PINT-SIZED Scouser Eric Potts went from a flying owl to a soaring seagull back in the 1970s.
Ginger-headed Potts caught the eye in more ways than one and, after he’d put in a man-of-the-match performance for Sheffield Wednesday against Brighton, he earned a £14,000 move to the Goldstone Ground.
He joined Alan Mullery’s newly-promoted Seagulls in the summer of 1977 but after three months lost his starting berth to Tony Towner and went on to earn the reputation of a goalscoring supersub during his one season with the Albion.
Potts (12) wheels away after his late goal v Sunderland
In one game at home to Sunderland, he went on for left-back Gary Williams with Albion trailing 1-0 and hit two goals in the last two minutes to turn the match in Brighton’s favour.
Potts moved back to his native north west, initially to Preston, before becoming a Third Division promotion winner with Burnley.
In 1977, though, football magazine Shoot! hailed Potts’ “astute” signing for the Albion in glowing terms, saying: “Potts’ will-of-the-wisp skill has electrified many crowds and will quickly win over Brighton supporters.
“An exciting individualist, his darting runs and ninety-minute wholeheartedness will undoubtedly set the terraces buzzing at his new club just as he did many times in the seven years he was with Wednesday.”
Potts had impressed when Wednesday visited the Goldstone for the last game of the season on 3 May 1977 when a crowd of 30,756 saw Albion edge a cracking match 3-2 to clinch promotion from Division 3. The next month, he was making the journey for a longer stay.
“When I met Alan Mullery and the chairman and vice-chairman of the club in June their attitude to the game was impressive enough for me to want to sign for them…they didn’t have to ‘sell; the potential of the club to me,” Potts told the magazine.
“I have played against Brighton twice and they seem to have the right blend of players. The motivation from Mullery makes their chances of success that much greater and I know I can do a good job for them.”
Somewhat ironically in view of how the season panned out, Potts declared: “I want to go places…not sit on the substitutes’ bench like I did eight times in the Third Division last season. The First is my aim and that’s the reason I’m delighted to be joining Brighton.”
Potts’ popularity at Hillsborough saw him become the first Wednesday player to be named Player of the Year twice (1974-75 and 1975-76) and the move to Brighton took him back to the second tier, a level at which he’d played under two different Owls managers, Derek Dooley and former Albion player Steve Burtenshaw.
The season began well enough for him as he lined up in the no. 7 shirt for the first 21 matches of the season. But home-grown winger Towner came back into contention in November and took over the shirt, meaning Potts had to resort to that familiar place on the bench.
He had only five more starts in the rest of the season, but, in the days of only one sub, went on 15 times between December and April and scored goals in three of them (including that double against the Black Cats).
As the history books have recorded, Albion narrowly missed out on a second successive promotion in 1978 and Potts’ short stay in the south was over. Brighton returned a decent return on their investment by selling the winger to Preston North End for £37,000.
Potts spent two seasons at Deepdale under former England World Cup winner Nobby Stiles but he switched to Lancashire rivals Burnley, then in Division Three, for £20,000.
He was a regular in Brian Miller’s side throughout the 1980-81 season, featuring in 37 games plus one as a sub, and chipping in with five goals, as the Clarets finished in eighth spot.
The team improved markedly the following campaign to earn promotion as champions but Potts had lost his place as a starter to an emerging future England international, Trevor Steven.
Nevertheless, his 21 appearances plus eight as a sub were enough to earn him a championship medal which he was presented with ahead of a pre-season friendly the next season after he’d already moved on again, this time to Bury, where he ended his career.
Born in Liverpool on 16 March 1950, part of Potts’ schooldays were spent at Anfield Comprehensive School, a stone’s throw from the home of Liverpool FC.
But it was at Blackpool FC where he began his football journey, starting out as an amateur.
When he wasn’t offered pro terms, he went into non-league football with New Brighton and Oswestry Town. His form at Oswestry attracted Wednesday who bought him for £5,000.
He made his debut for Wednesday in October 1970 but didn’t establish himself in the first team until towards the end of the 1972-73 season.
By the time he left for Brighton, he had scored 21 goals in 159 appearances for the Owls.
Potts returned to the non-league scene after he left Bury, turning out for Witton Albion and Clitheroe, and, after he’d hung up his boots, earned a living as a taxi driver.
Both his sons followed in his footballing footsteps: eldest Colin was initially with Preston but played all his first team football in non-league.
The youngest, Michael, started as a schoolboy with Manchester United, before moving on to become a member of the Blackburn Rovers team that reached the semi-final of the FA Youth Cup in 2008-09.
Released in 2011, he signed for York City in the summer of that year at the age of 19 and on the opening day of the 2012-13 season, as a substitute, he made his Football League debut for York in a 3-1 home defeat against Wycombe. He subsequently played for various non-league sides.
Potts looks on as Peter Ward challengesPotts wins a tussle with Kenny Sansom at Crystal Palace
MARK FLATTS was destined for a glittering career after breaking into Arsenal’s first team when only eighteen.
It was the season when George Graham’s side finished in a disappointing 10th place in the league but won the League Cup and the FA Cup, beating Sheffield Wednesday in both competitions.
Flatts got seven starts plus four appearances off the bench and the following season, after he’d been troubled with a few injuries, Graham sent him out on loan to get some games under his belt.
His first loan was at Cambridge United, then in January 1994 Flatts joined forces with former Gunners legend Liam Brady at Brighton.
The former midfield maestro who’d graced the game at the highest level as a player had not long arrived at the Goldstone Ground, creating a buzz of anticipation amongst the largely disillusioned Albion faithful.
Brighton were bumping along around the foot of the third tier table when he arrived and it augured well that Brady could use his connections with his former club to secure the services of a prodigious young talent who’d already played a handful of matches in the Premier League.
He made his debut in a cracking 4-1 New Year’s Day home win over Cambridge United when Kurt Nogan scored a hat-trick and he was only on the losing side twice during his two months at the club, helping the Albion move away from the relegation zone.
Brady wrote about it in his autobiography Born To Be A Footballer, describing how “livewire” Flatts had heated up “a freezing Goldstone” on that debut day. “He’s a lovely young kid off the field but on the park there’s a strut about him. That’s exactly what we need. He’s full of tricks.”
Flatts started nine matches, came on as a sub once, and scored one of Albion’s goals in a 3-2 home win over Blackpool, but it was his skill on the ball and pace that fans enjoyed most.
After he had returned to Highbury, Brady thanked him for his contribution and said in his programme notes: “He gave the place a tremendous lift. He’s a very confident lad and he did us a real favour and hopefully he’s got something out of it as well. I think he has and I think he enjoyed his time with us.”
Flatts confirmed as much recently. Although he has kept a low profile for many years, in 2020, online from his home in Norfolk, he appeared in two podcasts talking about his career.
On the Shoot the Defence podcast in April 2020, Flatts talked admiringly of his time under Brady at Brighton – “He still had it in training” – as well as the experience of playing alongside senior pros Jimmy Case and Steve Foster at the Goldstone Ground.
“Loyal fans as well. It was a good time,” he said. “I got on well with the fans and a few of them still text me, so that’s nice. Liam Brady and Jimmy Case had seen me in a few games, said they wanted me on loan, and I went there and enjoyed it.”
Born in Islington on 14 October 1972 and brought up in Wood Green, Flatts played for Haringey Borough and Middlesex County school teams and he was playing for Enfield Rangers when he caught the eye of professional clubs.
He spent time training with Watford and West Ham, but his mum and older brother were Arsenal fans so, when they invited him to join them, it was no contest. The scout responsible for picking him up for the Gunners was the former Brighton wing-half, Steve Burtenshaw.
Flatts was one of the country’s top talented 14-year-olds who went through the FA National School of Excellence at Lilleshall before becoming a trainee at Highbury after graduating.
In the first edition of a new fans’ podcastOver and Over and Over Again on 20 August 2020, Flatts talked about how he, Andy Cole and Paul Dickov up front, Ray Parlour and Ian Selley in midfield, Scott Marshall at the back and Alan Miller in goal were all going through from youth team to reserves at the same time. “It was a good strong youth team,” he said. “Pat Rice was the youth team manager who brought us through. He was a good coach.”
Flatts signed professional in December 1990 and he progressed to the reserve side who were managed by another Arsenal legend, George Armstrong.
One particular reserve match stands out as memorable – but not because Flatts scored a goal in a 2-2 draw. Ordinarily, Flatts was accustomed to playing in front of a few hundred supporters for the second string, but on 16 February 1991 it’s reckoned more than 10,000 turned up.
The Ovenden Papers Football Combination game against Reading was originally scheduled to be an away fixture but freezing conditions meant the game was swapped to Highbury because it had undersoil heating.
The reason for the surge of interest was the match saw the return to playing of Tony Adams after his release from prison, having served half of his four-month sentence for drink driving. The amazing response of the Arsenal faithful was remembered in this football.london article in February 2018.
Often niggled by injuries, Flatts was sidelined by one he hadn’t even been aware of, other than what felt like a small discomfort. “I got a stress fracture on my ankle and was playing on it for a month without realising,” he said.
Physio Gary Lewin arranged for him to see a Harley Street specialist and it was only after he was put through tests on a running machine that the problem was diagnosed. The injury required surgery that put him out of action for over a year.
Flatts got his first real involvement with the first team on a pre-season tour of Norway ahead of the 1992-93 season, getting on as a substitute against Stabaek and Brann Bergen. He was a non-playing sub in two subsequent pre-season friendlies away to Wolves and Peterborough.
It was back to reserve team football at the start of the season but Graham selected him to travel with the squad for an away game at Sheffield United on 19 September and he made his competitive debut as a 71st minute substitute for Anders Limpar, shortly before Ian Wright netted an equaliser for the Gunners.
His next involvement came in a third round League Cup encounter with Derby County. He was a non-playing sub in the away tie but started in Limpar’s place for the replay on 1 December 1992, when Arsenal edged it 2-1.
Flatts (right) celebrates Arsenal’s League Cup win with some familiar faces
He kept his place for the league game which followed four days later but was subbed off as Arsenal lost 1-0 at Southampton.
At one point, the Islington Gazette declared Flatts, Neil Heaney, Parlour and Dickov as the “next crop of Arsenal starlets who will take the club forward”.
As the year drew to a close, on 19 December, Flatts earned rave reviews for his showing in a 1-1 home draw against Lennie Lawrence’s Middlesbrough.
“It’s very unusual to have a quick player with a brain,” said manager Graham. “Mark has skill but he also has the application to go with it.”
Writing about how brightly Flatts shone in the game, Trevor Haylett, of the Independent, said: “He possesses an easy and deceptive running style which frequently carried him away from markers, and has a confidence that few of his colleagues shared in a desultory first 45 minutes.”
Haylett observed: “The problem for Graham is that his most productive line-up, with Merson in the ‘hole’ to distribute and ghost into scoring areas, leaves no room for Flatts, who amply justified his manager’s contention that he has a ‘very big future in the game’.”
Flatts kept his place for the following match, a goalless Boxing Day home draw against Ipswich Town, and was back on the bench away to Aston Villa three days later but came on for the second half in a game Arsenal lost 1-0.
The game he remembers most fondly came just over a fortnight later away to Manchester City at Maine Road. He sped past two players and crossed it for Paul Merson to score with a near post header that gave Arsenal a 1-0 win.
But competition for places was intense and he didn’t next get a start until 1 March against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge, another game that finished goalless.
He had to wait until May for his next involvement, as a sub in a 1-0 defeat away to Sheffield Wednesday, who his teammates would play twice in the space of five days later that month to win the FA Cup on penalties, both games having ended in draws.
With the first of those matches only four days away, Graham put out a young side to face Spurs in the last league game of the season, and Flatts was part of a side who lost the north London derby 3-1, Dickov getting the Arsenal goal.
After his loan spell at Brighton, Flatts got back into the first team picture at Arsenal towards the end of the 1993-94 season, featuring in three successive league games: as a sub in a 1-1 draw with Wimbledon and starting in a 2-1 win at Villa and a 1-1 home draw against QPR.
While he travelled to Copenhagen with the squad for the European Cup Winners’ Cup Final on 4 May 1994, he didn’t play in the Gunners’ 1-0 win.
Flatts wasn’t back in the Arsenal first team set-up until December 1994, when he had a four-game spell, starting in a 2-2 draw away to Nottingham Forest, being a non-playing sub away to Manchester City and then coming on as a sub in a 3-1 defeat at home to Leeds on 17 December and in the goalless Boxing Day home match with Aston Villa.
He came off the bench in a third round FA Cup replay defeat to Millwall on 18 January 1995 but the following month the manager who had supported his development was sacked, and the young wideman went out on loan to Bristol City.
Flatts didn’t reckon much of the man management skills of Graham’s temporary successor, Stewart Houston, but it was the manager who eventually succeeded him who showed the youngster the door.
“Bruce Rioch took over, and said: ‘No, you’re not good enough’ and that was it,” Flatts recalled. He had another short loan spell, this time at Grimsby Town, in the 1995-96 season, but when his contract was up in 1996, he was given a free transfer.
When Flatts left the famous marble halls of Highbury, all that early promise rapidly evaporated and despite a handful of trials at several clubs, his career fizzled out, the player admitting he fell out of love with the game.
Initially, he headed off to Italy to try his luck with Torino in Serie B. He said while he enjoyed his few months there, a limit on the number of foreign players who could play at any one time edged him out of the picture.
According to arseweb.com, back in the UK he had trial periods with Manchester City (September 1996) and Watford (October 1986), although the scathing Hornets fans website, Blind, Stupid and Desperate has a less than flattering summary of his efforts to impress at Vicarage Road. He was briefly at Kettering Town in December 1996, then Barnet (1997-98 pre-season) and Colchester United (1999-00 pre-season) but none of them took him on.
Former Arsenal striker Martin Hayes, manager at Ryman League Division One side Bishop’s Stortford, signed him during the 1999-00 season.
And his last appearance on a team-sheet was as an unused substitute for Queens Park Rangers in a 2000-01 pre-season 4-2 away defeat at Dr Martens League Premier Division side Crawley Town.
Flatts told host Richie Wakelin on Over and Over and Over Again that he kept on picking up niggling injuries too regularly. “With fitness concerns, I just lost interest,” he said. “I ain’t got no regrets. I loved it at Arsenal. I loved playing football. George Graham had faith in me and he gave me a go.”
He said his teenage son and daughter both play football and he has done some coaching at a local level and has considered setting up his own coaching school. He has also done some scouting work for Cambridge United and Norwich City.
Flatts looks back at his football career during a 2020 podcast
Pictures from Albion’s matchday programmes and various online sources.
In parallel lines 