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.
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.
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.
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.
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