Sorry, your browser is out of date. The content on this site will not work properly as a result.
Upgrade your browser for a faster, better, and safer web experience.

Search: 'Duncan Ferguson'

Stories

Episode 20: Groups of Death and ballooning with Duncan Ferguson

Amid cock-a-hoop chatter of mid-table obscurity, magazine editor Andy Lyons, writer Harry Pearson and host Daniel Gray talk temperature checks at the turnstiles and Groups of Death. A conversation about footballers’ more famous relatives ends in Shoestring and Terry Savalas as centre-halves, and a Greek-American Tony Mowbray. Record Breakers takes us to Belgrade, Turin and Peterborough. Plus, Richard Hay from Aberdeen podcast Here We Go! joins Dan to talk all things Dons. Expect Duncan Ferguson’s balloon encounters, the Beatnik of the goal and Romeo Challenger.

If you enjoyed this and would like more, you can sign up to the WSC Supporters’ Club for as little as £2 per month. There are great rewards, including bonus episodes, extended editions, badges, T-shirts and photo prints.

Subscribe
Apple
Spotify
Google Podcast
Stitcher
TuneIn+Alexa

Old Too Soon, Smart Too Late: My Story by Kieron Dyer

377 Dyer

with Oliver Holt
Headline, £20
Reviewed by Gavin Barber
From WSC 377, July/August 2018
Buy the book

Read more…

In Search Of 
Duncan Ferguson

336 DuncThe life and crimes of 
a footballing enigma
by Alan Pattullo
Mainstream, £18.99
Reviewed by Archie MacGregor
From WSC 336 February 2015

Buy this book

 

For someone who so determinedly shunned the media throughout his playing career Duncan Ferguson had quite a knack for grabbing headlines. The two were intrinsically related of course and contributed to him polarising opinion like few other Scots-born players have in recent decades, with perhaps only Graeme Souness ahead in the queue. This book lays bare not only justifications for his brooding hostility towards the press pack but also in turn how such unwillingness to explain himself fuelled antipathy towards him, especially in Scotland.

For those with strongly held opinions over whether Ferguson was a chronic underachiever with delinquent tendencies or a mixed-up kid who just needed to feel appreciated it’s unlikely this thoughtful and even-handed appraisal by Alan Pattullo will persuade them to change camps. Among the undecided there is simply just a lot more to ruminate over.

On the playing side the book chronicles Ferguson’s emergence as an exciting prospect at Dundee United, a then record-breaking £4 million transfer fee when he moved to Rangers in 1993, his failure there and the headbutt on Raith Rovers’ Jock McStay that led to a short jail sentence, a smattering of generally underwhelming international appearances and finally rejuvenation of sorts, eight sendings-off and near folk-hero status in two spells at Everton. Off the field Ferguson also emerges as no less paradoxical. For every interviewee testifying that he was “fun”, “sensitive” or had “a heart of gold” there is another portraying him as a “hellraiser”, “cruel” or “difficult to like”.

It’s hard not to escape the view that Ferguson’s early experiences under the successful but authoritarian Jim McLean at Tannadice shaped his seemingly ambivalent attitude towards the game. Along with notoriously long contracts to tie players down, there were results-driven pay packages with low basic wages topped up with relatively handsome appearance and win bonuses. This bred a “brutal” culture within the club where players competed ferociously with one another to make sure they were in the matchday squads. Newcomers were treated as unwelcome potential rivals and details of how Ferguson once humiliated a young German trialist by cutting up his suit in the dressing room make for particularly uncomfortable reading.

His penchant for getting into trouble ultimately led to a spell in Barlinnie prison. This was viewed as harsh by some but three previous convictions for assault prior to the McStay incident hardly stood him in good stead in court. However no one in the book offers any support for the SFA also seeking to impose a 12-game ban as its own punishment – a move that wholly soured Ferguson’s relations with the Association and all but extinguished his desire to play for Scotland.

It was letters of support from Everton fans, including one from a young Wayne Rooney, that Ferguson credits with keeping him going through those dark days and helped forge the strong relationship he has with the club to this day. Pattullo, like others who have taken a keen interest in his tumultuous career, could barely imagine him ever becoming a coach but there he is, an integral part of Roberto Martínez’s back-up team at Goodison Park. Heavens he’s even started speaking to the press occasionally. Maybe the autobiography will be next.

Buy this book

Gritted teeth

wsc316Seb Patrick mantains that it is becoming harder to admire or support a player who has lots of skill but repeatedly damages his club’s image

It’s difficult not to imagine that Luis Suárez has a “goodwill meter” that he lets fill up to a certain point before jettisoning all of it in one go. Having arrived in England fresh from serving a ban for biting PSV’s Otman Bakkal – and with his part in Ghana’s exit from the 2010 World Cup still fresh in the memory – it took a quick adjustment to English football for people to start thinking maybe he wasn’t so bad after all.

Read more…

Man out of time

Al Needham welcomed Steve McLaren’s appointment at Nottingham Forest, but won’t miss him now he’s gone

After the initial shock and subsequent debate across the city of Nottingham, the appointment of Steve McClaren as Forest manager in the summer made a sort of perverse sense. After all, both club and new manager had a lot to prove. For the former, the opportunity to replace the moaning, awkward Billy Davies with someone who has sat at the right hand of Alex Ferguson was an irresistible punt. For the latter, the opportunity to return to a club seething with the potential to get back to where they seemingly belonged was an obvious shortcut to expunging memories of holding an umbrella and looking helpless. As a friend pointed out: “Forest have gone from having the best manager England never had to the worst manager they did have.”

Read more…

Copyright © 1986 - 2024 When Saturday Comes LTD All Rights Reserved Website Design and Build NaS