

At the end of the 1990-91 season, Baird spent two years playing for Hearts under Jordan, although a torn thigh muscle restricted the number of appearances he’d hoped to make and at the end of his deal he moved back to England and signed for Bristol City, initially under Russell Osman and then Jordan once again.

After his experience in Hong Kong, Baird returned to Hampshire to put down roots back in Southampton, and pursued business interests in vehicle sales/leasing and the sports gear industry. He also spent five years managing Eastleigh before becoming Paul Doswell’s assistant at Sutton United. He then followed him to Havant & Waterlooville in May 2019.

Confrontation was seldom far away in Micky Adams’ career

THE FIRST player ever to be sent off in a Premier League game managed Brighton twice.

Fiery Micky Adams saw red playing for Southampton when he decked England international midfielder Ray Wilkins.

“People asked me why I did it. I said I didn’t like him, but I didn’t really know him,” Adams recalls in his autobiography, My Life in Football (Biteback Publishing, 2017).

It was only the second game of the 1992-93 season and Adams was dismissed as Saints lost 3-1 at Queens Park Rangers.

Adams blamed the fact boss Ian Branfoot had played him in midfield that day, where he was never comfortable.

“He (Wilkins) was probably running rings around me. I turned around and thumped him. I was fined two weeks’ wages and hit with a three-match ban.”

It wasn’t the only time he would have cause not to like Wilkins either. The former Chelsea, Manchester United and England midfielder replaced Adams as boss of Fulham when Mohammed Al-Fayed took over.

His previously harmonious relationship with Ray’s younger brother, Dean, turned frosty too. When Adams first took charge at the Albion, he considered youth team boss Dean “one of my best mates”. But the two fell out when Seagulls chairman Dick Knight decided to bring Adams back to the club in 2008 to replace Wilkins, who’d taken over from Mark McGhee as manager.

“He thought I had stitched him up,” said Adams. “I told him that I wanted him to stay. We talked it through and, at the end of the meeting, we seemed to have agreed on the way forward.

“I thought I’d reassured him enough for him to believe he should stay on. But he declined the invitation. He obviously wasn’t happy and attacked me verbally. I did have to remind him about the hypocrisy of a member of the Wilkins family having a dig at me, particularly when his older brother had taken my first job at Fulham.

“We don’t speak now which is a regret because he was a good mate and one of the few people I felt I could talk to and confide in.”

With the benefit of hindsight, Adams also regretted returning to manage the Seagulls a second time considering his stock among Brighton supporters had been high having led them to promotion from the fourth tier in 2001. The side that won promotion to the second tier in 2002 was also regarded as Adams’ team, even though he had left for Leicester City by the time the Albion went up under Peter Taylor.

Adams first took charge of the Seagulls when home games were still being played at Gillingham’s Priestfield Stadium.  Jeff Wood’s short reign was brought to an end after he’d failed to galvanise the side following Brian Horton’s decision to quit to return to the north. Horton took over at Port Vale, where Adams himself would subsequently become manager for two separate stints.

Back in 1999, though, Adams had been at Nottingham Forest before accepting Knight’s offer to take charge of the Albion. He’d originally gone to Nottingham to work as no.2 to Dave Bassett but Ron Atkinson had been brought in to replace Bassett and Adams was switched to reserve team manager.

The Albion job gave him the opportunity to return to front line management, a role he had enjoyed at Fulham and Brentford before regime changes had brought about his departure from both clubs.

On taking the Albion reins, Adams said: “For too long now this club has, for one reason and another, had major problems. The one thing that has remained positive is the faith the supporters have shown in their club.

“The club has to turn around eventually and I want to be the man that helps to turn it around.”

The man who appointed him, Knight, said: “Micky is a formidable character with a proven track record. He knows what it takes to get a club promoted from this division. But, more than that, Micky shares our vision of the future and wants to be part of it. That is why I have offered him a four-year contract and he has agreed to that commitment.”

Not long after taking over the Albion hotseat, he was happy to say goodbye to the stadium he’d previously known as home when a Gillingham player in the ‘80s and it was a revamped squad he assembled for the Albion’s return to Brighton, albeit within the confines of the restricted capacity Withdean Stadium.

Darren Freeman and Aidan Newhouse, two players who’d played for Adams at Fulham, scored five of the six goals that buried Mansfield Town in the new season opener at the ‘Theatre of Trees’.

Considering he was only too happy to be photographed supporting the campaign to build the new stadium at Falmer, it’s disappointing to read in his autobiography what he really thought about it.

“My mates and I nicknamed it ‘Falmer – my arse’ although I never said this to Dick’s face,” he said. “There was always so much talk and we never felt like it was going to get done.”

The turning point in his first full season in charge was the arrival of Bobby Zamora on loan from Bristol Rovers. “The first time I saw him he came onto the training ground; he looked like a kid. But he was tall and gangly with a useful left foot; there was potential there.”

Interestingly, considering Adams makes a point of saying he usually ignored directors who tried to get involved on the playing side, he took up Knight’s suggestion that the side should switch to a 4-4-2 formation – and the Albion promptly won 7-1 at Chester with Zamora scoring a hat-trick!

After a so-so first season back in Brighton, not long into the next season Adams was forced to replace his no.2, Alan Cork, with Bob Booker because Cork was offered the manager’s job at Cardiff City, at the time owned by his former Wimbledon chairman, Sam Hammam. Adams reckoned Booker’s appointment was one of the best decisions he ever made.

Surrounded by players who had served him well at Fulham and Brentford, together with the additions of Zamora, Michel Kuipers and Paul Rogers, Adams and Booker steered Albion to promotion as champions. Zamora was player of the season and he and Danny Cullip were named in the PFA divisional XI.

Not long into the new season, the lure of taking over as manager at a Premier League club saw Adams quit Brighton, initially to become Bassett’s no.2 at Leicester City, but with the promise of succeeding him.

“While I thought I had a shot at another promotion, it wasn’t a certainty,” Adams explained. “I knew I had put together a team of winners, and I knew I had a goalscorer in Bobby Zamora, but football’s fickle finger of fate could have disrupted that at any time.”

He admitted in the autobiography: “Had I been in charge at the age of 55, rather than 40, then I perhaps would have taken a different decision.”

While Albion enjoyed promotion under Taylor, what followed at Leicester for Adams was a lot more than he’d bargained for and, to his dismay, he is still associated with the ugly shenanigans surrounding the club’s mid-season trip to La Manga, to which he devotes a whole chapter of his book, aiming to set the record straight.

On the pitch, he experienced relegation and promotion with the Foxes and he doesn’t hold back from lashing out about ‘moaner’ Martin Keown, “one of the worst signings of my career”. Eventually, he’d had enough, and walked away from the club with 18 months left on his contract.

After a break in the Dordogne area of France, staying with at his sister-in-law and her husband’s vineyard, he looked for a way back into the game. He was interviewed for the job of managing MK Dons but was put off by a Brighton-style new-ground-in-the-future scenario. Then Peter Reid, a former Southampton teammate, was sacked by Coventry City. He put his name forward and took charge of a Championship side full of experienced players like Steve Staunton and Tim Sherwood.

The side’s fortunes were further boosted by the arrival of Dennis Wise, but, in an all-too-familiar scenario Adams had encountered elsewhere, the chairman who appointed him (Mike McGinnity) was replaced by Geoffrey Robinson. It wasn’t long before it was obvious the relationship was only going to end one way. As Adams tells it, Robinson was influenced by lifelong Sky Blues fan Richard Keys, the TV presenter, and it was pretty much on his say-so that Adams became an ex-City manager after two years in the job.

With an ex-wife and three children to support as well as his partner Claire, Adams couldn’t afford to be out of work for long and fortunately his next opportunity came courtesy of Geraint Williams, boss of newly promoted Colchester United, who took him on as his no.2.

However, it only got to the turn of the year before he was out of work once again, although, from what he describes, he wasn’t enjoying his time with the U’s anyway because Williams kept him at arm’s length when it came to tactics and team selection.

He was amongst the ranks of the unemployed once again when Albion chairman Knight gave him a call, but, with the benefit of hindsight, he said: “Going back turned out to be one of the biggest mistakes of my life.”

Adams blamed the backdrop of “the power struggle” between Knight and Tony Bloom on the lack of success during his second stint in the hotseat, and he reckons it was Bloom who “demanded my head on a platter”. The fateful meeting with Knight, when a parting of the ways was agreed, famously took place in the Little Chef on the A23 near Hickstead.

Looking back, Adams conceded he bowed to pressure from Knight to make certain signings – namely Jim McNulty, Jason Jarrett and Craig Davies in January 2009 – who didn’t work out. He reflected: “I shouldn’t have taken the job in the first place. I’d let my heart rule my head but, in fairness, I didn’t have any other offers coming through and it seemed like a good idea at the time.

“I wouldn’t ever say he (Knight) let me down, but he had his idea about players. I did listen to him, and maybe that’s where I went wrong.”

He added: “Going back to a club where success had been achieved before felt good, yet, the second time around, the same spark wasn’t there no matter how hard I tried.”

Born in Sheffield on 8 November 1961, Micky was the second son of four children. It might be argued his penchant for lashing out could have stemmed from seeing his father hitting his mother, which he chose to spoke about at his father’s funeral. Adams is obviously not sure if he did the right thing but he felt the record should be straight.

The Adams family were always Blades rather than Wednesdayites and, at 15, young Micky was in the youth set-up at Bramall Lane having made progress with Sunday league side Hackenthorpe Throstles.

While he thought he had done well under youth coach John Short during (former Brighton player) Jimmy Sirrel’s reign as first team manager, Sirrel’s successor, Harry Haslam, replaced Short and, not long afterwards, Adams was released.

However, Short moved to Gillingham and invited the young left winger to join the Gills. Adams linked up with a group of promising youngsters that included Steve Bruce.

In September 1979, he had a call-up to John Cartwright’s England Youth side, going on as a sub in a 1-1 draw with West Germany, and starting on the left wing away to Poland (0-1), Hungary (0-2) and Czechoslovakia (1-2) alongside the likes of Colin Pates, Paul Allen, Gary Mabbutt, Paul Walsh and Terry Gibson.

Adams honed his craft under the tutelage of a tough Northern Irishman Bill ‘Buster’ Collins and began to catch the attention of first team manager Gerry Summers and his assistant Alan Hodgkinson, who had played 675 games in goal for Sheffield United.

He made his debut aged just 17 against Rotherham United but didn’t properly break through until Summers and Hodgkinson were replaced by Keith Peacock (remember him, he was the first ever substitute in English football, in 1965, when he went on for Charlton Athletic against John Napier’s Bolton Wanderers) and Paul Taylor.

“Keith saw me as a full-back and that was probably the turning point of my career,” Adams recalled.

Once Adams and Bruce became regulars for the Gills, scouts from bigger clubs began to circle and at one point it looked like Spurs were about to sign Adams. That was until he came up against the aforementioned Peter Taylor, who was playing on the wing for Orient at the time (having previously played for Crystal Palace, Spurs and England).

“He nutmegged me three times in front of the main stand and, to cut a long story short, that was the end of that. Gillingham never heard from Spurs again,” Adams remembered.

Even so, Adams did get a move to play in the top division when Bobby Gould signed him for Coventry City. Managerial upheaval didn’t help his cause at Highfield Road and when John Sillett preferred Greg Downs at left-back, Adams dropped down a division to sign for Billy Bremner’s Leeds United (pictured below right with the legendary Scot).

“He had such a big influence on my career and life that I wouldn’t have swapped it for the world,” said Adams. But life at Elland Road changed with the arrival of Howard Wilkinson, and Adams found himself carpeted by the new boss after admitting punching physio Alan Sutton for making what an injured Adams considered an unreasonable demand to perform an exercise routine even though he was in plaster at the time.

Nevertheless, Adams admits he learned a great deal in terms of coaching from Wilkinson, especially when an improvement in results came about through repetitive fine-tuning on the training pitch.

“It is the one aspect of coaching that is extremely effective, if delivered properly,” said Adams. “I learnt this from Howard and took this lesson with me throughout my coaching and managerial career.”

However, Adams didn’t fit into Wilkinson’s plans for Leeds and he was transferred to Southampton, managed by former Aston Villa, Saints and Northern Ireland international Chris Nicholl. Adams joined Saints in the same week as Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock and the pair were quickly summoned by Nicholl to explain the large size of the hotel bills they racked up.

Adams moved his family from Wakefield to Warsash and he went on to enjoy what he reflected on as “the best few years of my playing career”. He was at the club when a young Alan Shearer marked his debut by scoring a hat-trick and the “biggest fish in the pond at the Dell” was Jimmy Case.

Adams described the appointment of Branfoot in place of the sacked Nicholl as a watershed moment in his own career. “Overall he was decent to me and I found his methods good,” he said. And he pointed out: “I was getting older, I’d started my coaching badges and I already had one eye on my future.”

Adams recalled an incident during a two-week residential course at Lilleshall, after he had just completed his coaching badge, when he dislocated his shoulder trying to kick Neil Smillie.

“I was left-back and he was right-wing, and he took the piss out of me for 15 minutes. The fuse came out and I decided to boot him up in the air,” Adams recounted. “The only problem was that I missed. I fell over and managed to dislocate my shoulder hitting the ground. It was the worst pain I’ve ever had.”

If life was sweet at Southampton under Branfoot, that all changed when he was replaced by Alan Ball and the returning Lawrie McMenemy. Adams and other older players were left out of the side. Simon Charlton and Francis Benali were preferred at left-back. Eventually Adams went on a month’s loan to Stoke City, at the time managed by former Saints striker Joe Jordan, assisted by Asa Hartford.

On his return to Southampton, and by then 33, Adams was given a free transfer.

Former boss Branfoot came to his rescue, inviting him to move to League Two Fulham as a player-coach in charge of the reserve team. Branfoot also signed Alan Cork and he and Adams began a longstanding friendship that manifested itself in becoming a management pair at various clubs.

On the pitch, Branfoot struggled to galvanise Fulham and, with the team second from bottom of the league, he was sacked – and Adams replaced him. He kept Fulham up by improving fitness levels and introducing more of a passing game.

But he knew big changes were needed if they were going to improve and he gave free transfers to 17 players, despite clashing with Jimmy Hill, who had different ideas.

An admirer of what Tony Pulis was doing at Gillingham, Adams signed three of their players: Paul Watson, Richard Carpenter and Darren Freeman. He also got in goalkeeper Mark Walton and centre back Danny Cullip. Simon Morgan was one of the few who wasn’t let go, and Paul Brooker emerged as a skilful winger. All would later play under him at Brighton.

Promotion was secured and Adams was named divisional Manager of the Year but after all the celebrations had died down Mohamed Al-Fayed bought the club and things changed dramatically.

“The club was in a state of flux as it tried desperately to come to terms with its new status as a billionaire’s plaything,” Adams acerbically observed. “From having nothing, we had everything.”

Before too long, in spite of being given a new five-year contract, Adams was out of the Craven Cottage door, replaced by Wilkins and Kevin Keegan.

But he wasn’t out of work for long because Branfoot’s former deputy, Len Walker, introduced him to the chairman of Swansea City, who were on the brink of relieving Jan Molby of his duties as manager.

Various promises were made regarding funds that would be made available to him but when they were not forthcoming he realised something was not right and he quit, leaving Cork, the deputy he’d taken with him, to take over.

By his own admission, if he hadn’t been sitting on the £140,000 pay-off he’d received from Fulham, he probably would have stayed. As it was, he was out of work once again…..until he had a ‘phone call from David Webb, the former Chelsea and Southampton defender who was the owner of Brentford, but in the process of trying to sell the club.

His brief was to keep the side in the league and to make it attractive to potential purchasers. It was at Griffin Park that he first met up with the aforementioned Bob Booker, who was managing the under 18s at the time. “He is one of the most loyal and trustworthy friends I have ever known,” said Adams. “He would do anything for you.”

However, although he signed the likes of Cullip and Watson from Fulham, he wasn’t able to stop the Bees from being relegated. During the close season, former Palace chairman Ron Noades bought the club and announced he was also taking over as manager.

Once again, Adams was out of a job but his next step saw him appointed as no.2 to Dave Bassett at Nottingham Forest.

Which brings us almost full circle in the Adams career story, but not quite.

After the debacle of his second stint in charge of Brighton, he was twice manager at Port Vale, each spell straddling what turned out to be a disastrous period in charge of his family’s favourite club, Sheffield United.

It was Adams who gave a league debut to Harry Maguire during his time at Bramall Lane, but the side were relegated from the Championship on his watch, and he was sacked.

Adams took charge of 249 games as Vale boss but quit after a run of six defeats saying he’d fallen out of love with the game.

It didn’t prevent him having another go at it, though. He went to bottom of the league Tranmere Rovers and admitted in his book: “It was arrogance to think I could turn round a club that had been relegated twice in two seasons.”

In short, he couldn’t and he ended up leaving two games before the end of what was their third successive relegation.

“It was a really poor end to a career that had started so promisingly at Fulham,” he said.

Day of reckoning beckoned for talent spotter Mervyn

THE YOUNGEST goalkeeper to appear in a FA Cup final spent 20 months picking out future players for Brighton.

It was one of several different post-playing roles Mervyn Day filled for various clubs.

Day, who at 19 won a winners’ medal with West Ham in 1975, was Albion’s head of scouting and recruitment between November 2012 and the end of the 2013-2014 season under head of football operations David Burke.

At the time, his appointment was another indicator of the gear change taking place at the club as it built on the move to the Amex Stadium and sought to gain promotion from the Championship.

Day said in a matchday programme interview: “This club has come such a long way in such a short space of time.

“When you think of the debacle of the Goldstone, the wilderness of Gillingham, then Withdean, you only have to get a player through the front door at this wonderful stadium to have a chance of signing them.

“Hopefully, within the next year or so, the new training ground will be up and running and, when you’ve got that as well, you’ve got the perfect opportunity not only to encourage kids to sign but top quality players as well.

“If we are fortunate enough to get ourselves into the Premier League at some point, we’ll be able to attract top, top players.”

It was a case of ‘the goalkeepers union’ that led to him joining the Albion. Day explained he’d been chatting to Andy Beasley, Albion’s goalkeeping coach at the time, who had been a colleague when Day was chief scout at Elland Road. Beasley wondered if he’d like to help coach Albion’s academy goalkeepers but Burke, who he also knew, stepped in and offered something more substantial: the job of scouting and talent identification manager.

He certainly brought a wealth of experience to the task. He had previously been assistant manager to former Albion midfielder Alan Curbishley at Charlton and West Ham; manager and assistant manager at Carlisle United, a scout for Fulham and the FA (when Steve McClaren was England manager) and chief scout at Leeds until Neil Warnock took charge.

In addition to that background, in the days before full-time goalkeeper coaches, Day had worked at Southampton under David Jones, Chris Kamara at Bradford City and John Aldridge at Tranmere Rovers. Then in 1997 Everton came along and he joined Howard Kendall’s backroom team alongside Adrian Heath and Viv Busby. “I was living in Leeds at that time, so distance wasn’t an issue, but it was an interesting trip across the M62 in the winter months,” Day recalled in an October 2021 interview with efcheritagesociety.com.

Brighton made Day redundant at the end of the 2013-14 season following a reshuffle of the recruitment department amid criticism of the quality of signings brought in.

That assessment might have been rather harsh because during his time at the club there was a change in manager (Oscar Garcia taking over from Gus Poyet) and, although the season ended in play-off disappointment, the likes of former Hammer Matthew Upson (who’d played under Day when he was at West Ham) had signed permanently on a free transfer (having been on loan from Stoke City for half the previous season).

The experienced Keith Andrews and Stephen Ward also joined on season-long loan deals and played prominent roles in Garcia’s play-off reaching side.

It was under Day’s watch that the promising young goalkeeper Christian Walton was signed after a tip-off from Warren Aspinall. Aspinall told the Argus in 2015: “I went to Plymouth to do a match report. I set off early and took in a youth team game off my own back. He was outstanding, commanding his box. I reported straight back to Gus (Poyet). He told Mervyn Day. He went to see him, Mervyn liked him.”

It wasn’t the first time Day had played a role in securing a goalkeeper for the Albion. As far back as 2003 he had an influence on Ben Roberts’ arrival at the Albion. Manager Steve Coppell revealed: “He is one of three goalkeepers at Charlton and at the moment nearly all the Premiership clubs are very protective about their goalkeepers.

“I have seen him play a number of times, although I certainly haven’t seen him play recently. I spoke with Mervyn Day (Charlton coach) and he says Ben is in good form. It’s a little bit of a chance and it will certainly be a testing start for him, but he is looking forward to the challenge.”

Day was also sniffing around another future Albion ‘keeper when he was chief scout for Bristol City (between 2017 and 2019).  According to Sky Sports commentator Martin Tyler, Mat Ryan was on their radar in the summer of 2017 when he swapped Belgium for England. In an interview with Socceroos.com, Tyler reveals he was asked by City’s ‘head of recruitment’ (thought to be Day) to glean the opinions of Gary and Phil Neville (manager and coach of Valencia at the time) on Ryan and whether he’d be suitable for the English game.

“I got a text saying, ‘Can you find out from the Nevilles whether they rate Mat Ryan’,” Tyler said. “It wasn’t my opinion they were looking for – quite rightly – it was Gary and Phil’s. I was able to do that and both Gary and Phil gave Mat the thumbs up.”

After leaving Brighton, Day moved straight into a similar role with West Brom, where he worked under technical director Terry Burton and first team manager Alan Irvine, but he was only there a year before linking up with the Robins. He has since been first team domestic scout for Glasgow Rangers, although based in his home town of Chelmsford.

Day was born in Chelmsford on 26 June 1955 and educated at Kings Road Primary School, the same school that England and West Ham World Cup hero Geoff Hurst attended. He moved on to the town’s King Edward VI Grammar School and represented Essex Schools at all levels. He joined the Hammers under Ron Greenwood on a youth contract in 1971.

“On my first day as an associate schoolboy I got taken by goalkeeping coach Ernie Gregory into the little gym behind the Upton Park dressing room and he had Martin Peters, an England World Cup winner, firing shots at me,” Day later recounted. “As a 15-year-old that was incredible.

“The bond got even closer when my father died when I was 17. I was an apprentice but Ron signed me as a full pro within a very short space of time to enable me to earn a little more money to help out at home. A short while later he gave me another increase. He was almost a surrogate father to me.”

In the early part of 1971, Day played in the same England Youth side as Alan Boorn, a Coventry City apprentice Pat Saward took from his old club to the Albion in August 1971.

The goalkeeper was just 18 when he made his West Ham United debut, on 27 August 1973, in a 3-3 home draw with Ipswich Town.

He went on to play 33 matches in his first season and only missed one game in the following three.

Tony Hanna, for West Ham Till I Die, wrote: “In only his eleventh game for the Hammers he received a standing ovation from the Liverpool Kop in a 0-1 defeat that could have been a cricket score but for his fine display and, in his next visit to Anfield, he saved a penalty in a 2-2 draw.”

Day recalled: “As a kid, I had no fear, I took to playing in the first team really, really well. At West Ham, the ‘keeper always had lots to do as we were an entertaining team. We had forward-thinking centre-backs in Bobby Moore and Tommy Taylor, and then after Bobby came Kevin Lock.”

Mervyn Day in action for West Ham against Brighton at the Goldstone Ground, Hove.

In 1974, Day progressed to England’s Under-23 side. He won four caps that year and a fifth in 1975 but it was a golden era for England goalkeepers at the time and he didn’t progress to the full international side, despite being touted for a call-up.

By the time Day won that last cap, he had been voted PFA Young Player of the Year and, at 19, had become the youngest goalkeeper to appear in a FA Cup Final, keeping a clean sheet as West Ham beat Fulham 2-0 at Wembley.

Hanna continued: “At times he was performing heroics in the West Ham goal and he was fast becoming a fans favourite. Tall and agile, he was a brilliant shot stopper and he was playing like a ‘keeper well beyond his years.”

However, by the 1977-78 season Day’s form had tapered off as the Hammers were relegated. “His confidence was so bad he was eventually dropped and he only played 23 games that season,” said Hanna. “There are several theories to what triggered the loss of form, but one thing that did not help the lad was the stick he was getting from the Hammers supporters.

“In hindsight Mervyn said that he was ill prepared for such a tough run of form. The early seasons had gone so well that he had only known the good times and when the bad ones came he struggled to come to terms with the pressure.”

In 1979, West Ham smashed the world record transfer fee for a goalkeeper to bring in Phil Parkes from QPR and Day was sold to Leyton Orient, where he replaced long-standing stopper John Jackson, who later became a goalkeeper coach and youth team coach at Brighton.

Day spent four years at Brisbane Road before moving to Aston Villa as back-up ‘keeper to Nigel Spink. After a falling-out with Villa boss Graham Turner, he switched to Leeds under Eddie Gray and then Billy Bremner. During Bremner’s reign, he had the humiliation of conceding six at Stoke City at the start of the 1985-86 season and, in spite of vowing it wouldn’t happen again, let in seven in the repeat fixture the following season. Amongst his Leeds teammates that day were Andy Ritchie and Ian Baird.

Nevertheless, he ended up playing more games (268) for Leeds than any of his other clubs. He rarely missed a game up to the end of 1989-90, the season when was he was named Player of the Year and collected a Second Division championship medal.

Howard Wilkinson offered him a post as goalkeeping coach for United’s first season back in the elite, having lined up a £1m move for John Lukic from Arsenal. Day had a couple of loans spells – at Luton Town and Sheffield United in 1992 – but was otherwise back-up for Lukic, alongside his coaching duties, until Wilkinson saved Brighton’s future by signing Mark Beeney from the Seagulls.

After eight years at Elland Road, Day moved to the Cumbrian outpost of Carlisle in 1993. When he moved into the manager’s chair at Brunton Park, he not only led them to promotion from the Second Division in 1997, but they also won the (Auto Windscreens Shield) Football League Trophy. United beat Colchester 4-3 on penalties at Wembley after a goalless draw; one of the scorers being the aforementioned Warren Aspinall, later of Brighton and Radio Sussex.

Day worked under Curbishley at Charlton for eight years between 1998 and 2006, helping the club stabilise in the Premier League.

And, in December 2006, he followed Curbishley as his No.2 to West Ham, where the duo spent almost two years.

It was in 2010 that he returned to Leeds as chief scout, working under technical director Gwyn Williams. United manager Simon Grayson said at the time: “We’re restructuring the scouting department under Gwyn and Mervyn will be both producing match reports and watching our opposition and working on the recruitment of players.

“Merv’s knowledge and experience will prove important to the football club as we look to progress and develop what we are doing.”

Knee injury cut short Justin Fashanu’s career rescue mission

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.

Knock-out stories of Mark ‘The Fizz’ Leather

MARK LEATHER spent six years as the first team physiotherapist at Anfield having previously been Brighton’s physio in the early days of Barry Lloyd’s reign as manager.

Leather tended the injured when Albion were promoted from the old Third Division in 1987-88 and half of the 1988-89 tier two campaign before moving back to his native north west.

Roy Evans added Leather’s specialist knowledge to the backroom team at Anfield in 1994 but the physio was controversially sacked by his successor Gerard Houllier following a row over the then teenage striker Michael Owen’s fitness.

A sign of the way Leather expected to work with managers came in an interview for Albion’s matchday programme. “Barry Lloyd will respect the decision if I say a player needs more time to get back to fitness,” he told interviewer Dave Beckett. “From that point of view, he is sadly in the minority.

“If it was different, I wouldn’t hang around, but it still amazes me that some clubs don’t realise that if we all stick to what we know things will run more smoothly.”

Leather, who’d spent three years studying for a diploma, and gained experience in the National Health Service, added: “We’re getting away from the old ‘bucket-and-sponge’ image.”

Ahead of his arrival at the Goldstone, Leather had combined his studies with helping out Exeter City, Leek Town, Port Vale and Sheffield Wednesday. And during the Commonwealth Games in Edinburgh in 1986, Leather provided specialist medical support for the weightlifters and wrestlers.

He revealed a funny story against himself in a matchday programme article. Asked to reveal his ‘most embarrassing moment’ he said: “During the Port Vale and Scunthorpe match in 1985, when Port Vale scored, I jumped up out of the bench hitting my head on the dugout roof and needed smelling salts and a cold sponge.”

Perhaps predictably nicknamed ‘The Fizz’, Leather sought to give an insight to his role in his matchday programme interview. “I try to be friends with all of the lads and the management too, but sometimes you really do have to sit on the fence,” he said.

“There’s pressure sometimes from both sides to say a player’s ready to return, but you have to stand back from the situation and give a professional opinion.”

The Albion gave him a regular slot in the matchday programme which he used to give readers updates on the progress of injured players, and in recent times he has become a regular source for the media seeking expert comments on football injuries.

Leather now has his own physiotherapy business and back in the day at Brighton he and his physiotherapist wife Lucy ran a sports injury clinic for the general public two evenings a week.

Born in Bolton on 24 June 1961, Leather left the Seagulls halfway through the 1988-89 season to return to more a familiar part of the country and took a job in the NHS in Chorley, Lancashire.

Leather had been an ardent Bolton Wanderers fan from an early age and his all-time favourite player was Frank Worthington, who had played for the Seagulls during the 1984-85 season.

When Evans stepped up to take charge of Liverpool, Leather was one of his first appointments (along with goalkeeping coach Joe Corrigan, whose playing career had ended with the Seagulls).

Leather and Corrigan together in Liverpool backroom team

An insight into Evans’ decision-making was given in the book Men In White Suits, by Simon Hughes. “With Mark Leather’s arrival, there was an end to the running repair jobs carried out by a succession of unqualified coaches mid game,” he wrote.

“Regularly injured players had long been treated with suspicion at Liverpool. (Bill) Shankly maintained his side were the fittest in the league, with pre-season geared towards building stamina and therefore preventing muscle tears.

“It was a difficult theory to argue against. Liverpool won the 1965-66 title using just 14 players all season. Anyone who suffered an injury was almost bullied into feeling better. ‘Otherwise you really were persona non grata,’ Alan Hansen said.

“Leather’s recruitment meant that (Ronnie) Moran could focus on drilling the first team in the Liverpool way rather than writing what Evans describes as ‘little scribbles’ on an old ledger, charting training patterns.”

Endorsements to Leather’s attributes appear on his website from the likes of Robbie Fowler and Jamie Redknapp, who is quoted as saying: “Mark Leather has been brilliant with me. He has kept me going and it’s because of him really that I’m back to full fitness as soon as I am.”

In 1999 media reports said Houllier was facing “a furious players’ backlash after his escalating row with Liverpool physio Mark Leather took a dramatic twist”.

Leather was left in the UK when Liverpool went to Oslo for pre-season games, a move which was said to be causing disquiet in the dressing room.

Leather clashed with Houllier over the condition of injured Michael Owen

“Leather is one of the game’s top physios and he was publicly praised by Robbie Fowler after helping the striker make a miraculous recovery from a cruciate knee ligament injury last season,” said one report in the Scottish Daily Record. “Other stars, including Michael Owen and skipper Jamie Redknapp, are known to have a close bond with the medic.”

Houllier was angry at the length of time it was taking for Owen to return to full training after a hamstring injury and sent him to a specialist in Germany for a course of treatment.

In 2013, when Owen’s many injuries finally forced him to his retire from the game, he recalled bad decisions in the past that ultimately affected his career.

“I was compromised because I played too much too soon as a youngster at Liverpool. In my opinion, had I been managed differently I would have been at my best for longer as opposed to being a better player,” he said in The Mirror.

“I basically run on two hamstrings on my right leg and three on the other. I lost a third of the power.

“If I hadn’t, 90 per cent of the other injuries wouldn’t have happened and I would have been the all-time leading scorer for England.”

The Mirror article continued: “If there was a defining moment in his career, then it was a snapped hamstring when his then-manager Houllier ignored the advice of his physio and insisted Owen be brought back from injury quickly because he needed his goal threat so desperately.

“The French coach fell out so badly with the physio, Mark Leather, he forced him out, but Houllier later admitted to the mistake, which Owen believes led to the moment that changed his career – on a cold March evening at Elland Road, Leeds, in 1999. ‘My hamstring snapped in two and it was at that point that my ability to perform unimpeded was finished,’ said Owen.

Leather wasn’t finished with football, however, and he moved to his beloved Bolton Wanderers as Sam Allardyce’s physio for a year, before joining former Trotter Peter Reid at the Stadium of Light.

“From a personal point of view, I’ve had the privilege of working with two guys I used to support from the terraces at Burnden,” Leather told the Bolton News ahead of a match between Bolton and the Black Cats in September 2001. “There’s only one team I’ve ever supported and leaving them last year was purely a professional decision,” he said. “Financially and from a facility point of view, it was the right move for me, but I’ll never stop supporting the Wanderers.”

Leather spent four years (2000-2004) as the head physio at Sunderland straddling the managerial reigns of Reid, Howard Wilkinson and Mick McCarthy.

It certainly wasn’t all plain sailing for Leather on Wearside, as the Republic of Ireland winger Kevin Kilbane, now a TV pundit on the BBC, mentioned in his autobiography (Killa: The Autobiography of Kevin Kilbane; Aurum Press Ltd, 2014).

The player was determined to play for his country but the physio obviously didn’t feel he should because he was still trying to recover from an ankle injury.

Leather had already put him through some tough routines to test the strength of his ankle and when they were then on opposing sides in a two-a-side hockey match, Leather caught Kilbane on the tender joint with his hockey stick.

“After a few times and much pain, I finally snapped, and I gave him a left hook and decked him, leaving him with a fat lip and a very surprised look on his face,” Kilbane admitted.

Although he told the assistant manager Bobby Saxton what had happened, nothing more was done about it. Kilbane said: “I later apologised to Mark Leather but was disappointed he didn’t reciprocate. Things were never right between us after that, although we didn’t let it interfere with our professional relationship.”

After Sunderland, Leather switched sports and took on a similar position with Wigan Warriors rugby league side before moving into the world of academia. He spent seven years at Edge Hill University as a senior lecturer in sports therapy and programme leader for the Football Rehabilitation MSc course.

In October 2006,Leather joined Chester City as club physio, with City chairman Stephen Vaughan declaring: “He is a fully qualified physio and has a wealth of experience at Premier League level, so it’s something of a coup to bring him to the Deva Stadium.”

In 2013, he returned to Bolton, spending three years as Head of Sports Performance.

He had also set up his own physiotherapy business in 2008 and, since 2016, has been a senior lecturer and course leader for the Football Science and Rehabilitation MSc course at the University of Central Lancashire.

• Pictures from the Albion matchday programme and various online sources.

The goalscoring legend who slipped through Brighton’s net

ONES that got away always make for fascinating stories and a striker who went on to become a goalscoring legend slipped through the net at both Brighton and Burnley.

Ian Muir is hailed an all-time hero by fans of Tranmere Rovers for whom he scored 180 goals in all competitions during what many regard as the best period in Rovers’ history. If it hadn’t been for injury, he could have played in the Premier League and Europe for Leeds United.

But he’s barely remembered for the struggles he had to get games at Brighton, let alone in a month with the Clarets.

Success could have eluded himf it hadn’t been for the time he spent at Brighton alongside the legendary Frank Worthington. He was considering a move to non-league Maidstone United, but, when Worthington quit Brighton in the summer of 1985 to take his first step into management on the Wirral, he made Muir his first signing.

“Ian Muir was a fantastic forward with great touch,” Worthington told Spencer Vignes in an Albion matchday programme interview. “He did things in training you just wouldn’t believe, yet he wasn’t even making the side at Brighton under Chris (Cattlin).”

Cattlin had taken the youngster on after he had been given a free transfer by Birmingham City where he’d made just one League Cup appearance in the 1983-84 season under Ron Saunders. But competition for forward places was intense with the likes of initially Alan Young and Terry Connor, then Worthington, Mick Ferguson and later Alan Biley.

Muir’s first involvement with the Albion first team was as a non-playing substitute for the home 3-0 win over Leeds on 24 March 1984. He made his debut the following Saturday at Fratton Park in place of the injured Young and was brought down in the penalty area only 20 minutes into the game to earn Brighton a spot kick, which Danny Wilson successfully buried to put the Seagulls ahead.

Muir in his Brighton days

Connor had a chance to put Albion further ahead and, as the matchday programme reported, “Muir sliced wide as Connor made the opening” before Pompey began a devastating fight back.

Albion had been hoping to complete a fourth win in a row for the first time in six years, but it wasn’t to be, and, into the bargain, Muir couldn’t cap his debut with a goal, instead firing wide when set up by winger Steve Penney.

Unfortunately, this was the game when former Spurs and Arsenal centre back Willie Young, on loan from Norwich City, was given the runaround by Pompey centre forward Mark Hateley, and, courtesy of a second half blitz, the home side ran out 5-1 winners.

Alan Young was restored to the no.9 shirt in the next match and scored twice as Albion beat Grimsby Town 2-0 at the Goldstone, but Muir was drafted in to take Connor’s place in the away game at Shrewsbury Town.

That match ended in a 2-1 defeat, but the News of the World angled its report on an unlucky afternoon for the young forward.

“It just wasn’t Ian Muir’s day,” wrote reporter Brian Russell. “The Brighton teenager (actually he was 20) playing only his second league game could so easily have taken the limelight from Shrewsbury two-goal hero, 17-year-old Gerry Nardiello.

“Young Muir headed the ball home in the eighth minute from Jimmy Case’s corner, but it was ruled out (for a foul by centre-half Eric Young).”

Alan Young produced a powerful header from a Muir cross that Steve Ogrizovic (later of Liverpool and Coventry City fame, of course) saved brilliantly.

Russell continued: “With Brighton battling to cancel out Nardiello’s 23rd-minute opportunist goal, striker Muir suffered. His delicate chip left the ‘keeper clutching thin air, but Shrewsbury skipper Ross McLaren headed out.

“Brighton levelled it with 15 minutes to go (through Eric Young). But, five minutes later, Nardiello pounced on Chick Bates’s chested pass to beat Joe Corrigan.”

Muir was on the scoresheet when Albion’s reserve side began the 1984-85 season with a 1-0 win over reserve team boss George Petchey’s old club, Millwall. It was a very experienced team featuring Corrigan in goal, full-backs Chris Ramsey and Graham Pearce – who had both played for the Seagulls in the FA Cup Final the year before – along with Steve Gatting and Neil Smillie. Giles Stille and Alan Young were also in the line-up.

Muir had to wait until 13 October for his next first team opportunity when he was a non-playing sub as Albion went down 2-1 at Oxford United. He then got on as a sub for Connor in a 0-0 home draw with Barnsley, but the game was so dire that Cattlin very publicly forfeited a week’s wages.

After three goalless games straddling October and November 1984, Cattlin paired Muir with Worthington away to Blackburn on 10 November but still the drought couldn’t be breached, and Albion went down 2-0. The next game, Cattlin tried Ferguson and Connor as his front pair – same outcome: a 1-0 defeat at Leeds.

Muir didn’t get another chance with the Albion but in the spring of 1985 was sent out on loan to Lou Macari’s Swindon Town, where he played in three matches (and his teammates included Ramsey, who’d been released by Cattlin, and Garry Nelson, who would later become a promotion winner with the Seagulls).   

Somewhat curiously, when commenting on Muir’s departure from the club that summer, Cattlin said in the matchday programme: “I am sure Ian will get goals at whatever level he plays.”

Sure enough, Prenton Park eventually became his spiritual home and, although Tranmere struggled to stay in the fourth tier initially, Muir’s goalscoring exploits were synonymous with four years in which Rovers were promoted twice and appeared at Wembley five times. Highlights saw Muir score in the FA’s centenary celebrations in 1988 and an acrobatic and precise volley in Tranmere’s Leyland DAF Trophy victory over Bristol Rovers in 1990.

Muir and strike partner Jim Steel

He particularly began to prosper after Worthington’s successor, Johnny King, brought in tall target man Jim Steel alongside him in 1987.

Steel, who later became a police officer on Merseyside, said King, a Bill Shankly devotee, would compare him and Muir to John Toshack and Kevin Keegan. “That’s the way football was at the time,” he told the Liverpool Echo. “You looked for a little mobile player to feed off a tall striker.

“Muiry was one of the best finishers in the game at the time. If I’m honest, the intelligence of the partnership was down to Muiry, who was very good at reacting to things off me,” he said.

“I wasn’t the most technically gifted of players compared to the likes of Johnny Morrissey and Jim Harvey. But things happened around me and Muiry was very good at picking up the crumbs.”

Muir was Tranmere’s leading scorer from 1986 to 1990 and, in the 1989-90 season, he scored 35 goals in 65 games.

Such is the esteem in which Muir is held in those parts that a mural depicting him and all-time-appearances record holder Ray Matthias adorns the side of a house close to Prenton Park. A lounge at the ground is also named after him.

Born in Coventry on 5 May 1963, Muir played for the City’s schools side and Bedworth Juniors and won four England Schoolboy caps (against Wales, Scotland and two v West Germany) featuring alongside the likes of Tommy Caton, Ian Dawes, Terry Gibson and Kevin Brock.

He joined QPR as an apprentice aged 17 in 1980 and was a Hoops player for four years in total during Terry Venables’ reign as manager. In October 1982, he went on a one-month loan to Burnley. The respected all-things-Burnley writer, Tony Scholes, takes up the story.

“When Burnley played on QPR’s plastic pitch at Loftus Road in 1982 we came home with more than we’d bargained for. Two Trevor Steven goals in front at half time, we’d suffered a 3-2 defeat in the end although we managed to acquire a striker.”

Scholes pointed out how Muir had progressed into the first team squad at Loftus Road, but after a goalscoring start had fallen out of favour.

“He made a dramatic start to his first team career, scoring twice on his debut in a 5-0 thrashing of Cambridge United in April 1981,” said Scholes. “He kept his place for the one remaining game of the 1980-81 season but by the time he arrived at Turf Moor, well over a year later, he was still looking for his third game.”

It eventually came with Burnley, when he went on as a substitute in a 2-1 defeat at Charlton, replacing skipper Martin Dobson. He then started and scored Burnley’s goal in a 3-1 defeat at Leeds.

“He impressed, but the home fans never saw him and. at the end of the month, he was dispatched back to West London, his Burnley career over,” said Scholes.

Ian Muir alongside Terry Fenwick when Terry Venables managed QPR

Unable to get back into Terry Venables’ side at Loftus Road, Muir joined Birmingham and subsequently Brighton.

Finally given a platform to shine, the striker scored the majority of his 180 Tranmere goals between 1985 and 1991 and spearheaded the side that vaulted two divisions in three seasons between 1988 and 1991, before eventually being edged out by the arrival of John Aldridge.

The Liverpool Echo remembered: “It was inevitable his subtle skills and clinical finishing would make him a target for a larger club. Muir knew of Leeds’s interest as Tranmere campaigned to secure a place in the Third Division playoffs in 1990-91.

Muir told the newspaper: “Howard Wilkinson was sending scouts to watch me and coming along himself. When I went along to the ticket office before games, the Leeds scout was sometimes at the kiosk and I’d chat to him. He told me what was happening.

“Mark Proctor, who joined us from Middlesbrough the following season and worked under Wilkinson, knew about the deal and told me.”

Muir was arguably in his prime at the age of 27, but he suffered what would be a fateful knee ligament injury in a game against Chester City on 23 March 1991.

When Tranmere visited Leeds in a League Cup tie early in the following season, Muir hobbled into Elland Road on crutches. Muir recalled: “Before the game Gordon Strachan asked our midfielder, Neil McNab, where I was. Neil pointed to me standing there on crutches.

“Then Strachan said: ‘Ian is the unluckiest man in the world because we were going to sign him’. Leeds went on to win the league that season and I could have been with them, playing at the highest level playing in Europe the following season.

“I was gutted. I was so close and the injury changed everything. But that’s football. You get your ups and downs.

“I could never complain about the fantastic career I had at Tranmere and I wouldn’t swap my memories of the years at Prenton Park for anything.”

He wasn’t granted a testimonial after a decade with Rovers, but in 2020 there were moves afoot amongst their supporters to help him publish his autobiography.

Adulation has not waned and a young writer who didn’t even get to see him play wrote warmly about the striker’s achievements in this tribute.

In 1995, Muir returned to Birmingham City for a £125,000 fee but he played only twice before he suffered a groin injury. In an effort to get fit, he spent a month on loan at Darlington, and scored a goal, but his league career was over.

He went to play in Hong Kong, scoring a hat-trick on his debut for Sing Tao, and later played for Happy Valley. In June 2011, he recalled in an interview with the Liverpool Post: “The warm climate was a big help. Then the medical people found the cause of the groin problem was my spine. The pelvis wasn’t lined up properly. It could get out of joint just by lying in bed.

“One of the lads on the medical side was able to click me back into place. I have to say I have not had many problems with it since.”

Muir returned to the UK, and his native West Midlands and joined Nuneaton Borough.

“We won the league by 20 points and got into the Conference,” Muir told the Post. “We were top of the league after three months of the following season then it all went pear-shaped.”

The newspaper reported that Muir stepped down a level to Stratford Town, where his football days finished.

He did some voluntary coaching in schools and took a job in a factory for a year, and subsequently joined a friend in a business fitting out pubs and shops.

• Pictures from various online sources.

Cobblers hero Mike Everitt started out with the Gunners

CONTACTS made as a youngster at Arsenal stood versatile Mike Everitt in good stead for the rest of his career.

He went on to play under his former Gunners teammate Dave Bowen at Northampton Town as part of one of football’s most remarkable stories and earned a place in the Cobblers’ ‘team of the century’.

Later, he joined a small enclave of former Arsenal players at Brighton. Everitt swapped Devon for Sussex in March 1968 when he moved from Plymouth Argyle for a £2,500 fee.

The man who signed him, Archie Macaulay, was a former Arsenal man himself who’d already brought three other ex-Gunners to Hove in goalkeeper Tony Burns, Irish international full-back Jimmy Magill and winger Brian Tawse.

Everitt started the new season as first choice left-back in Macaulay’s side and an uninterrupted 14-game run in the team as autumn turned to winter straddled Macaulay’s departure and the arrival of new boss Freddie Goodwin.

Everitt slotted home a penalty as Albion drew 1-1 away to Bristol Rovers on 18 January 1969 but the 3-1 home win over Crewe Alexandra the following Saturday was his last outing of the season.

Everitt, Howard Wilkinson and Dave Turner from this Albion line-up all went on to become coaches

He picked up an injury and, with Goodwin having signed his former Leeds teammate Barrie Wright from New York Generals, local lad John Templeman able to fill either full-back slot, not to mention the addition of Eddie Spearritt from Ipswich Town, Everitt couldn’t win back his place in the starting line-up.

Competition for a starting place only intensified in the summer of 1969 when Goodwin’s former Leeds teammate, Willie Bell, arrived from Leicester and was installed as the regular choice at left-back, while Stewart Henderson cemented the right-back slot to the extent he was named Player of the Season.

While Everitt deputised for Bell on a couple of occasions and filled Bobby Smith’s midfield spot for four matches, his only other involvement was as sub on a handful of occasions. He was a non-playing sub in the final game of the season (a 2-1 home defeat to Mansfield Town) and then left the club during the close season.

Born in Clacton on 16 January 1941, Everitt represented Essex Schoolboys and London Schoolboys before being taken on as an apprentice by Arsenal in 1956. He turned professional in February 1958 and, thanks to the excellent records of thearsenalhistory.com, we know that he first played in the first team in the Harry Bamford Memorial match at Eastville against a Bristol XI on 8 May 1959.

He then went on Arsenal’s end-of-season tour to Italy and Switzerland. He was an unused sub for friendlies against Juventus and Fiorentina but came on as a substitute in a 4-1 win over Lugano of Switzerland on 24 May 1959.

Everitt (circled back row) lines up for Arsenal – with (left to right trio in centre of front row), David Herd, Tommy Docherty and Jimmy Bloomfield

It wasn’t until Easter 1960 that he made his competitive first team breakthrough, but when he did it was a baptism of fire in George Swindin’s side.

He made his first team debut in front of 37,873 fans packed into Highbury on Good Friday (15 April 1960) as the Gunners beat a Johnny Haynes-led Fulham side 2-0.

Modern day players might not be able to comprehend it but Everitt also played the following day when Arsenal travelled to Birmingham City, and lost 3-0. Two days later, away to Fulham this time, Everitt was again in the starting line-up as Arsenal lost 3-0.

He kept his place for the following Saturday’s match – at home to Manchester United – and in front of 41,057 he was part of the side that beat United 5-2. Future Albion teammate Alex Dawson led the line for a United team that included Bobby Charlton and Johnny Giles.

That was the penultimate game of the season and Everitt retained his place for the final game, which ended in a 1-0 defeat to West Brom at The Hawthorns.

The 1960-61 season got off to a good start for him too as he played in the opening four matches and, into the bargain, scored Arsenal’s only goal as they beat Preston North End at home on 23 August. Unfortunately for him, a tigerish Scot called Tommy Docherty edged him out of the first team picture and in February 1961 he moved to Fourth Division Northampton Town (for a fee of £4,000) who were managed by the aforementioned Bowen.

His stay with the Cobblers spanned one of the most remarkable stories in football history as they were promoted season on season from the Fourth to the First….and then relegated all the way back down again (although Everitt had left for pastures new before they reached the basement again).

What he was part of, though, was achieving three promotions in five years. Glenn Billingham recalled that heady era in a 2017 article for thesefootballtimes.co.

In 1961-62, Everitt was a regular at wing-half and scored five goals in 41 appearances. He switched to left-back the following season and played 30 matches as Town went up as champions.

A season of consolidation in 1963-64 saw Town finish 11th in Division Two, when Everitt played 45 matches. He played in 43 games in the 1964-65 season which culminated in the historic promotion to the top-flight courtesy of finishing in runners up spot, a point behind champions Newcastle United.

Necessary investment in improving the squad was slow to materialise and Bowen initially had to rely on the same squad of players who’d got them up. Everitt was one of only five Town players who had previously played at that level.

A 5-2 defeat away to Everton in the opening fixture was perhaps a portent of what was to follow for the rest of the season. They didn’t record a win until their 14th game, at home to West Ham (when they won 2-1), but the underdogs performed heroics in their first two home matches. It must have been quite an occasion when in only the second game of the season Everitt lined up in the Northampton side to face Arsenal.

The game finished 1-1, although Everitt had to be replaced at half-time. However, he also played in the return fixture at Highbury which also finished in a 1-1 draw.

Town also drew 1-1 at home to Manchester United, stifling the attacking threat of Best, Law and Charlton, although United exacted revenge at Old Trafford where they dished out a 6-2 thrashing. Charlton got a hat-trick, Law scored a couple and John Connelly was also on the scoresheet.

Everitt made 34 appearances (plus one as sub) that season and scored two goals, one in a rare win, in the penultimate game, when the Cobblers beat Sunderland 2-1 (the Wearsiders scorer was Neil Martin, who later played for the Albion). Graham Carr (father of comedian Alan Carr) played 30 times for the Cobblers that season.

Back in the second tier, Everitt featured in 17 games but as Town plummeted straight through the division, he moved on to Plymouth Argyle in March 1967, where his former Arsenal teammate Jimmy Bloomfield had moved to from West Ham. Everitt was still only 26 when he made his debut in a 1-0 home defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers. After 31 games for Argyle, he made the move to Brighton.

Everitt had already gained his preliminary coaching badge when still a player and after leaving Brighton in 1970 he initially moved to Plymouth City as player-manager. Within months, he seized the opportunity to move up a level when he landed the player-manager role at then Southern League Wimbledon.

In a January 2010 interview in The Guardian, it was revealed the two candidates he beat to land the position were David Pleat, who went on to manage Luton, Leicester and Spurs, and his former Albion teammate Howard Wilkinson, who won the league title with Leeds United.

Pleat recalled: “The director, Stanley Reed, went for Mike and Howard ended up at Boston United while I was eventually appointed by Nuneaton Borough in the Southern League.”

A few eyebrows were raised in 1973 when Everitt was appointed manager of newly-relegated Brentford just seven days before the start of the 1973-74 season, taking over from Frank Blunstone, who’d left to become youth team manager at Manchester United.

Greville Waterman, on a Bees fan blog, said Everitt polarised opinion, declaring: “He was undoubtedly a cheap option and received little support from the directors (now where have we heard that before) and did his best with a wafer thin squad.”

A classic example saw defender Stewart Houston sold to Manchester United for a club record £55,000 in December 1973, but the money wasn’t immediately reinvested in the squad.

Nevertheless, Waterman pointed out: “His approach did not go down well with some of his players and he brought in a number of tough bruisers. Under his management, Brentford declined rapidly, fell to the bottom of the Football League and barely escaped the need to apply for re-election.”

Legendary Brentford defender Alan Nelmes was particularly disparaging about Everitt. “He didn’t have the technical expertise that Frank had and you felt as if the club wasn’t going anywhere with him. Frank was very advanced in his thinking, ahead of his time, really, and it was a step backwards to have Mike.”

Everitt finally got some backing from the boardroom on transfer deadline day. Experienced forward Dave Simmons was brought in from Cambridge United and former Everton and Southampton defender Jimmy Gabriel from Bournemouth and a 10-match unbeaten run from mid-February to early April did enough to assure the Bees avoided bottom spot even though their finishing position of 19th was their lowest position for nearly 50 years. Crowds were hovering around only 5,000 too.

It didn’t get much better the following season and in spite of getting a vote of confidence in November 1974 from new chairman Dan Tana, Everitt only lasted a few more weeks in the hotseat.

Ironically, after a poor start to the campaign, he’d begun to turn results round and lifted the side to a mid-table position on the back of four wins and a draw in a seven-game spell between late November to mid-January, but he was sacked on 16 January and replaced with John Docherty, who’d only packed up playing for the Bees the previous summer.

Everitt’s next role came as a coach (pictured above) under his old Arsenal pal Bloomfield at Leicester City, and former winger Len Glover came up with an amusing reminiscence on lcfc.com.

Glover recalled when he was 17 playing against Everitt for Charlton Athletic against Northampton.

“He had massive thighs, and had his sleeves rolled up. In the first five minutes he had kicked me when the ball was nowhere near, and now he was our coach!

“He was just the same when he was our coach. When he started, he gathered us round at the training ground. His opening gambit was, ‘You don’t know me, and I don’t know you, but we will soon change that!’

“Then he noticed Frank Worthington who was not with the group but was with the apprentices who were crossing the ball for him to volley like they did every morning. He went, ‘Oi, get over here!’ Frank went, ‘Yeah, in a minute’. Instead of saying, ‘Over here, now!’ Everitt just went, ‘Well, hurry up then’.

“Before Everitt left we went to Leeds and we got stuffed 3-0. After the game Birch (Alan Birchenall) was doing his hair with his hair dryer. Win or lose he would always do his hair. Mike Everitt came in and said, ‘It’s a pity you’re not as good with the ball as you are with that hair dryer!’ Birch replied, ‘If I was as good with the ball as I am with the hair dryer, I wouldn’t be playing for Leicester!’”

After leaving Leicester, Everitt managed Kuwaiti side Al-Shabab when another former Arsenal teammate, George Armstrong, was manager of the Kuwaiti national side (Armstrong’s daughter, Jill, posted a picture of them in Kuwait on Twitter in 2019).

Jill Armstrong posted this picture on Twitter of her with dad George and Everitt in Kuwait

After Kuwait, Everitt managed Cairo-based Egyptian teams Al Mokawloon and Al Ahly, the club Percy Tau joined in the summer of 2021.

According to Wikipedia, Everitt had particular success at Al Mokawloon, winning the 1982-83 Egyptian Premier League title and two African Cup Winners Cups.

• Pictures from matchday programmes and online sources.

How Shots stopper Mark Beeney’s move saved the Albion

MARK BEENEY has coached young goalkeepers at Chelsea for nearly 20 years, but Brighton fans who saw him play remember his most important ever save.

The proceeds from his sale to Leeds United for £350,000 on 20 April 1993 quite literally saved the Albion from being wound up by the Inland Revenue.

Beeney had played 55 league and cup games in the Albion goal that season (missing only one because of a suspension) and he didn’t have much say in what happened next, as he remembered in an interview with the Argus in 2001.

“Albion were at Plymouth and the night before the game manager Barry Lloyd told me that he had given Leeds permission to talk to me and that he wanted me to negotiate a deal otherwise the club were history,” he said.

“I didn’t really have much choice because if I’d have turned down the chance I’d have been unemployed anyway with the financial situation at Albion.”

Howard Wilkinson, the former Albion winger who had led Leeds to the old Division One title the previous season, had been looking for a ‘keeper to compete with the ageing John Lukic, and Beeney fitted the bill….as well as footing the bill for Brighton where the taxman was concerned.

The move was certainly an upheaval in terms of geographical location but it presented Beeney with the chance to leap from third tier football into the Premier League.

It didn’t quite pan out as he might have hoped – most of his action was for Leeds’ reserve side! – but over the course of six years he played 49 games in the Premiership and 68 first team games in total for the Elland Road outfit.

Born in Pembury, near Tunbridge Wells, on 30 December 1967, Beeney went to St Francis Primary School in Maidstone then to St Simon Stock, a Catholic secondary school.

He first came to the attention of talent spotters when playing for Ringlestone Colts, a successful Maidstone junior side, and he was invited to join Gillingham, Kent’s only professional side at the time, as an associate schoolboy.

He made sufficient progress to be taken on as an apprentice by the Gills and turned professional in August 1985. He only played two first team games, though, and was given a free transfer by manager Keith Peacock.

Beeney, circled, when with the Maidstone United squad who won promotion to the league

He joined Maidstone United in January 1987 and, although they were in the GM Vauxhall Conference at the time, he helped them to gain promotion to the Football League in 1989.

His form for Maidstone led to international recognition when he played as a second half substitute for the England C (semi-professional) side in a 1-1 draw away to Italy on 29 January 1989. The game at Stadio Alberto Picco in La Spezia saw Fabrizio Ravanelli, a Champions League winner with Juventus seven years later, score the Italians’ goal.

Back at Maidstone, it wasn’t the best news for Beeney when Peacock arrived as manager. He ended up going on loan to Aldershot, where he played seven games. On his return, Maidstone’s goalkeeping coach Joe Sullivan recommended him to Brighton boss Barry Lloyd and the Seagulls paid a £25,000 fee to take him to the Goldstone in March 1991 as back-up to Perry Digweed.

Wheeler-dealer Lloyd had sold John Keeley to Oldham Athletic for £238,000 a year before – not a bad return for a player who cost £1,500 – and with the inexperienced Brian McKenna not really a meaningful challenger for Digweed’s place, Beeney was ideally suited to the Seagulls.

However, he had a rather ignominious start when, on 20 April 1991, Albion lost 3-0 at home to Oxford United but he kept a clean sheet second time around when he was between the sticks for a 1-0 win at Hull City before Digweed returned to star in the end-of-season excitement that culminated in a trip to Wembley for the play-off final.

Beeney’s third senior Albion appearance couldn’t have come in stranger circumstances, and I was at close quarters to witness it. I was a guest in the directors’ box at The Den, Millwall, on the evening of 4 September and tracksuited Beeney was sat a couple of rows behind me, having travelled but not been included in what in those days was a 13-man squad.

During the warm-up, Digweed suddenly pulled up with an injury and, after physio Malcolm Stuart attended to him, it was evident he wouldn’t be able to take part in the game. But the referee was poised to start the match, so the ‘keeper’s jersey was handed to Gary Chivers to go between the posts to avoid delaying the kick-off.

A discussion between the managers and the officials gave the green light to allow Albion to replace Digweed with a recognised ‘keeper and, although he hadn’t been due to be involved, Beeney was summoned from the stand to enter the fray as an emergency substitute.

Eight minutes of play had elapsed by the time he’d managed to leg it down to the changing room and get himself ready for action. John Crumplin, who had started the game in Chivers’ right-back slot instead of being on the bench, was forced to come off without having broken into a sweat, and a relieved Chivers resumed his more traditional defensive position.

Into the bargain, the eventful evening saw the Seagulls come away with a 2-1 win – their second successive victory at The Den, having won 2-1 there in the second leg of the play-off semi-finals four months earlier.

Digweed’s injury meant Beeney then had his first extended run in the side, playing in 30 of the following 31 league and cup games (loan American goalkeeper Juergen Sommer deputising in a 0-0 away draw at Cambridge United) before Digweed was finally restored to the no.1 spot in early February. Only five of the remaining 16 games were won and Albion were relegated back to the third tier.

When the new season got under way, Beeney had stepped up to become first choice ‘keeper, and, when interviewed in a matchday programme article, said: “I came as second string ‘keeper as I knew Perry was the number one but I have always wanted to establish myself and this season I have had my chance.”

As referred to earlier, his final Albion appearance came away to Plymouth on 17 April, and Beeney left the club having featured in 87 games plus that one as sub. He told the Argus he retained great affection for the Seagulls. “I remember it as a friendly club even though they didn’t have much to be cheerful about with the taxman trying to shut them down and the players were wondering whether they would get paid.

“There was a good spirit in the dressing room with experienced types like Fozzie (Steve Foster) and Johnny Byrne around the place who had seen it all before.

“I spent the least time there but it is the one former club that makes me most welcome. I appreciate that.”

With Beeney transferred, Digweed returned for the final three games of the season, but the 3-2 home win over Chester turned out to be his last game for the club, and Albion began the following season with 18-year-old Nicky Rust as their first-team ‘keeper.

Because Beeney’s transfer had gone through outside of the window, Leeds gained special dispensation from the FA and their opponents, Coventry City, to allow him to make his debut in the final game of the 1992-93 season, there being nothing of consequence at stake with both sides comfortably sitting in mid-table.

Beeney conceded three in the game at Highfield Road but the game finished 3-3, diminutive Rod Wallace a hat-trick hero, rescuing a point for Leeds with goals in the 87th and 90th minutes to add to his first half strike.

In his first full season at Elland Road, Beeney shared the no.1 spot with Lukic, but the former Arsenal stopper had the upper hand in the following two seasons.

And just when Beeney thought he would make the breakthrough, Leeds signed Nigel Martyn from Crystal Palace to take over from Lukic.

Beeney told the Argus: “I thought I was going to be no. 1 and Paul Evans no. 2 in 1996 and both Paul and I were told a deal with Nigel was not going through. A couple of days later he had joined. I was disappointed. But I decided to buckle down as we were happy at the club and in the North with my family. I ended up playing more than 400 reserves games, I was hardly ever injured, and it was frustrating.”

Beeney handles ouotside the box at Old Trafford and is sent off

One time when he did get a start, against Manchester United at Old Trafford, on 14 April 1996, he was sent off after 16 minutes! Wilkinson never picked a sub keeper, so defender Lucas Radebe had to go in goal.

The excellent Leeds archive website ozwhitelufc.net.au remembers Beeney as: “A big keeper, his meticulous planning left him well prepared as he keenly watched videos of potential penalty-takers. He proved a capable deputy for John Lukic, taking over from him when his form dipped. His contract was extended in June 1996 for a further two years, but he had to retire due to injuries sustained in a reserve game at Stoke City when he ruptured an Achilles tendon in March 1999.”

In fact, he ruptured it twice in the space of eight months, he told the Argus, and he quit playing professionally after taking the advice of Leeds’ boss at the time, David O’Leary, whose own career had ended with a similar injury.

“The medical people said the Achilles would not hold up to what was needed at the level I was at,” he said. “I sought a second opinion afterwards and was told the Achilles was strong but it’s so short it doesn’t give me the spring I need to play at the top.”

Beeney set up an executive chauffeur business – Victoria Beckham was among his clients – but a former playing colleague at Aldershot, Steve Wignall, had taken over as manager at Doncaster Rovers, and offered him a return to playing.

“I just wanted somewhere to train,” Beeney told the Argus. “He (Steve) said they needed cover as a goalkeeper so I might as well sign on. I played four reserve games and was substitute for the first team.”

Eventually, after eight years living in Yorkshire, Beeney moved the family back to Kent so sons Mitchell and Jordan could be nearer their grandparents. He linked up with Dover Athletic as a back-up ‘keeper and played in a couple of pre-season friendlies but was mainly standby to first choice Paul Hyde.

In October 2001, he switched to Sittingbourne as manager, and also began working two days a week with the young goalkeepers at Chelsea (under 21s, under 17s and under 16s).

He left Sittingbourne in 2004 when the role at Chelsea was made a permanent position, and he’s been coaching the Premier League club’s reserve and academy ‘keepers ever since, although he did work with the first team ‘keepers temporarily when Jose Mourinho was in charge in 2007.

Beeney the goalkeeping coach pictured in 2010

Both his sons went through the Chelsea academy as goalkeepers. Mitchell was at Chelsea from 2007 until 2018. He came close to first-team action as a non-playing substitute for a home 1-1 draw with Liverpool in May 2015, which he spoke about in an interview with the42.ie and he did get to play league football out on loan at Newport County and Crawley Town. When he finally left Chelsea, he moved to Ireland to play for Sligo Rovers and returned to the UK in 2019 to join Hartlepool United.

Younger son Jordan left Chelsea in 2014 after seven years and joined Charlton Athletic where he spent four years before being given a free transfer.

Pictures from Albion matchday programmes and online sources.