Rebooted: ‘Has no one said? I’m off to Benfica.’ Sheffield United’s secret sales

[Kozzy_is_my_Dad]

Three mid-season departures behind manager Steve Bruce's back made life very difficult in 1998-99...

Rebooted: ‘Has no one said? I’m off to Benfica.’ Sheffield United’s secret sales

Three mid-season departures behind manager Steve Bruce's back made life very difficult in 1998-99...

theathletic.com

Does anyone here subscribe to the Athletic and would they feel generous enough to share/copy and paste? Obviously without landing themselves or Foxy and Linz in hot water. Not wanting to sponge or come across as a tight arse but literally only interested in reading this Baldes article...

Ta!

 

[LoughboroBlade]

There’s little new in it tbh. Though for me, Bruce has either misremembered this or has played it for drama in his retelling:

Bruce got to Bramall Lane early ahead of the team bus’s departure for the West Country and bumped into Saunders. “You’re a bit early, Deano. We don’t leave for another hour.”

The striker looked quizzically at his manager before replying. “Has no one told you? I’ve been sold to Benfica and am on the 3.10pm flight from Heathrow.”

This might have been when he was confirmed as sold, but the sale was as good as done ahead of (or certainly reported on the day of) the heavy home defeat the previous weekend at home to Sunderland. Saunders didn’t play, his departure was talked about on the day, and it was also of course Bruce’s last ever game as a player. The way Bruce tells it here it’s as though he turned up for the bus to the Bristol City game the following week and completely out the blue discovered Saunders had been sold. That’s bollocks.

 

[Cheets]

There was a good article about The Athletic in GQ, how it started in the US and has tried to expand into the UK, poaching some highly respected sports journalists from newspapers etc and paying them big salaries. They feed articles like this into the public domain via twitter etc but put them behind a paywall in order to gain subscribers.