Homegrown Strikers (1 Viewer)

[Grendel]

Was just thinking about Paul Furlong for some reason, and it made me wonder. How many homegrown, out-and-out strikers have we had who actually cemented a place in the first team and banged in the goals? I can think of Wilson, but that's about it in recent years, and he was pretty much a one-season player. Midfielders aplenty, but strikers not so much. Or is my memory just bad?

Edit: Thanks to the posters who pointed out Paul Furlong wasn't homegrown. Turns out my memory is even worse than I thought!

Ferguson is the real obvious one in my time and came back for a month to save the club from relegation

 

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[Woodingdean_Sky_Blue]

Ferguson is the real obvious one in my time and came back for a month to save the club from relegation

...and when he was saving the Sky Blues he was relegating his 'parent' club (Birmingham City).

 

[87 n all that]

We swapped Tommy English with Leicester for Jim Melrose during the 82-83 season. Melrose was sold to Celtic in the summer of 83 for £100,000. Tommy English was already drifting downwards when he left us, so he was probably worth less than the money we got for Melrose.

Garry Thompson was sold during the 82-83 season for a fee that was widely reported at the time as £225,000 (different figures have been quoted since).

We got £190,000 from Portsmouth from Hateley in the summer of 83. This went to tribunal and the general consensus at the time was we had been ripped off. Portsmouth got £915,000 for him from Inter Milan less than 12 months later.

When we sold Ian Wallace in 1980 we got £1,250,000.

There’s a pretty good book called “29 mins from Wembley” which highlights the 80-81 season and Thompson states he didn’t want to leave because he’d just got married and bought a house but Jimmy Hill wanted him to move on. Might be wrong on this because haven’t read it in a while but I think part of his signing on fee was in suits, not money, because he liked going out and I think it was Jimmy who told him that he’d be paid that way. I’ll check it out again when I get a chance.

 

[Woodingdean_Sky_Blue]

There’s a pretty good book called “29 mins from Wembley” which highlights the 80-81 season and Thompson states he didn’t want to leave because he’d just got married and bought a house but Jimmy Hill wanted him to move on. Might be wrong on this because haven’t read it in a while but I think part of his signing on fee was in suits, not money, because he liked going out and I think it was Jimmy who told him that he’d be paid that way. I’ll check it out again when I get a chance.

Payment in suits, that's interesting and says a lot (mainly about Jimmy Hill). I don't think the PFA or an Agent would let Hill get away with that nowadays. Not too sure about the marriage thing - Garry Thompson had been married for a couple of years when he moved (got married at the tail end of 1980). I'd be interested if and when you check the book out again.

 

[87 n all that]

Payment in suits, that's interesting and says a lot (mainly about Jimmy Hill). I don't think the PFA or an Agent would let Hill get away with that nowadays. Not too sure about the marriage thing - Garry Thompson had been married for a couple of years when he moved (got married at the tail end of 1980). I'd be interested if and when you check the book out again.

I’ll try and dig it out but it was 80-81 season to be sure. Thompson said he’d wished he spoke to more experienced players in the squad (or Hutchinson) for advice but it wasn’t a mobile phone world in those days and no agents. It sounded like he had no choice. Bit before my time but sounds like we had a cracking squad in those days

 

[skyblue025]

Paul Furlong was not home grown, we got him from Enfield, I have said before as soon as we got him Butcher in his infinite wisdom got rid of Regis, who would have helped Furlong massively but sadly that wasn't to be. Furlong never really pulled up any trees in the top division but always seem to do well in the lower league 2 /championship

Regis left as he was out of contract and Villa almost trebled his wages. Even back then we couldn't compete wages wise. Some things never change.

 

[Terry_dactyl]

We swapped Tommy English with Leicester for Jim Melrose during the 82-83 season. Melrose was sold to Celtic in the summer of 83 for £100,000. Tommy English was already drifting downwards when he left us, so he was probably worth less than the money we got for Melrose.

Garry Thompson was sold during the 82-83 season for a fee that was widely reported at the time as £225,000 (different figures have been quoted since).

We got £190,000 from Portsmouth from Hateley in the summer of 83. This went to tribunal and the general consensus at the time was we had been ripped off. Portsmouth got £915,000 for him from Inter Milan less than 12 months later.

When we sold Ian Wallace in 1980 we got £1,250,000.

AC Milan?

 

[Woodingdean_Sky_Blue]

AC Milan?

Yes, you're right. Don't know why I typed Inter!

 

[Magwitch]

There’s a pretty good book called “29 mins from Wembley” which highlights the 80-81 season and Thompson states he didn’t want to leave because he’d just got married and bought a house but Jimmy Hill wanted him to move on. Might be wrong on this because haven’t read it in a while but I think part of his signing on fee was in suits, not money, because he liked going out and I think it was Jimmy who told him that he’d be paid that way. I’ll check it out again when I get a chance.

Hill caused as much damage to ccfc than he did good, no great things as manager. A number of his policies cost us money we could ill afford, the all-seater fiasco cutting our average gates at a stroke and remember this all seater wasn’t new posh stands like what happens now it was seats on existing terracing with no roof. I believe this was the biggest cause of the decline in our gates which got as low as 8/9000

The American venture with Washington Diplomats more debt, the only thing we got out of that was David bloody Bradford I’ll say no more

The selling of Ian Wallace for an at the time massive £1.25million severing our prolific and vital goalscoring partnership with Mick Ferguson. That money could have bought three or four very good players but no he spent it on the white elephant and poorly equipt Sky Blue Connexion which was eventually hived off for less than a third of what it cost to build.

The Saudi Arabian venture ! never really got what that was all about if we had ended up with a billionaire sheik it might have been okay, I suspect JH made more dosh out of that than ccfc did.

And then the sales of the likes of Garry Thompson, Steve Hunt and others, cruelty singaling Hunt over the tannoy in front of thousands of fans while kicking about before a match and cutting the affectivness of our squad these were our top players, Hunt got capped for England afterwards.

And while I’m at it remember on the eve of our big kick-off in our debut season everybody bubbling, he out of the blue resigned never signed any new blood for the campaign, leaving his eventual successor Cantwell having to do that throughout the season. I worked with Ron Farmer and Ernie Machin at Massey-Ferguson and they both told me they hadn’t an inclin that was about to happen and gutted them at the time.

But I will say he was a brilliant football manager and took us from the gutter to the top division in just 5 seasons.

 

[Woodingdean_Sky_Blue]

The selling of Ian Wallace for an at the time massive £1.25million severing our prolific and vital goalscoring partnership with Mick Ferguson. That money could have bought three or four very good players but no he spent it on the white elephant and poorly equipt Sky Blue Connexion which was eventually hived off for less than a third of what it cost to build.

I get the sentiment about how the money the club received from Ian Wallace, but the Wallace / Ferguson partnership was already becoming distant history by the time he left for Forest. After the key Wallace / Ferguson partnership season of 77-78 Gordon Milne introduced different attacking options into the team - notably Tommy English, Mark Hateley and Garry Ferguson. I think selling Ian Wallace probably seemed like a good idea at the time.

 

[Magwitch]

Not doubting that but £1.25 million was at that time massive money impossible to turn down and could have financed the purchase of a number of very good players improving the teams ability, it wasn’t it was spent on the white elephant Sky Blue Connexion the whole project cost the club money and imo a detrimental effect on the team.

 

[Woodingdean_Sky_Blue]

Not doubting that but £1.25 million was at that time massive money impossible to turn down and could have financed the purchase of a number of very good players improving the teams ability, it wasn’t it was spent on the white elephant Sky Blue Connexion the whole project cost the club money and imo a detrimental effect on the team.

The connection was undoubtedly an absolute waste of money. I still remember going to look at the connection when it opened and thinking what's the point in building this in the middle of nowhere (I also found out that Mick Coop isn't very good at squash).