[Archived] Question For You Anoracks

[Flopsy]

someone asked me who the manager was when we tried to sign Dugarry and Zidane in the 90's. Does anyone know?

[chocky]

Wasn't it Dalglish..?..

[Gally]

it was for the season after we won the league, so it might've been Dalglish's idea but it would've been for Harford's squad.

[JAL]

RAY HARFORD just after we won the premiership.

[Dave S]

Ray Harford took over at the beginning of the 1995/96 season, he left in October 1996.

Dugarry left France for Italy sometime in 1996. I remember a quote from him saying something about choosing Blackburn or Milan. Which was an easy descision to make.

So I assume it was Ray Harford.

Both Dugarry and Zidane left Bordeaux in 1996 to AC Milan and Juventus respectively.

There is a comment regarding this on Zidanes Wiki entry. It states that the Harford enquiry was 1995.

[Stuart]

Wasn't this rumour going around the same time as we were signing Sven on as manager - before he reneged?

[philipl]

Sven was three years later.

[jim mk2]

Question for Flopsy: why is this thread title spelt incorrectly ?

[broadsword]

Coz he can't spell proper innit.

[Majiball]

Weren't we also linked to Roberto Baggio that summer, could anyone imagine what we could have done with those three

[Sandiway Blue]

It was Harford who tried to sign Dugarry and Zidane.

If i remember rightly,the deals were in place to sign them but the then french manager said that no transfers would be completed until after Euro 96.Needless to say they both had a good tournament and i think they ended up going to Juventus?

[thenodrog]

It was Dalglish who tried to sign Dugarry and Zidane.

If i remember rightly,the deals were in place to sign them but the then french manager said that no transfers would be completed until after Euro 96.Needless to say they both had a good tournament and i think they ended up going to Juventus?

Now this is not admitting to be an anorak Flopsy but as you are struggling to rem.............

Wasn't Jack Walkers unwillingness to import new players and to show faith in the Championship winning squad cited as the reason that KMD resigned as manager to take up the new Director of Football post that simply involved spending all day on the golf course? No doubt KMD was still in place as DoF but I rem when Harford was sacked he said that he'd expected his forward line that season to be Shearer, Dugarry and Donis in front of Zidane but he ended up with the frenchies in Italy, Donis in and Shearer out.

9m the pair would have cost and within just 2 years Real paid 45m for ZZ! Jack Walkers motto was 'Think Big', unfortunately and ONLY with the benefit of hindsight can I say this but that also applied to his mistakes at that time.

[Sandiway Blue]

Now this is not admitting to be an anorak Flopsy but as you are struggling to rem.............

Wasn't Jack Walkers unwillingness to import new players and to show faith in the Championship winning squad cited as the reason that KMD resigned as manager to take up the new Director of Football post that simply involved spending all day on the golf course? No doubt KMD was still in place as DoF but I rem when Harford was sacked he said that he'd expected his forward line that season to be Shearer, Dugarry and Donis in front of Zidane but he ended up with the frenchies in Italy, Donis in and Shearer out.

9m the pair would have cost and within just 2 years Real paid 45m for ZZ! Jack Walkers motto was 'Think Big', unfortunately and ONLY with the benefit of hindsight can I say this but that also applied to his mistakes at that time.

Correct.

The benefit of hindsight would be a wonderful thing.

[Majiball]

Now this is not admitting to be an anorak Flopsy but as you are struggling to rem.............

Wasn't Jack Walkers unwillingness to import new players and to show faith in the Championship winning squad cited as the reason that KMD resigned as manager to take up the new Director of Football post that simply involved spending all day on the golf course? No doubt KMD was still in place as DoF but I rem when Harford was sacked he said that he'd expected his forward line that season to be Shearer, Dugarry and Donis in front of Zidane but he ended up with the frenchies in Italy, Donis in and Shearer out.

9m the pair would have cost and within just 2 years Real paid 45m for ZZ! Jack Walkers motto was 'Think Big', unfortunately and ONLY with the benefit of hindsight can I say this but that also applied to his mistakes at that time.

Well you learn something new everyday. I had no idea thats why Kenny moved up-stairs.

Cheers

[Guest Wen Y Hu]

Just to add to the above points - one other factor that seems to be forgotten in accounts of our failure to strengthen the squad post-Championship was that there were restrictions in place on the number of "overseas" players that could play in UEFA competitions.

Some of the real anoraks will be able to fill in the gaps here, but if I remember correctly (after midnight here and over half a bockle of wine gone) the ruling on overseas players was extremely restrictive. Just as there's now a 6:5 rule in the offing for the domestic leagues, I believe that at the time it was only 3 or 4 (?) overseas players that were permitted to be named in squads for UEFA competition. This was of significance at the time in the context of Uncle Jack's long-term plan for the club to establish itself on the European stage. And I'm half sure that overseas players were defined on the basis of national Football Associations, which meant that first-teamers such as Colin Hendry, Jeff Kenna and Kevin Gallacher were classed as overseas players in addition to Henning Berg.

Uncle Jack believed in investing in young talent, and preferably English talent. We had just proven ourselves the best in England and the core of our team was made up of young English talent who had won or would go on to win full or B-level international honours (Flowers, Le Saux, Batty, Sherwood, Ripley, Shearer, Sutton). I think I'm right in saying that Jack felt that there was little room for improvement (a feeling that was not shared by Kenny as has already been pointed out) and that this was a factor in our not pursuing non-English talent. How big a factor, I'm not sure, but my memory is that it was pretty big.

Any corrections or additions - please feel free...

[Flopsy]

Many thanks guys, and the reason for the crap spelling was due to writing it on my mobile whilst I was being driven back from the Twenty20 after one or two small shandies

[Amo]

Many thanks guys, and the reason for the crap spelling was due to writing it on my mobile whilst I was being driven back from the Twenty20 after one or two small shandies

Apart from *90s, you didn't make any.

[Guest Wen Y Hu]

Here's a follow-up from my post the other day. Comments, corrections, etc., gladly received.

--Weny

The national quotas system in the early 1990s

In 1991 UEFA introduced the so-called 3+2 rule, whereby no more than 3 "non-selectable" players, plus 2 "assimilated" players, were to be on the field of play at any given time. Non-selectable players were broadly defined as those who were not eligible to play for the national team of the country in which the league they were playing in was based. In strict terms, this would mean that all players who were not eligible to play for the England national team were non-selectable. Thus, the non-English contingent of Hendry, Gallacher, Berg, Kenna, etc. would all have been treated as non-selectable under a strict application of this rule.

However, according to the online source I used (García - see References below), the definition of non-selectable differed across Europe. (Reference is made to Lanfranchi, P. and Taylor, M. (2001) Moving With the Ball. The Migration of Professional Footballers. Oxford: Berg. Unfortunately I don't have access to this work over here in Japan.) So whether special dispensation was given to the British leagues to have all home nations players treated as domestic (i.e., selectable), I can't say for sure, but my memory says that selectable applied only to the English players.

As for the definition of "assimilated", I haven't been able to confirm this yet, but I guess it could refer either to overseas players who had come through the youth ranks or to national associations that had special relations with neighbouring countries as is the case with England, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland, and perhaps even the Republic of Ireland. So, it's quite possible that two out of Hendry, Gallacher, Kenna, etc. would have been treated as assimilated. Confirmation required here, though...

National quotas and Bosman

Whatever the matter regarding the 3+2 national quotas system in the summer of 1995 when we were reportedly chasing Zinedine and Dugarry, it was all rendered completely and utterly irrelevant during the course of the following season as a result of the Bosman ruling. On 15 December 1995, the European Court of Justice ruling on the Bosman case made it illegal to have national quota systems that restricted the movement of EU citizens.

Thus, the 3+2 rule was rendered obsolete overnight, even though it took two months for UEFA to act decisively after the Bosman ruling. The UEFA Executive Committee met on 19 February 1996 and finally did away with the 3+2 rule with immediate effect, although ongoing UEFA competitions that season were not affected thanks to a gentleman's agreement among participating clubs. In the summer of 1995 we could have strengthened our squad with top European talent; King Kenny may have stayed on as manager; and we may well have taken Europe by storm in the late '90s. If only history worked like that...

Summary

In the context of Rovers' dramatic rise to prominence during the early 1990s and their subsequent fall, I think it's of considerable historical value to establish the role of the Bosman case and the national quotas system in terms of our transfer policy. I think uncertainty over the ongoing Bosman case coupled with the restrictive national quotas system (especially so for British clubs, I believe) were among the main reasons why Rovers didn't move decisively for top European players like Zidane and Dugarry in the summer of 1995.

This is roughly how I remember it at the time, but if anyone can clarify the above matters on non-selectable and assimilated players - either from memory or from published sources, that would be most appreciated. Similarly, if you have knowledge of the club's inner workings at the time, please feel free to share that knowledge.

References

Borja García. UEFA and the European Union: From confrontation to co-operation? Working paper. Presented at the 10th Biennial International Conference of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA). Montreal (Canada), 17-19 May 2007 (http://www.unc.edu/euce/eusa2007/papers/garcia-b-10i.pdf). (This is a working paper, so it is for reference only - please don't quote from this! It's a non-native speaker, too, and needs quite a bit of editing, so beware when reading.)

The Football Industry Group, University of Liverpool. Fact-Sheet One: The Bosman Case, EU Law and the Transfer System (http://www.liv.ac.uk/footballindustry/bosman.html)

John Goodbody. 'Foreigners ruling scrapped by UEFA'. The Times, 20 February 1996.

Reason for edit: Added Goodbody reference.

[ni_rover]

someone asked me who the manager was when we tried to sign Dugarry and Zidane in the 90's. Does anyone know?

Really?