October 21 – Shepherd You Old Spoil-Sport

AS regular readers will know, this time seven years ago, much like today, England were in a right old state.

Kevin Keegan had resigned as manager in a toilet in Wembley after his team were beaten by Germany two weeks earlier, and England were a rudderless ship.

There was the same paucity of top English candidates for the job then as there is now the FA were pretty stumped as to what to do.

It was on this day in 2000 that one-time FA chief exec and current postman Adam Crozier decided that a 67-year-old man who could never remember his player’s names was the guy to buck England’s ideas up.

Sir Bobby Robson had just presided over a 1-0 home loss to Everton with his Newcastle team when he was summoned to a meeting with the portly Magpies chairman Freddy Shepherd.

Crozier had made an official approach to Newcastle to employ Robson as England boss for seven matches while a long-term solution was found.

It seemed like the perfect plan. In the absence of any leading and obvious candidates, there was no better choice for a temporary boss than Robson. He was a world-renowned coach who had already managed England to a world cup semi-final. At the time he was impressively reviving Newcastle’s flagging fortunes and he was popular with the players, media and the fans. And as a fierce patriot he would have jumped at the chance to help out his country.

Sadly, Crozier would pre-empt his future Royal Mail employees by failing to deliver. It was all going so well until Shepherd threw his not inconsiderable weight firmly against the plan.

Sir Bobby recounts the conversation with his chairman after being told the FA wanted him: “I said ‘oh, I’d quite like that’ and he said ‘yes, but we’re not letting you go. We don’t want you to do two jobs.’ I was disappointed, and I said I thought I could handle it, but I didn’t argue with him.”

In the end England put Peter Taylor in charge for a match with Italy, before appointing Sven soon after.

Free from his shackles after Shepherd sacked him, here is a team Robson was able to manage that could probably beat the current England no-hopers.

October 20 – Saturday Night’s Alright For Fighting

HERE at OTFD we believe that fighting isn’t big or clever and there’s no place for it on the football pitch. Yeah right. Nothing beats a good set of footballing handbags, which is exactly what happened at Old Trafford today in 1990 when Manchester United and Arsenal got stuck into each other.

If you thought the recent bad-blood between United and the Gooners was a new thing, think again. Back in 1988 Nigel Winterburn had a few choice words for Brian McClair when he missed a penalty and the seeds were sown. On that fateful autumn day in 1990 tempers began to flare when Choccy was again involved, this time swapping studmarks with Tony Adams before Winterburn went in with another tackle and all hell broke loose. First Andres Limpar and Denis Irwin squared up, then before you knew it 21 players were brawling.

Unlike most football fights, those in attendance actually saw a few kicks and punches thrown as chaos ensued. A young Paul Ince was particularly in the mood when he threw Limpar into an advertising hoarding, obviously hoping his nickname of ‘the Guvnor’ would catch on.

Eagle-eyed readers will have seen that only 21 players took part in the dust-up. The missing man? None other than David Seaman, who was no doubt either worried about having his hair pulled or didn’t want to leave his line in case Nayim was knocking around.

When the dust settled all eyes turned on referee Keith Hackett, as a card-fest was expected, but amazingly only Limpar and Winterburn were booked. The FA were not impressed though, fining both clubs £50,000 and taking the unprecedented step of deducting Arsenal two points and Manchester United one. Both clubs got over this early-season blow pretty well, as Arsenal won the title and United the Cup Winner’s Cup.

If you thought that the FA’s punishment would have calmed down the two sides, think again. Since then, we’ve seen a fair bit of agro between the sides, such as Martin Keown jumping around in Ruud van Nustelrooy’s face after the Dutchman missed a penalty in 2003, the end of Arsenal’s Invincible’s run in 2004 that descended into the Pizzagate saga and Roy Keane defending his pal Gary Neville from Patrick Vieira in the Highbury tunnel later that season, with a retort that went along the lines of “if you like Senegal so much, why don’t you go and play for them?” but with more swearing.

See the beef below and join us tomorrow for a somewhat calmer affair, involving someone who would never get caught up in such matters.

October 19 – ‘Remember the name: Wayne Rooney’

A FEW years ago now I turned up on a Saturday afternoon at Goodison Park expecting to see Arsenal outplay and certainly defeat a well organised and spirited, but nevertheless limited Everton team.

After going a goal down, the Toffeemen had managed to equalise through Tomasz Radzinksi and with ten minutes to go it looked like they were going to pull off a creditable draw against the gunners who were on a 30 match unbeaten run.

Cue 16-year-old Wayne Mark Rooney to enter stage left. Young Rooney was already being talked about on Merseyside as something a bit special but he was largely an unknown quantity elsewhere. Not for long, as it was on this day in 2002 that the Roondog scored his first Premier League goal.

A long ball was launched up to Rooney and he took it down with a great touch, turned, and with the Arsenal defence backing off, hit an unbeatable curling shot into the top corner to send Goodison wild.

Everton had won, Arsenal’s unbeaten run was over, and Rooney had arrived. Always searching for the sound bite, commentator Clive Tyldesley exclaimed: “Remember the name: Wayne Rooney!”

At the time he was the youngest ever Premiership goalscorer, but James Milner took that mantle from his later the same season, and James Vaughan, also of Everton has since broken the record again.

We left the ground that day buzzing and got into a taxi. The driver had a football phone in show on the radio and an Evertonian was already on the line declaring: “England, Euro 2004: Owen and Rooney up front!”

Oh how we laughed. He was good, we thought, but that was going a bit far. What did we know.

Here is the goal complete with Tyldesley’s commentary. For those of you who are Everton fans, look away now.

October 18 – Haynes Passes Away

TO get a mention here at OTFD, let alone your own entry, you have to fulfil certain criteria. You must have had some impact on the world of football, and either been truly exceptional, truly awful, or just truly funny.

Today’s subject was an exceptional player, but his impact on the game went way beyond his footballing talent.

It was on this day in 2005 that Johnny Haynes, latterly of Fulham and England, died aged 71, following a road accident the previous day.

Johnny ‘The Maestro’ Haynes was an inside forward with a superb eye for a pass.

Save for a short spell with the South African side Durban City after he had retired professionally, Haynes was that rarest of beasts: a one club man, turning down offers to join both AC Milan and Tottenham to stay with Fulham even when they were in the lower leagues.

He made his Fulham debut aged 18 and he would remain at Craven Cottage for the next 17 years, making a club record 658 appearances, many of them as captain, and scoring 158 goals.

Fulham’s greatest ever player was a regular in the England side, scoring on his debut, a 2-0 win over Northern Ireland in 1954, and going on to captain his country for two years.

An injury sustained in a bike crash in 1962 meant he never played for England again, robbing him of the chance to become a world cup winner despite being only 31 in 1966.

For all his playing prowess however, Haynes is perhaps most well known for being the first player to be paid £100 a week after the £20 wage cap was abolished.

Haynes was also something of a trailblazer in terms of exploiting his celebrity. He was one of the first players to have an agent, and even advertised Brylcreem. Becks eat your heart out.

It seems sad that Haynes is most remembered for his salary than his skill, which was sublime. When he died, Alan Mullery, another former Fulham and England great said: “He was the only reason I went to Fulham as a young boy of 15 leaving school. He was my hero, the captain of England and Fulham.

“The word great rolls off the tongue quite easily these days but he really was. He was the best passer of a ball I have ever seen – I don’t know anyone who could pass a ball as accurately.

“Anyone who saw him will know what a great player he was. It’s a very sad day. He will never go from my memory.”

Well said Mullers. Now come back tomorrow for one of today’s star names announcing his arrival on the Premiership scene.

October 17 – England Pole-Axed

SEVEN years earlier, Sir Alf and his England side had been the toast of the nation, having reached football nirvana in the 1966 World Cup final. But today in 1973 was a different story, as England fell short in their attempts to qualify for the 1974 World Cup, as Poland held them to a 1-1 draw at Wembley.

England had managed to get themselves backed into a corner, where only a win against the Eastern Europeans would be enough to book their place in the 1974 finals. In what was the biggest game that Wembley had seen since the ’66 final, a lacklustre campaign had caught up with the national side. Sir Alf had struggled with tactics throughout qualifying, often sending out a team of brawlers that lead one first division manager at the time to ask “how can you play football when you’ve got players on the field who would kick their own grandmother?”

Knowing that a draw would see them through the Poles set about frustrating England. Showing grit and tenacity, they managed to hold back wave after wave of English pressure before taking a shock 55th minute lead thanks to a goal from centre-forward Jan Domarksi. Leeds striker Allan Clarke leveled the scores eight minutes later from the penalty spot, but sloppy finishing meant that the second goal never came, and the English players could go about booking next year’s summer holidays.

The real hero of the night was Polish goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski who made a string of world-class saves in what was one of the greatest performances ever seen between the sticks at Wembley. Commenting on his unorthodox style, the always reserved Brian Clough had labeled him a clown, but we all know who laughed last that night.

The failure to qualify for the World Cup in 1974 marked the beginning of the end for Alf Ramsey. Many in the press and the public were calling for Brian Clough, fresh from his 44-day spell at Leeds, but the FA let him linger in the job until the following April before they had decided enough was enough and pensioned him off in favour of Joe Mercer. England wouldn’t return to the World Cup finals until 1982, whereas Poland embarked on the most successful era in their history, reaching the semi finals in both 1974 and ’78.

See Tomaszewski breaking the hearts of 100,000 Englishmen at Wembley below and come back tomorrow for your daily dose of football history.

October 16 – Same Old England

TODAY we’re looking at a game that encapsulates the frustration of following England. Dodgy goalkeeping error? Check. New player on the left? Check. Hot-head striker losing their rag when the tough gets going? Check. Failure to beat one of international football’s minnows? Check. Back in 2002 it was the turn of Macedonia to frustrate England as they held them to a 2-2 draw at St. Mary’s.

For the first time ever England were plying their trade down in Southampton, at their new St. Mary’s ground as the national side’s roadshow in the absence of Wembley stadium continued. Opponents Macedonia came into the game ranked 90th in the world and were seen as cannon fodder for Sven’s men in the Euro 2004 qualifier.

Having spent the last couple of months coming to terms with Ronaldinho’s goal that lofted above his pony-tailed head and ended England’s World Cup hopes in Japan, the last thing David Seaman needed was another goalkeeping gaff. But when Artim Sakiri stepped up to take a corner in the first half that’s exactly what he got. Sakiri’s corner sailed into the net and Seaman had another addition to his arsenal (pun very much intended) of goalkeeping nightmares.

Captain fantastic David Beckham bagged an equalizer two minutes later, but a disjointed England side again fell behind to a Vanco Trajanov strike. It was Steven Gerrard who saved Sven’s blushes as his spectacular volley made the scores 2-2 ten minutes before half time.

England toiled for the whole of the second half, with Seaman getting ironic cheers from the home crowd whenever he touched the ball and the embarrassment was complete when Alan Smith was sent off in the dying minutes following a second yellow card for a horribly mis-timed tackle.

A brutal post-mortem followed with calls for Sven’s head and for Seaman to retire. Old football clichés were being knocked around as Beckham said that “we have to pick ourselves up from this” and Sven claimed that “we deserved to win”. The ship was steadied enough for England to qualify for the finals in Portugal meaning England fans could spend the second half of their summer sulking about penalty shoot-outs.

See the death-knell of Seaman’s England career below and we’re afraid it’s more of the same tomorrow for long-suffering England fans.

October 15 – Stan the Man

ALREADY here at OTFD we have looked at a few controversial figures in football, including Paolo di Canio, George Best and even Adolf Hitler, but few people have created more headlines than today’s subject.

Stan the Man Collymore has seen the highs of playing for Liverpool and England and the lows of tabloid stories about his relationship with Ulrika Jonsson and his fondness for car parks.

It was on this day in 1999 however that a reluctant Stan was forced to crawl back to Villa after a loan spell at Fulham did not turn into a permanent deal.

Collymore had been on loan with the Londoners after Villa manager John Gregory had frozen him out at Villa park, despite paying £7m for him only two years before.

Stan had well-publicised mental health issues, a fact Gregory found hard to understand.

When Collymore claimed he was stressed, Gregory responded: “There are people who come to watch Aston Villa who earn £300 a week and spend 60 hours a week at work.

“We probably spend 10 hours a week on the training pitch and are paid vast sums of money. I find it very difficult to see how anybody could be stressed.”

While on the one hand we are finding it hard to disagree with Gregory, there can be no doubting that Collymore is a complex character, and depression has never been the preserve of the poor alone.

When he made his return to the Midlands, Gregory was silent so it fell to his assistant Steve Harrison to make the right noises about Stan’s prospects at Villa Park.

“Stan has certainly not blown it,” Harrison said.

“He has still got age on his side, he’s still got a great deal of ability and he’s got a lot to offer on the football pitch.

“He has got to be in the right frame of mind and if he comes back he would have to get stuck in and do some hard work.

“It really is up to him because he has the ability.”

With Gregory in charge, it was never going to work out for Stan at Villa so in 2000 he packed his boots in his little red and white poker-dot handkerchief, tied it to a stick and set off for a new life at Leicester City. He didn’t last long there either and was soon off to Bradford, and finally Spanish third division side Real Oviedo before he decided to jack it all in.

Undoubtedly hugely talented, Collymore seemingly lacked the mental strength to deal with being a top class footballer, and perhaps oddly for someone so sensitive, he now works in the media as a pundit for the BBC.

He also rather bizarrely starred opposite Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct 2: Risk Addiction. We were going to show you a clip of that but it’s a bit too weird seeing him so out of context so instead, he here is showing why he has commanded transfer fees totaling nearly £20m over the years:

October 14 – Don’t Mention the War

THEY say timing is everything in comedy – a principle well-known funny man and some-time goalkeeper Mark Bosnich should really have listened to.

For example Mark, if you decide it would be absolutely side-splittingly hilarious to do a quick Nazi salute, probably best to time it so you are not standing on a football pitch surrounded by 40,000 baying Spurs fans – many of them Jewish.

It was on this day in 1996 that Bosnich was hauled before the FA beaks after they had a sense of humour failure and charged him with misconduct for his comedy-gold gag.

For that is how Bosnich played the whole thing – rather than admit he had been very very foolish, he claimed it was all a misunderstood joke, and predictably blamed ‘political correctness gone mad’ for the furore.

In between mouthfuls of pie he said: “It was all meant as a joke and I’m very sad if some people can’t take it.

“I came from Australia to play in England believing that a big part of the game was the banter between players and the fans, but it seems that over the last couple of years this is no longer the case.

“I’m so sorry if I upset or offended anybody but I think it is a sad indictment of society that things like this are now taken right out of context.”

Bosnich said the gesture was a Basil Fawlty style joke and rather feebly went on to claim that it was actually directed at German forward Jurgen Klinsmann. That will be the same Jurgen Klinsmann who not only wasn’t playing that day, but had left Tottenham the year before.

The matter was even investigated by the police who in the end left it to the FA to punish Bosnich. Turns out the FA are even funnier than Bosnich though, as the paltry £1000 fine they gave him must have had him laughing like a demented evil bond villain.

Bosnich has not played since he was sacked by Chelsea in 2003 for failing a drugs test but he has recently shown that his career as a comedian is not over. He is currently training with QPR in a bid to earn a pro contract and, wait for it, be selected again for the Australian national side. Ah you’ve got ‘em rolling in the aisles with that Mark.

If you’re sides haven’t completely split come back tomorrow to read about a striker whose autobiography is called Tackling My Demons.

October 13 – First Ever Merseyside Derby

WHERE would football be without it’s derbies? Passion, glory, local bragging rights and sometimes even silverware are up for grabs when two great rivals meet. Today in 1894 saw the first installment of English football’s biggest derby, as Everton and Liverpool fans were telling each other to ‘calm down’ as the Merseyside Derby was played out for the first time.

Nothing polarizes the City of Culture like football. In Liverpool, you’re either Red or Blue. Cultural, social or even family ties matter little in what is known as the ‘Friendly Derby’ due to the number of colleagues, mates and families who are on opposing sides. This has historically meant that the intense scenes that you might see at a Real v Barca-type game, where pigs head’s and whiskey bottles can end up on the pitch are typically avoided.

That’s not to say that Derby day in Liverpool doesn’t lack passion. For both sets of fans it’s one of the first games they’ll look for when the fixtures are released and the players and managers don’t normally need any help egging them on. Former Liverpool boss Bill Shankley claimed that “If Everton were playing at the bottom of the garden, I’d pull the curtains”. Legend also has it that in the 1920s Liverpool’s Irish goalkeeper Elisha Scott passed the Everton striker Dixie Dean in the street one day and when Dean nodded his head to him, Scott leapt to the floor, saving an imaginary header, a bit like you would when you’re eight years old.

Relations between the two clubs became strained following the Heysel disaster, as Everton were not allowed to enter the European Cup due to the UEFA ban on English clubs. And don’t get Everton fans started about who the real team in Liverpool is. As the ‘People’s Club,’ Everton were the original tenants of Anfield until a rent dispute saw them move across Stanley Park in 1892.

Two years later in 1894 it was Everton who drew first blood, as they beat the Reds 3-0 at Goodison Park. It was another 5 games until Liverpool claimed their first scalp with a 3-1 win at Anfield. And it’s Liverpool who have had more joy over the years, having won 77 of the 203 clashes, compared to Everton’s 64 victories. Classic matches such as the 4-4 FA Cup clash in 1991 and the 1986 and 1989 FA Cup finals have given generations of Scousers plenty of reasons to shout about.

See some classic 80s Scouse action, perms and all, and join us tomorrow for a lesson in people skills with another one of those mad goalkeepers.

October 12 – He Walked the Line

IT was on this day in 1993 that the man who won England the world cup in 1966 popped his clogs.

Geoff Hurst? Bobby Moore? Sir Alf Ramsey? No, it was on this day that Tofik Bakhramov passed away.

Bakhramov is one of those great characters in history who had fame thrust upon him, for he was the ‘Russian Linesman’ who gave England their third and decisive goal in the 1966 final.

‘Russian linesman’ was something of a misnomer as he was actually from Azerbaijan, which was part of the Soviet Union at the time.

His playing career was cut short by injury, but rather than move into coaching Bakhramov decided to switch to the thankless job of refereeing.

If he had not been involved in the controversy surrounding Hurst’s goal, Bakhramov would have gone home being hated by the Swiss rather than the Germans, as in a first round game between Switzerland and Spain he was responsible for chalking off a Swiss goal leading to a 2-1 win for the Spanish and an early exit for the Swiss.

In an effort to eclipse this Bakhramov went on to be the key factor in probably the most debated and controversial decision ever made in the history of football.

In his memoirs Bakhramov said he believed the ball had bounced back from the net rather than the crossbar, meaning it had already crossed the line. Didn’t stop the Germans banging on about it though.

After he finished refereeing Bakhramov went on to be the general secretary of the Azerbaijan Football Association, and the national stadium in Baku is even named after him. Don’t get any ideas Poll, Wembley already has a name.

Rest in peace Tofik, perhaps if it wasn’t for you, our current footballers wouldn’t constantly cite the pressure of ’1966 and all that’ as the reason they fail to win anything.

Although you have no doubt seen it countless times, here is the infamous goal again, and Bakhramov furiously nodding at referee Gottfried Dienst to indicate it was a goal.