Revolution
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I do not enjoy transfer windows. Their approach gives a feeling of dread, as you start to think it’s inevitable that United will sell their best player for a bag of magic beans or, even worse, an “undisclosed fee”, and as for incomings, there’s not a lot of entertainment in watching what seems to be a competition to sign the slowest, least creative midfielders we possibly can, or guessing whether the next signing will be from Blackpool, Derby County’s treatment room, or a Scottish dwarf.
Player swaps are more fun though. It’s like grown up Panini sticker swapping. You take someone you don’t want, or don’t use, and see if you can foist them on some other sucker in return for someone more valuable. This is how much of the transfer business is done in US sport, and I think we need more of it in British football.
United have done swap deals from time to time. Indeed, between 1995 and 1999 we did a bunch of them. I thought I’d have a look at 8 such deals from the last 30 years and see if we “won” any of them. This is not a comprehensive set of these deals (the Tudor/Hope/Ford one was well before my time, Nick Henry - swapped for Doug Hodgson - is too boring to write about, and there may be others I’m forgetting) but these are all memorable to me and I hope you find them interesting.
* * *
1. Steve Wigley and Paul Tomlinson (loan) to Birmingham for Martin Kuhl and Andy Kennedy (loan) (March 1987)
This 4 player trade is, I think, the biggest single deal United have ever done in terms of bodies. It was announced on the back page of the Star with photos of all 4 players in a line. It was a mutually beneficial swap deal, as each side traded people they weren’t using for people they could use.
United, very goal shy that season, got Andy Kennedy to bolster the forward line - he was coming back from injury - and Kuhl to add some steel to midfield. Both did well as United finished the season relatively strongly after being in lower mid table during early 1987. Kennedy scored a fine goal against Blackburn, breaking from his own half after a corner and hammering home as the keeper came out, put himself about a lot, and was impressive. Kuhl looked better than what we had in the middle at the time.
Wigley had been brought in to replace Colin Morris and had scored the greatest goal I’ve ever seen by a Blades player the previous season, but he’d not built on a decent start and didn’t seem to fit as well as Morris (who outlasted him) did. He’d had a good run in the side just before the transfer, but perhaps he was playing to get away. Tommo, who had gone backwards after an excellent start in 1983-4, couldn’t displace John Burridge (unlikely but true) and so we didn’t need him. He finished the season for Blues, went to Bradford that summer, and played over 300 games for them. I suspect had we known Burridge was going to go we’d have kept him and used him instead of Andy Leaning. Oh well.
Verdict: even - useful for both sides.
2. Martin Kuhl to Watford for Tony Agana, Peter Hetherston and ₤40,000 (February 1988)
Martin Kuhl came in on a swap deal, and left the same way: I think that’s unique for a United player. As I said above, he looked good when he first signed, and had lots of experience in the top 2 divisions, but like a number of other players was having an off year in our relegation season, and he became part of Bassett’s whirlwind of wheeling and dealing as he tried to keep us up.
The deal was a disaster for Watford - Kuhl played only 4 times for them, and they were relegated anyway - but it’s an interesting one to evaluate. Kuhl had a pretty solid career after he left us - he had 10 straight years as a first choice midfielder for Pompey, Derby and Bristol City, mostly in the second tier, before going to Hong Kong (where I once saw him sent off after a tremendous multi player brawl also involving Glyn Hodges). He was a useful player.
But Kuhl wasn’t a Bassett type of player, and if we hadn’t done this deal we wouldn’t have had Tony Agana. And if we didn’t have Tony Agana, we wouldn’t have the memories of his debut winner against Barnsley, his Chester hat trick, his winner at Huddersfield in the Cup, his goal at Norwich, his performance at West Brom, his penalty at Barnsley, his goal at Leicester….and we sure as hell wouldn’t have had back to back promotions.
Peter Hetherston played for United only 11 times before going back to Scotland, where he had a decent career, although he never did shake the reputation for being a bit nesh. He did not score, but he hit the post a lot. It had to be seen to be believed.
I always like to think that Bassett used the 40 grand he got from Watford to buy Deano…
Verdict: Big win for United
3. Nathan Blake to Bolton for Mark Patterson and ₤750,000 (December 1995)
A controversial deal at the time. United had lost 13 of 22 games when this deal took place, but Blake had scored 12 goals in that time, and was looking sharp. He started Kendall’s first game at Ipswich but was subbed at half time and that was that (there was a symmetry to this - his debut had been as a sub at Ipswich on the night I met Reg Brealey, but that’s another story). If you have a struggling side, selling your top scorer, who is also one of your best players, is a dangerous thing to do. There were also murmurings about Kendall’s willingness (or otherwise) to work with Black players, although the later signing of Paul Parker suggested there was nothing in this.
However, this was one of those all too brief periods where United actually had a transfer strategy. For starters, Patterson was a useful player. His passing was often wretched but he was tough, liked to get involved, played box to box, and was a leader - basically, he did what Dean Hammond should be doing. He effectively replaced Paul Holland in the side, which saw instant improvement in midfield.
Plus we actually spent the money well! Amongst others, Vonk, Hutchison, Walker, Taylor, Short and Cowans were all soon at the club and we were climbing the table. Blake was a good striker, no doubt about that, and whilst he didn’t help keep Bolton up he was instrumental in their instant promotion. By that time, however, we had Taylor, Walker, Kachouro and (eventually) Fjortoft to score goals. I don’t see that we missed him too much, for once.
United even had a sell on clause in place - ₤250,000 of the money came in when Blake was sold to Blackburn a few years later for ₤4 million. That’s a big profit, but of course we’d have sold him earlier in the Charles Green fire sale.
Moral of the story? Perhaps that you can sell your best player if you actually have a good replacement in mind.
Verdict: Useful deal for both teams, though perhaps Bolton got slightly the better of it.
4. Mitch Ward and Carl Tiler to Everton for Graeme Stuart and ₤500,000 (November 1997)
There’s nothing more annoying than a transfer deal that doesn’t work for anyone involved. Mitch Ward had done well for us - a tough little player who filled in wherever we had a gap, really, and of course had a big hand in our 1993 Cup Semi Final appearance (a novelty at the time). With the injury blight we had in those years he was a useful player to have around. Tiler had come in at the end of the preceding season and looked a class act when I saw him, but his wages made him part of the Charles Green cull and he was sent off to Everton with Ward, despite (according to his father) his extreme reluctance to sign for them.
Howard Kendall was a big fan of Ward, but Ward’s Everton career was blighted by injury. He made less than 30 appearances in 3 seasons, and he did not impress - like another signing from United, Terry Curran, he is sometimes seen as part of Everton “Worst Ever” XIs on the internet. They dumped him on Barnsley in the end, where he did okay. It was a bad deal for United, Ward and Everton IMHO. Tiler did quite well that year but then Walter Smith discarded him, and he ended up at Charlton and injuries finished him not long afterwards.
Stuart was a class act with a good pedigree who had hurt us in the past (scoring the goals that kept Everton up in 1994, scoring the winner in the Cup for Chelsea in 1992) but I felt his form was patchy the season he came over and he didn’t settle well. He looked much better in a weaker team the following year, but his better form attracted attention. United, not for the first or last time, decided they wanted money more than a playoff place or promotion, and sold him to Charlton, where he was a fixture in their side, mainly in the PL, for over 5 years.
I wonder whether everyone would have been better off staying where they were.
I should also mention for completeness another Howard Kendall raid on his former club - Don Hutchison went over to Goodison in February 1998, with ₤1 million and John O’Connor moving in the opposite direction, but that was more of what they call a “salary dump” in US sport, as Charles Green worked diligently to dismantle an expensive team before it had been allowed time to do the job it had been assembled to do.
Verdict: Not much good for either team. United made a profit on Stuart, but that’s about all
5. Vas Borbokis to Derby for Rob Kozluk and Jonathan Hunt and ₤500,000 (March 1999)
Denis Clarebrough and Andrew Kirkham point out that of the 3 players involved in this deal, Kozzy went on to have the most successful career afterwards. I bet you could have got long odds on that at the time.
Steve Bruce and Borbokis had fallen out, with Vas disobeying Bruce’s orders and sunning himself in Greece, and as we were selling anything that moved at this point - Holdsworth and Stuart soon followed, buggering up our playoff chances - we cut this deal with Derby which saw Jonathan Hunt, who had been on loan earlier in the season, come over to the Lane with Kozzy as a throw in.
Hunt was rubbish for United. He played well once - when we beat Wolves 3-0 early in the Heath era - but did little else of note save miss a penalty against non league Rushden in the Cup. His occasional pairing with the similarly ineffective Ian Hamilton was the stuff of nightmares. We ended up paying him to go away. Vas fared little better at Derby, playing only 16 games before returning to Greece. Like Ward and Tiler, he’d have been better off staying where he was.
Meanwhile, Kozluk got sent off twice in his first 10 games for us but settled down and, whilst not everyone’s favourite player and not always a first choice, gave us decent to good service in both full back positions for over 8 seasons, and even returned for a brief cameo when we were last relegated. His career outlasted the other 2 in the deal. I always think it’s a shame that the first thing anyone remembers about him is his cross into the Kop against Port Vale - he deserves to be remembered more fondly than that.
Verdict: Win for United, as Kozluk turned out to be the only decent signing of the three
6. Curtis Woodhouse to Birmingham for Peter Ndlovu and ₤1 million (February 2001)
This was an odd deal at the time it was made: Ndlovu, who was well regarded by Blues fans, was supposed to be a part of the deal, but was reluctant to leave. Birmingham reportedly dealt with this by cancelling his contract, meaning that he may as well sign for us.
At the time, I wrote off this deal as more selling of the family silver, but with the benefit of hindsight it turned out to be a great deal for us and perhaps Warnock had already seen the writing on the wall for Curtis - he had of course already been in trouble after the Wednesday game in December. Woodhouse was only ever a regular for Birmingham in 2001 (with his major contribution being scoring the goals that relegated Huddersfield) and then became something of a nomad before moving over to boxing. There is an argument that, as with Bassett’s sale of Agana, Warnock sold Woodhouse at exactly the right moment.
Nuddy, meanwhile, gave us 3 and a half good seasons, and some good memories, particularly in 2002-3. Wingers with pace who like to take people on are always fun to watch. One thing I’ll always thank him for is his 2 goals against Millwall that saw us beat them 3-2 a few days after the Battle of Bramall Lane - the club was in crisis and the team was at its lowest ebb that season, and that victory was so valuable in terms of points and morale.
Verdict: Big win for United
7. Phil Jagielka and ₤1 million to Everton for James Beattie and Gary Naysmith (2007)
This was not one deal. It was three separate deals - Jags went to Everton on 4 July, Naysmith came the other way on 5 July, and Beattie came at the start of August - but when the dust settled, this was the sum total of the deal.
Almost 9 years on, there is still a lot written on message boards and elsewhere about that period, and these transfers, and there’s little point in going over old ground.
I will say just this - I understand that promises were made to Jags, I was a fan of the Naysmith signing, and Beattie won me round very quickly, but with hindsight, those transfers look awful for us when you present them as a set, don’t they?
Verdict: Win for Everton. No, big win for Everton.
8. Tony McMahon to Blackpool for Bob Harris (January 2014)
When I think of Tony McMahon I always think of something he did in the Carlisle game on Easter Monday 2013…Carlisle’s right winger had just beaten McMahon with a piece of trickery so deft that a number of Blades fans applauded it, a rarity in these partisan times…and McMahon’s response was to bring him down savagely.
McMahon was supposedly a cult figure at Boro but just seemed like a nasty piece of work when he was at the Lane, plus he was slow, reluctant to cross the half way line, and made his share of errors. He took good free kicks, I suppose. We have a lot to complain about in terms of Clough’s transfer dealings but to get Harris in return for McMahon - indeed to get anything of value for McMahon - was a transfer heist up there with selling a one legged Lee Morris to Derby for 3 million quid.
Harris did everything that McMahon does, but did it better. I was disappointed to see McEveley in the team ahead of him this year but Adkins loves him some McEveley and Harris’ injury record does not help him.
Verdict - Big win for United
* * *
Well, there you go. With the obvious exception of the Jagielka-Beattie-Naysmith transactions, I reckon United have done pretty well out of swap deals in the last few decades. Maybe we should try to do more of these. Someone must want Martyn Woolford, mustn’t they?
Player swaps are more fun though. It’s like grown up Panini sticker swapping. You take someone you don’t want, or don’t use, and see if you can foist them on some other sucker in return for someone more valuable. This is how much of the transfer business is done in US sport, and I think we need more of it in British football.
United have done swap deals from time to time. Indeed, between 1995 and 1999 we did a bunch of them. I thought I’d have a look at 8 such deals from the last 30 years and see if we “won” any of them. This is not a comprehensive set of these deals (the Tudor/Hope/Ford one was well before my time, Nick Henry - swapped for Doug Hodgson - is too boring to write about, and there may be others I’m forgetting) but these are all memorable to me and I hope you find them interesting.
* * *
1. Steve Wigley and Paul Tomlinson (loan) to Birmingham for Martin Kuhl and Andy Kennedy (loan) (March 1987)
This 4 player trade is, I think, the biggest single deal United have ever done in terms of bodies. It was announced on the back page of the Star with photos of all 4 players in a line. It was a mutually beneficial swap deal, as each side traded people they weren’t using for people they could use.
United, very goal shy that season, got Andy Kennedy to bolster the forward line - he was coming back from injury - and Kuhl to add some steel to midfield. Both did well as United finished the season relatively strongly after being in lower mid table during early 1987. Kennedy scored a fine goal against Blackburn, breaking from his own half after a corner and hammering home as the keeper came out, put himself about a lot, and was impressive. Kuhl looked better than what we had in the middle at the time.
Wigley had been brought in to replace Colin Morris and had scored the greatest goal I’ve ever seen by a Blades player the previous season, but he’d not built on a decent start and didn’t seem to fit as well as Morris (who outlasted him) did. He’d had a good run in the side just before the transfer, but perhaps he was playing to get away. Tommo, who had gone backwards after an excellent start in 1983-4, couldn’t displace John Burridge (unlikely but true) and so we didn’t need him. He finished the season for Blues, went to Bradford that summer, and played over 300 games for them. I suspect had we known Burridge was going to go we’d have kept him and used him instead of Andy Leaning. Oh well.
Verdict: even - useful for both sides.
2. Martin Kuhl to Watford for Tony Agana, Peter Hetherston and ₤40,000 (February 1988)
Martin Kuhl came in on a swap deal, and left the same way: I think that’s unique for a United player. As I said above, he looked good when he first signed, and had lots of experience in the top 2 divisions, but like a number of other players was having an off year in our relegation season, and he became part of Bassett’s whirlwind of wheeling and dealing as he tried to keep us up.
The deal was a disaster for Watford - Kuhl played only 4 times for them, and they were relegated anyway - but it’s an interesting one to evaluate. Kuhl had a pretty solid career after he left us - he had 10 straight years as a first choice midfielder for Pompey, Derby and Bristol City, mostly in the second tier, before going to Hong Kong (where I once saw him sent off after a tremendous multi player brawl also involving Glyn Hodges). He was a useful player.
But Kuhl wasn’t a Bassett type of player, and if we hadn’t done this deal we wouldn’t have had Tony Agana. And if we didn’t have Tony Agana, we wouldn’t have the memories of his debut winner against Barnsley, his Chester hat trick, his winner at Huddersfield in the Cup, his goal at Norwich, his performance at West Brom, his penalty at Barnsley, his goal at Leicester….and we sure as hell wouldn’t have had back to back promotions.
Peter Hetherston played for United only 11 times before going back to Scotland, where he had a decent career, although he never did shake the reputation for being a bit nesh. He did not score, but he hit the post a lot. It had to be seen to be believed.
I always like to think that Bassett used the 40 grand he got from Watford to buy Deano…
Verdict: Big win for United
3. Nathan Blake to Bolton for Mark Patterson and ₤750,000 (December 1995)
A controversial deal at the time. United had lost 13 of 22 games when this deal took place, but Blake had scored 12 goals in that time, and was looking sharp. He started Kendall’s first game at Ipswich but was subbed at half time and that was that (there was a symmetry to this - his debut had been as a sub at Ipswich on the night I met Reg Brealey, but that’s another story). If you have a struggling side, selling your top scorer, who is also one of your best players, is a dangerous thing to do. There were also murmurings about Kendall’s willingness (or otherwise) to work with Black players, although the later signing of Paul Parker suggested there was nothing in this.
However, this was one of those all too brief periods where United actually had a transfer strategy. For starters, Patterson was a useful player. His passing was often wretched but he was tough, liked to get involved, played box to box, and was a leader - basically, he did what Dean Hammond should be doing. He effectively replaced Paul Holland in the side, which saw instant improvement in midfield.
Plus we actually spent the money well! Amongst others, Vonk, Hutchison, Walker, Taylor, Short and Cowans were all soon at the club and we were climbing the table. Blake was a good striker, no doubt about that, and whilst he didn’t help keep Bolton up he was instrumental in their instant promotion. By that time, however, we had Taylor, Walker, Kachouro and (eventually) Fjortoft to score goals. I don’t see that we missed him too much, for once.
United even had a sell on clause in place - ₤250,000 of the money came in when Blake was sold to Blackburn a few years later for ₤4 million. That’s a big profit, but of course we’d have sold him earlier in the Charles Green fire sale.
Moral of the story? Perhaps that you can sell your best player if you actually have a good replacement in mind.
Verdict: Useful deal for both teams, though perhaps Bolton got slightly the better of it.
4. Mitch Ward and Carl Tiler to Everton for Graeme Stuart and ₤500,000 (November 1997)
There’s nothing more annoying than a transfer deal that doesn’t work for anyone involved. Mitch Ward had done well for us - a tough little player who filled in wherever we had a gap, really, and of course had a big hand in our 1993 Cup Semi Final appearance (a novelty at the time). With the injury blight we had in those years he was a useful player to have around. Tiler had come in at the end of the preceding season and looked a class act when I saw him, but his wages made him part of the Charles Green cull and he was sent off to Everton with Ward, despite (according to his father) his extreme reluctance to sign for them.
Howard Kendall was a big fan of Ward, but Ward’s Everton career was blighted by injury. He made less than 30 appearances in 3 seasons, and he did not impress - like another signing from United, Terry Curran, he is sometimes seen as part of Everton “Worst Ever” XIs on the internet. They dumped him on Barnsley in the end, where he did okay. It was a bad deal for United, Ward and Everton IMHO. Tiler did quite well that year but then Walter Smith discarded him, and he ended up at Charlton and injuries finished him not long afterwards.
Stuart was a class act with a good pedigree who had hurt us in the past (scoring the goals that kept Everton up in 1994, scoring the winner in the Cup for Chelsea in 1992) but I felt his form was patchy the season he came over and he didn’t settle well. He looked much better in a weaker team the following year, but his better form attracted attention. United, not for the first or last time, decided they wanted money more than a playoff place or promotion, and sold him to Charlton, where he was a fixture in their side, mainly in the PL, for over 5 years.
I wonder whether everyone would have been better off staying where they were.
I should also mention for completeness another Howard Kendall raid on his former club - Don Hutchison went over to Goodison in February 1998, with ₤1 million and John O’Connor moving in the opposite direction, but that was more of what they call a “salary dump” in US sport, as Charles Green worked diligently to dismantle an expensive team before it had been allowed time to do the job it had been assembled to do.
Verdict: Not much good for either team. United made a profit on Stuart, but that’s about all
5. Vas Borbokis to Derby for Rob Kozluk and Jonathan Hunt and ₤500,000 (March 1999)
Denis Clarebrough and Andrew Kirkham point out that of the 3 players involved in this deal, Kozzy went on to have the most successful career afterwards. I bet you could have got long odds on that at the time.
Steve Bruce and Borbokis had fallen out, with Vas disobeying Bruce’s orders and sunning himself in Greece, and as we were selling anything that moved at this point - Holdsworth and Stuart soon followed, buggering up our playoff chances - we cut this deal with Derby which saw Jonathan Hunt, who had been on loan earlier in the season, come over to the Lane with Kozzy as a throw in.
Hunt was rubbish for United. He played well once - when we beat Wolves 3-0 early in the Heath era - but did little else of note save miss a penalty against non league Rushden in the Cup. His occasional pairing with the similarly ineffective Ian Hamilton was the stuff of nightmares. We ended up paying him to go away. Vas fared little better at Derby, playing only 16 games before returning to Greece. Like Ward and Tiler, he’d have been better off staying where he was.
Meanwhile, Kozluk got sent off twice in his first 10 games for us but settled down and, whilst not everyone’s favourite player and not always a first choice, gave us decent to good service in both full back positions for over 8 seasons, and even returned for a brief cameo when we were last relegated. His career outlasted the other 2 in the deal. I always think it’s a shame that the first thing anyone remembers about him is his cross into the Kop against Port Vale - he deserves to be remembered more fondly than that.
Verdict: Win for United, as Kozluk turned out to be the only decent signing of the three
6. Curtis Woodhouse to Birmingham for Peter Ndlovu and ₤1 million (February 2001)
This was an odd deal at the time it was made: Ndlovu, who was well regarded by Blues fans, was supposed to be a part of the deal, but was reluctant to leave. Birmingham reportedly dealt with this by cancelling his contract, meaning that he may as well sign for us.
At the time, I wrote off this deal as more selling of the family silver, but with the benefit of hindsight it turned out to be a great deal for us and perhaps Warnock had already seen the writing on the wall for Curtis - he had of course already been in trouble after the Wednesday game in December. Woodhouse was only ever a regular for Birmingham in 2001 (with his major contribution being scoring the goals that relegated Huddersfield) and then became something of a nomad before moving over to boxing. There is an argument that, as with Bassett’s sale of Agana, Warnock sold Woodhouse at exactly the right moment.
Nuddy, meanwhile, gave us 3 and a half good seasons, and some good memories, particularly in 2002-3. Wingers with pace who like to take people on are always fun to watch. One thing I’ll always thank him for is his 2 goals against Millwall that saw us beat them 3-2 a few days after the Battle of Bramall Lane - the club was in crisis and the team was at its lowest ebb that season, and that victory was so valuable in terms of points and morale.
Verdict: Big win for United
7. Phil Jagielka and ₤1 million to Everton for James Beattie and Gary Naysmith (2007)
This was not one deal. It was three separate deals - Jags went to Everton on 4 July, Naysmith came the other way on 5 July, and Beattie came at the start of August - but when the dust settled, this was the sum total of the deal.
Almost 9 years on, there is still a lot written on message boards and elsewhere about that period, and these transfers, and there’s little point in going over old ground.
I will say just this - I understand that promises were made to Jags, I was a fan of the Naysmith signing, and Beattie won me round very quickly, but with hindsight, those transfers look awful for us when you present them as a set, don’t they?
Verdict: Win for Everton. No, big win for Everton.
8. Tony McMahon to Blackpool for Bob Harris (January 2014)
When I think of Tony McMahon I always think of something he did in the Carlisle game on Easter Monday 2013…Carlisle’s right winger had just beaten McMahon with a piece of trickery so deft that a number of Blades fans applauded it, a rarity in these partisan times…and McMahon’s response was to bring him down savagely.
McMahon was supposedly a cult figure at Boro but just seemed like a nasty piece of work when he was at the Lane, plus he was slow, reluctant to cross the half way line, and made his share of errors. He took good free kicks, I suppose. We have a lot to complain about in terms of Clough’s transfer dealings but to get Harris in return for McMahon - indeed to get anything of value for McMahon - was a transfer heist up there with selling a one legged Lee Morris to Derby for 3 million quid.
Harris did everything that McMahon does, but did it better. I was disappointed to see McEveley in the team ahead of him this year but Adkins loves him some McEveley and Harris’ injury record does not help him.
Verdict - Big win for United
* * *
Well, there you go. With the obvious exception of the Jagielka-Beattie-Naysmith transactions, I reckon United have done pretty well out of swap deals in the last few decades. Maybe we should try to do more of these. Someone must want Martyn Woolford, mustn’t they?
