Tipped to be a star at Everton, Graham Ennis remembers why Nick Barmby couldn't fulfil his potential

On the day Joe Royle signed Nick Barmby from Middlesbrough he made a curious admission: that he wasn’t quite sure where he was going to play him. Obviously then, he just kinda hoped that he’d get lucky and things would work themselves out. We all kinda hoped too. Choosing to ignore the fact that Royle had just off-loaded the highly promising Daniel Amokachi because he didn’t know quite where he fitted into his plans.

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Along with many more, he was compared with the Busby Babes, but Tony Kinsella thinks that Andy Ritchie could have laid claim to being that good

In the days before winning championships with kids became a formality, every new Wonderboy at Manchester United was viewed exclusively as a perspective on the bygone Busby era: Trevor Anderson was “the new George Best” because he resembled the maestro uncannily; Scott McGarvey “the new Denis Law”, fair-haired and Scottish; and Ashley Grimes was “the new Bobby Charlton” because… nope, can’t help you on that one.

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Boyd Hilton wonders what went wrong for a great Arsenal No 7

Once upon a time, in the era before Sky, before the Taylor Report, before Football Came Home, there was a great player for Arsenal who proudly and appropriately wore Liam Brady’s Number 7 shirt and earned the admiration of 50,000-strong Highbury crowds.

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More unlikely meetings between WSC readers and professional footballers

“While holidaying in Greece, I shared a hotel with Doug Alder, a Millwall and Brentford ‘left half’ from the ‘60s. He was playing a poolside game with his pals one night, of ‘trying to guess the pop celebrity’. Early in the game he said, ‘It’s on the tip of me tongue,’ and, ‘I’ll know it if I see the name.’ Several clues later: a dual nationality, a liking for tartan, an indirect link with the Small Faces, a hit with Sailing, a penchant for tight trousers and spiky hair, and still Doug couldn’t guess Rod Stewart. ‘Oooh, I know it. I can see his face.’

Apparently Doug now works in customs at Heathrow Airport.”
Jamie Sellers

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Matthew Brown doesn't think the latest anti-racism campaign it is aimed at enough people

“We must act to prevent the return of this racist menace” screamed the Express after the “appalling scenes” of racist chanting at Leeds v Leicester the other week. Amid “furious responses from both clubs”, the newspaper launched its own ‘Kick Out The Scum’ campaign, where you the reader can help to “cut out the cancer which afflicts OUR game”. Ho hum. Another season, another campaign against racism. There’s no Cantona antics this time, nor seig heiling England fans, but another high profile incident helps to keep up press interest in a topic that’s been covered from more angles than a game on Sky TV over the last few years.

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