Half a dozen post-Christmas purchases, including Tony Cascarino, Gordon Strachan and Faustino Asprilla
1. Rodney Marsh (Manchester City)
Along with lame double entendre, pensioner whimsy, tales of thwarted ambition and highly dubious approximations of Pakistani accents, a staple of the classic 1970s sitcom was the symbiotic relationship between suburban neighbours. Were the writers of programmes such as Terry and June, The Good Life and George and Mildred influenced by the never-ending one-upmanship of Manchesters City and United, do you think? Were they inspired by, say, the Rodney Marsh transfer, which had all the hallmarks of tightly scripted sitcom: vaulting ambition; hubris; unnecessary risk-taking; disastrous mistakes a six-year-old would have thought twice about; and a denouement of painful comeuppance, the sort which, as the credits roll, would see the protagonist pictured patting the top of his head with the palm of his hand in impotent confusion as the fixtures and fittings of his front room came crashing down around his ears?
Probably not, no.
So anyway – cue Ronnie Hazelhurst trill – 24 hours before deadline day of the 1971-72 season, Manchester City were shoo-ins for the title. They'd won five of their last seven, had scored 63 goals in 32 matches, and were four points clear at the top with 10 games remaining. Leeds and Derby, in second and third places respectively, had two games in hand, but such was City's impressive form, it was widely considered all over bar the shouting. The Guardian, to pull an example from the ether, spoke of "the championship now heading towards Maine Road".
Problem was, over at Old Trafford, mid-table Manchester United were attempting to regain their former pre-eminence by splashing the cash. As deadline day approached, they spent £330,000 on Martin Buchan from Aberdeen and (the ill-fated, as it would turn out) Ian Storey-Moore from Nottingham Forest. City felt they had to flex their muscles in response, and so made their fourth attempt to sign Rodney Marsh from QPR. The first three attempts had failed because City were playing hardball over the fee, but now they were prepared to stump £30,000 over the odds for the 27-year-old maverick. Marsh joined in a £200,000 deal. City, wrote the Guardian, had proved themselves "determined not to be pushed out of the transfer market by Manchester United or anyone else".
Cue the inevitable hubristic downfall. The Marsh era started well, with a 2-1 win at Everton, but only because the man himself was missing with a groin strain. His debut, at home to Chelsea, ended in a 1-0 win, but the goal was scored by centre-half Tommy Booth, while an overweight Marsh departed the scene 20 minutes from time with cramp, before heading back to London on the Chelsea team bus. Marsh soon regained his fitness, but City lost their form. A dismal goalless draw at Newcastle was followed by a 2-1 capitulation at home to Stoke. Defeat at Southampton followed, City couldn't decide whether to keep their new bauble on display or not; the team started to (Marsh's own words) "play around me and we lost the focus of what we were trying to do". City lost the title by a point to Derby, finishing in fourth place, in effect spooked out of their third championship by United.
Here's a question, though. Since when has sport been solely about winning? It's also about fun, trying to pull things off with a little style, performing with panache, having a story to tell. You could argue that Derby might have won the title that year, but Marsh ensured City were the most memorable turn. Speaking of which ...
2. Faustino Asprilla (Newcastle United)
The 1995-96 season may have represented the early flowering of Manchester United's astonishing Class of 92, but their signature achievements were still to come, and anyway, this particular campaign was all about another United. Newcastle were the story of the season, their gorgeously brittle football taking them to within a hair's breadth of the club's first title since 1927. Like Marsh at City, like Jean van de Velde at the 1999 Open golf, like Ronnie O'Sullivan so often at the Crucible before this late-era gameface phase he's currently enjoying, it's the swashbuckling loser who stuck in the memory and captured the hearts of the neutral.
Kevin Keegan aside, the Colombian international Faustino Asprilla is painted as the fall guy in Newcastle's ill-fated title bid. He joined in early February – "We are delighted," said Keegan, "Faustino is a world-class striker" – when Newcastle were nine points clear of Manchester United with a game in hand. By the end of the season, with Asprilla having featured in 14 games, his new club winning only six and losing five, Newcastle trailed United by four points, their dream in tatters.
But stats on their own are about as much use as an episode of Numberwang. Newcastle may have won five of their six league games leading up to Asprilla's signing, but in all competitions they had only managed six wins from 12. He hardly turned their form upside down. And in any case, Asprilla hit the ground running with some blistering form: turning defeat into victory at Middlesbrough on his debut; hitting the post at West Ham; scoring at Man City; dominating Manchester United in that first half at St James Park; scoring at home against the Hammers; and playing Liverpool off the park at Anfield.
Ah, Asprilla at Anfield. He set up one, then scored another, and it's not much of a stretch to say that, had his team-mates held onto the 3-2 lead he had given them with an insouciant flick of his boot past a hapless David James, Newcastle would have gone on to win their elusive championship. As it was, the defence capitulated and they relinquished control of the title race. Asprilla's fault? Hardly.
In any case, we're back to the bit about fun, trying to pull things off with a little style, performing with panache, having a story to tell. It's not often Eric Cantona gets bested in this department, but despite his jaw-dropping series of strikes towards the end of the season – goals which earned the 29-year-old Frenchman's team 13 priceless points, because you can't win anything just with kids – it's Asprilla's curious introduction to English football that defines the season, and gives Newcastle fans a few bittersweet memories they'd otherwise not have. Money better kept in the bank? Nope, nope, six-point-seven million times nope. Next!
3. Tony Cascarino (Aston Villa)
And here's yet another poor bugger who cops all the flak for screwing up a title challenge, unfairly so in some respects. Graham Taylor's Aston Villa were a couple of points clear of perpetual title winners Liverpool (kids, ask your granny) in early March 1990, and with the closure of the year's transfer trading looming, decided to add a little experience to an attack led by 20-year-old Ian Olney, who had been doing a mighty fine job until the goals had dried up around the turn of the year.
"With someone like Tony Daley on the wing and crossing the ball for me, I can't really go wrong!" trilled Tony Cascarino upon signing from Millwall in a £1.5m deal which rewrote Villa's record book. And here he is years later, in his wonderful memoir Extra Time: "There was no conceivable way I could fail. But I managed to find one. Becoming a million-pound player was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I became lazy and complacent." The early signs were mixed. His debut at Derby County saw Villa win 1-0, and David Lacey noted that his performance was "encouraging but inconclusive ... Cascarino fitted easily into a playing style which is not that much different from the one he left at The Den, just a little more refined". Peter Shilton denied him a debut goal with a stunning save near the left-hand post, an ersatz replay of the Banks-Pele incident in Mexico twenty years earlier.
But Villa stuttered, losing at relegation haunted Crystal Palace a week later. Cascarino was impotent, though the Guardian's Ian Ridley wondered why "a striker who thrives with a partner [was] left so isolated? When Olney belatedly came on, David Platt began to time his runs better and Gordon Cowans found more space." It suggested the team's late-season travails weren't all the fault of the new recruit, and that a paper-thin squad simply didn't have the depth to keep going all season. Indeed, the wheels on Taylor's truck had started wobbling in worrying fashion before the striker's arrival, with back-to-back defeats against Wimbledon and Coventry, the former a 3-0 undressing at home.
Cascarino finally found the net for the first time in a 3-3 home draw against Norwich at the end of April, but by then it was too late. It was the day Liverpool claimed the title, having found a late-season gem of their own in Ronny Rosenthal, who scored a perfect hat-trick on his full debut against Charlton – left foot, right foot and head – before scoring another four during the run-in. It remains Liverpool's last championship. Villa, meanwhile, have still only won it once since 1910, so Cascarino was hardly walking into an arena where success is a given. Now as for his time at Celtic ...
4. Andy Carroll (Liverpool)
A final folly before we move on to a couple of success stories. With the January transfer window uppermost in mind, let's address the elephant in the room, this big cuddly bugger. The panic buy to end all panic buys, Liverpool threw a ludicrous amount of money at Andy Carroll upon losing their beloved Fernando Torres to Chelsea. An astonishing decision in many respects, not least because another new arrival at Anfield, Luis Suarez, wasn't regarded a big enough capture on his own to placate the fanbase. Liverpool's new American owners, still finding their way in the world of not-very-sensible soccer, were accordingly played by Mike Ashley like fiddles, very much in the hoedown style.
Carroll – stylistically, the Cascarino de nos jours, which is not to do the man down at all – was never the sort of player who could justify such a fee. The entire enterprise was jiggered from the get-go. It'll be a while before an English club makes such a high-profile and expensive mistake in the transfer market again; expect this to remain the gold-standard in cock-ups for a few years yet. And yet, is Carroll unfairly traduced? Consider ...
He cost £35m, but Liverpool recouped £15m of that from West Ham. So £20m down the hole, and in return they got a player who never once became unpopular despite his struggles, Liverpool's support appreciative of his honest workrate; who scored a dramatic late Wembley winner in an FA Cup semi-final against the club's arch rivals, a game Everton really should have won; who scored one of the great FA Cup final goals, diddling one of the best defenders the English league has seen in the last decade; and was only denied a dramatic second in that game by a stunning save from the Premier League's greatest keeper of recent years. Bittersweet memories all, but at least there's a little something for all that money, and therefore shouldn't Carroll be remembered as better value for money than £4.5m wasted on Christian Poulsen here, £5m lost on Mark Gonzalez there, and £20m spent on Stewart Downing?
OK, hands up, this is post-hoc rationalisation of the most absurd order. But when you're talking about these sums of money – the total transfer fees paid by all clubs in the aforementioned 1971-72 season during which Marsh, Buchan and Storey-Moore moved was £5m – what else is left for the honest follower of football to do?
5. Frank McAvennie and Gordon Strachan (West Ham United and Leeds United)
Transfer deadline action is invariably viewed through the club prism, with supporters on tenterhooks awaiting that last-minute big-money signing or clever loan deal that will change their side's season for the better. But players have crucial decisions to make too.
Here are the two big stories on deadline day in March 1989. First up, it's Frank McAvennie. A goalscoring success during West Ham's best-ever season of 1985-86, then a double winner with Celtic in the club's centenary year of 1988, McAvennie fancied returning from Glasgow to London, presumably for the quieter life. He was offered a deal with Arsenal, but dragged his heels, hoping to go back to what he knew at Upton Park. West Ham eventually coughed up £1.25m; George Graham said "bugger that", having never paid seven figures for anyone at that point. McAvennie rejoined the Hammers, scoring a sum total of zero goals as the team were relegated; Arsenal went on to win the league. Oop!
A wiser man was Gordon Strachan. The winger had nearly left Manchester United for Lens at the start of the campaign, causing Alex Ferguson to conclude that "his enthusiasm for our cause had dwindled irretrievably". After a lacklustre display in the FA Cup quarter-final, Nottingham Forest knocking United out at Old Trafford, both parties decided a parting of the ways was for the best. Sheffield Wednesday, under Ron Atkinson, looked favourites, and Strachan was poised to sign for his old manager until Ferguson advised him to speak to Howard Wilkinson at Leeds. Strachan opted for West rather than South Yorkshire; won promotion from the old Second Division with Sgt Wilko the season after, as Wednesday and Big Ron headed in the other direction; then won the title as part of arguably the most under-rated midfield in the entire history of English football, the fulcrum of that wonderfully belligerent 1991-92 team alongside Gary McAllister, David Batty and Gary Speed.
6. Christophe Dugarry (Birmingham City)
The January transfer window has an unfair reputation as a forum for wanton, panicked largesse and comic catastrophe. Poor old Andy Carroll again. But don't expect Liverpool to take that view too seriously, despite those 35 million smackeroos in the mouth; last year they laid out £20m on Daniel Sturridge and Phillipe Coutinho, a couple of big-club misfits who have since helped Liverpool arrest a seemingly inexorable descent into mid-table oblivion in pretty spectacular style. This time round, Manchester United have revived themselves from an uncharacteristic stupor with the marquee £37m signing of Juan Mata, while eight years ago the £12.5m double purchase of Nemanja Vidic and Patrice Evra was arguably Sir Alex Ferguson's last great swoop, allowing a new-look defence time to bed in during the second half of a 2005-06 season that already looked a write-off by the turn of the year.
(United, for the record, flew out of the blocks the following season, on their way to the title. Much to the relief of Evra, who claimed upon signing that – and this is unquestionably one of the greatest quotes in the entire history of association football – "To be honest, I'll be the king of all cunts if I can't be a success here.")
But arguably the most successful New Year swoop came early doors in the new system's existence, on the second day of the first-ever January window back in 2003, in fact. Has there been a better mid-season transfer than the loan agreement that sent Bordeaux's World Cup and European Championship-winning forward Christophe Dugarry to Birmingham City? Described by manager Steve Bruce as the club's "biggest ever signing", Dugarry had failed to score in his last 13 games with Bordeaux, then went 10 games in a Blues shirt without finding the net. Hmm.
But his class was always apparent. Not long after arriving in England, he was the brains behind a draw at Blackburn in a match which saw Rovers unsuccessfully attempt to hoof him off the park, to such an extent that his body resembled his national flag by the end of the match. And when he started scoring, he couldn't stop. At the end of April, his goal against Middlesbrough was his fifth in four matches, part of a run which saw his team win seven out of nine. A relegation-haunted team were safe, and in Champions League form to boot. Dugarry couldn't keep up the act upon signing permanently in the summer, but no matter: this was more than enough to earn his status as the first great January transfer window signing in English league history.
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