Tag: Peter Clarke

Eventful Albion stopover for on-loan Calvin Andrew

JOURNEYMAN striker Calvin Andrew is unlikely to forget his eventful months playing for the Seagulls on loan from Crystal Palace.

The Luton-born forward got off to a great start in January 2009 when he scored a 90th-minute winner on his debut for the Seagulls.

In only his fourth game, he damaged a hamstring against his hometown club – a match that turned out to be the last for the manager who’d brought him in on loan.

While Andrew was back at Selhurst Park recovering from the injury, a new boss – but familiar face – took charge at the Withdean.

Andrew rejoined the Seagulls but couldn’t force his way into the starting line-up because Lloyd Uwusu had arrived to take centre stage. However, the loanee scored two vital goals in Albion’s ‘Great Escape’ when going on as a substitute.

To cap it all, in the nail-biting last game of the season, when Brighton just preserved their League One status with a 1-0 win over Stockport County, Andrew suffered a horrific injury which sidelined him for six months.

Andrew, who had lost his place at Palace after picking up an injury at the start of the season, had joined the Seagulls as part of a major January transfer window overhaul Micky Adams oversaw in an attempt to revive the club’s flagging League One fortunes.

When he signed, Adams said: “Calvin is a young centre-forward and will complement our existing forwards by giving us an added physical presence up front.

“He is over six-foot tall and the type of striker who makes things happen and can be a real handful for opposing defenders.”

The player himself, who had only joined Palace the previous summer for a £30,000 fee, said: “I went there and at the start of the season I was playing games and I was doing well. But then the situation changed. I got injured and since then I haven’t been able to get back in the team.

“The team has been doing really well and it’s totally understandable from my point of view. Neil Warnock still rates me highly, but he wants me to go out and get some games and get myself ready for when my chance does come.

“It was quite an easy decision. There were a few clubs in for me, but Brighton is relatively close to where I’m living so it was an easy choice. It’s a good club.

“I didn’t know any of the players, but I knew the manager. He’s a great manager and I’m looking forward to playing for him. Everybody knows about Nicky Forster. He’s an experienced player and there’s always something to learn as well as forming a good partnership.”

With Forster scoring Albion’s first against Hartlepool United at the Withdean on 31 January 2009, the script looked like it had been perfectly written when Andrew netted a winner in the last minute to seal a 2-1 victory.

Unfortunately, successive home defeats – 4-2 to Peterborough United and 2-0 to Carlisle United – in five days followed by elimination from the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy at Luton the following week was too much for Adams to stomach and he decided to quit after meeting chairman Dick Knight the day before the next match, which ironically saw Albion win 1-0 at Millwall.

Andrew wasn’t involved because he’d picked up a hamstring injury at Kenilworth Road, a ground where he’d made a first team debut as a 17-year-old in the 2004-05 season. Born in Luton on 19 December 1986, Andrew was a prolific goalscorer as a youth player at his hometown club.

When he was sent out on loan to gain experience at League Two Grimsby Town in 2005, he played nine matches under manager Russell Slade.

And it was Slade who was parachuted in at the Withdean to try to steer Albion away from the League One relegation trapdoor in the Spring of 2009.

Even though Albion picked up only four points from Slade’s first seven games in charge, the former Yeovil boss slowly turned things around with four wins in the next five games to lift the Seagulls out of the bottom four.

Andrew spoke about the change in fortunes in an Argus interview. He told reporter Steve Hollis: “We have shown different qualities which I don’t think we had when I was at the club before my injury. There is some real resilience now.

“I know Russell Slade quite well and he asks all of his teams to show some grit when the going gets tough. He demands you stick in there when you are struggling and to keep going.”

Andrew was buoyant having headed the winner from Gary Hart’s cross in the 52nd minute at Bristol Rovers after leaving the bench before half-time to replace the injured Dean Cox.

“That was a big goal,” he said. “It was important for me because I am coming back from injury but it was more important for the club and the town.

“I usually hang around the back post when I am playing on the left but Dean White told me to get into attacking positions and it was a cross you dream about from Hart.”

He told Hollis: “When I initially had the injury, my fear was that I wouldn’t play again this season. I had a very bad tear in two places in the hamstring and was told it would take a very long time to repair.

“Fortunately, I seem to recover pretty quickly, and I am glad because I want to play a part in helping Albion stay up. It means a lot for me that Brighton stay up, even though I am only on loan.

“I have been made to not only feel part of the team but part of the town and it would be awful to go down.

“The supporters have been great and welcomed me even though I am from a rival team, so it is my duty to give 110 per cent. Just because I am on loan doesn’t make any difference.”

Andrew had to contend himself with another appearance from the bench in the following match but, again, he made a positive impact after replacing Hart, who limped off injured after only nine minutes of the game at Huddersfield.

The young striker levelled up the game after Town had taken the lead and Owusu continued his purple patch of form by netting a second equaliser to give Albion a share of the spoils.

Palace boss Warnock had been contemplating recalling Andrew but was told he would start in Albion’s crunch final home game against Stockport County. In fact, Slade once again opted to use Gary Hart in the starting line-up instead but Andrew was sent on in injured Hart’s place after only 17 minutes and went close to breaking the deadlock with a header that hit the top of the bar.

Forster, who had also been troubled by injury throughout the season, had to replace Andrew for the second half because he picked up an anterior cruciate knee ligament injury which ultimately prevented him playing for six months.

It wasn’t until October 2009 that Andrew got back playing for Palace reserves, and their assistant manager, Mick Jones told the club’s website: “Calvin played for half-an-hour on Monday. He is miles ahead of schedule following one of the worst injuries I have ever seen.”

The 2009-10 season saw Palace in all sorts of trouble: going into administration, Warnock departing as a result, Paul Hart taking over as manager, and the side only narrowly avoiding relegation. Andrew got 13 starts as Palace battled at the wrong end of the Championship, but he was more often a substitute, coming off the bench on 19 occasions.

With game time limited under new boss George Burley the following season, Andrew once again went out on loan: briefly to feature in three games for fellow Championship side Millwall in November, and in the New Year to League One Swindon Town, where his old Palace boss Hart was in charge.

Although he was involved in the Palace set-up at the start of the 2011-12 season, by the following March he went out on loan again, this time reuniting with Slade at Leyton Orient. He only started two matches, though, and didn’t score in any of the 10 games played while he was at Brisbane Road.

At the end of the season, Palace boss Dougie Freedman didn’t offer Andrew a new contract. His next stop saw him link up with League Two Port Vale on a two-month deal under former Albion boss Adams.

While he managed to earn a contract until the end of the season, he only started eight matches and was used as a substitute on 15 occasions.

With no new deal in the offing, he then switched to another League Two side, Mansfield Town, for the first part of 2013-14 before joining York City in the closing months.

It was in the summer of 2014 that he finally found a more permanent berth, at Rochdale, who’d been newly promoted to League One.

In six seasons at Spotland, Andrew scored 28 goals in 231 appearances and over four years was recognised as a ‘community champion’ for the amount of work he did in the local community, including school visits and involvement with the club’s women’s teams. In 2020, he was declared the League One PFA Community Champion.

One blot on his copybook came in 2016 when he was handed a 12-match FA ban (later reduced to nine games) after video evidence found him guilty of elbowing Oldham’s Peter Clarke in the face in an incident the referee missed.

After leaving Rochdale, he didn’t get fixed up with a new club until March 2021, when he joined Barrow AFC until the end of the season.

• Pictures from matchday programmes.

Sweet left foot but McLeod wasn’t to Albion fans’ taste

McLeod stripesWHEN MICKY Adams returned to the Albion for a second spell as manager, he brought in a number of players who, for whatever reason, struggled to deliver what was expected of them on the pitch.

One was Kevin McLeod, a Liverpudlian who, earlier in his career, had come through the Everton academy and briefly made it through to the Everton first team.

During Adams’ previous reign at Brighton, he’d made a habit of recruiting players he had worked with before – with plenty of success. Second time around, it was not the same outcome. McLeod was a player who had played under Adams at Colchester United, joining Albion on a Bosman free transfer on 1 July 2008.

“He is a left winger with good pace. He can deliver crosses and he offers a goal threat,” Adams told the media at the time. “At this level, he’s going to be a terrific signing for us.”

McLeod scored in only the second minute of a pre-season friendly against Worthing at Woodside Road and followed up three days later with two goals against Bognor.

When the proper League One action got under way at Gresty Road, Crewe, McLeod was on fire in the opening 45 minutes and Albion went on to win 2-1.

Three days later, Adam Virgo scored twice from McLeod corner kicks as Barnet were swept aside 4-0 in the League Cup. But McLeod picked up a knee injury in that game which forced him off just before half time. Some critics maintain he never properly recovered from it for the rest of his time with the Albion. In the middle of September, he had to undergo an operation on the troublesome knee.

He returned to the line-up after a month, in a 0-0 home draw v Peterborough, and in his Argus match report, Andy Naylor observed: “McLeod once again demonstrated his ability to deliver quality crosses, which is why he has been so badly missed.”

However, by his own admission, McLeod rushed back rather too soon, and playing when not properly fit didn’t do him any favours.

650057It didn’t seem to stop him being the joker in the pack during training, though, on one occasion taking the key to loan signing Robbie Savage’s Lamborghini and hiding it. Former teammate Jim McNulty remembered him as being “hilarious for so many different reasons”, adding: “He was funny when he meant to be, he was funny when he didn’t mean to be and he was funny when he told a story because we never knew whether it was true or false. We could have so much humour with him from so many different angles and he probably wasn’t even aware of 95 per cent of them.”

McNulty detailed one stupid stunt in an interview with express.co.uk: “Macca took the car keys from the pants of one of the young lads in the changing room and decided to drive his brand new 4×4 straight onto the training pitches, over the grass and locked it between two goals.

“The goals would get chained up so he pushed two goals over the top of this lad’s BMW and locked them together. It was hilarious watching the lad trying to unlock them from his car.”

Poster ‘Basil Fawlty’ opined on North Stand Chat: “He never recovered after that knee injury against Barnet. His wages could have been used on somebody decent who can actually play left wing!”

‘Finchley Seagull’ added: “Most of the time he was here he was being paid for being injured or useless” and ‘EssBee’ declared: “Never have I seen such an unlikely professional footballer than that bloke. He looked like a poor pub team footballer…barrel chested, ill-physiqued, he was like a tub of f***ing lard with no control, no nothing.”

McLeodWell-known Albion watcher Harty observed: “I cannot think of any player, in recent years, who had a better first 45 mins for the club, vs Crewe in August 2008… then had an Albion career peter out in the manner it did.”

‘Twinkle Toes’ agreed: “I remember marvelling in his performance that day at Gresty Rd. He was absolutely terrorising the Crewe right-back with his pace and ability: he looked absolutely awesome.

“How the hell could somebody with that kind of ability turn into the no-hoper we all know and loathe?”

wearebrighton.com summed him up thus: “Another player to be filed under the umbrella of players signed by Adams who just wanted money. You could see that McLeod had talent, he just couldn’t be bothered to use it.”

While he made 28 appearances in the 2008-09 season, he only appeared eight times in 2009-10 and by the time Gus Poyet was in the manager’s chair, he let McLeod join Wycombe Wanderers on loan.

After the move he further riled Brighton supporters by claiming the humble Buckinghamshire club had “a better squad than Brighton, better ground, better fans”.

McLeod played just 11 more times as a professional for the Chairboys before going on to join a Sunday League side in Colchester.

Born in Liverpool on 12 September 1980, McLeod joined Everton as a schoolboy in 1991 and did well enough to become part of a decent youth side before establishing himself in their reserves. In the 2000-01 season, he was player of the season as they topped the reserve league.

His form was recognised by manager Walter Smith who called him up to the first team and gave him five substitute appearances in the Premier League. He made his debut v Ipswich on 30 September 2000; called off the bench for the last 15 minutes when the Toffees were already 3-0 down.

His next two appearances, two months later, were happier, though: he featured in a winning team against Arsenal and Chelsea.

Fellow youth team product Danny Cadamarteri had already given Everton a second-half lead over the Gunners when, within a minute of McLeod’s introduction, Kevin Campbell sealed the points against his old club.

The following week, the same two goalscorers gave Everton a 2-1 victory against a Chelsea line-up including the likes of Marcel Desailly, Eidur Gudjohnsen and Gianfranco Zola.

McLeod reflected some years later: “That’s not bad to have on your CV is it? Being an Evertonian it was great.

“When you are on the same pitch as Dennis Bergkamp, Ashley Cole, Ray Parlour, Lee Dixon, Martin Keown and the rest of them you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“It was a good experience and I thoroughly enjoyed it. In my age group there was Cadamarteri, Leon Osman, Francis Jeffers, Tony Hibbert, George Pilkington and Peter Clarke.”

The Arsenal-Chelsea double was as good as it got for McLeod. He made two more substitute appearances that season, in defeats at Ipswich and Chelsea.

The following season he made his only start for Everton as a team-mate of Paul Gascoigne in a League Cup defeat on penalties at home to Crystal Palace on 13 September 2001.

The excellent toffeeweb.com probably hit the nail on the head in describing the rising star.

“He may fall into the Everton black hole for promising youngsters who are good… but just not quite good enough,” it said. “He only has one weakness, and that is within himself when he will sometimes hide in a game if things don’t go to well in the first 10 to 15 mins.”

McLeod only got one chance under Smith’s successor David Moyes, coming on as a last-minute sub in a FA Cup defeat v Shrewsbury Town on 4 January 2003.

Ten years later he admitted to the Liverpool Echo that things might have turned out different if he had been more responsive towards Moyes.

Instead, he joined QPR on loan between March and May 2003, helping them reach the second division play-offs before joining them permanently for £250,000 on 18 August 2003.

McLeod said: “I didn’t like it at first when I moved to London. I didn’t want to go but I sat down and talked about it with my family and they said you can stay here and work hard or go and play League football.

“I went away and enjoyed it and got promotions (in his first season with both QPR and Swansea).

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“You look at Leon Osman and Tony Hibbert. They stayed there for the extra year and now they are playing week in and week out but I am not one of those people who looks too much at the past.

“I’d rather go forward. I made my decision and I live with it to this day.”

McLeod initially joined Swansea on loan in February 2005 and made 11 appearances as the Swans won promotion to League One. The move was made pemanent for a fee of £60,000 at the start of the 2005-06 season and he went on to make 52 appearances (14 as a sub), before the move to Colchester.

In November 2015, McLeod was in trouble with the law, appearing before magistrates in Colchester accused of assault.