Legends of the game....

[Jager]

I want to start a thread in here where you all can post the legends and key players that have played in England's top league.

I will sticky it, please feel free to add players to this thread, with a brief description, and maybe some pics.

This will help educate people who come to the forum.

Thanks......


!.....just a reminder, that this thread is for tributes, and tributes only. No discussions. If you have positives to say, then that is fine. I will modify or delete posts that don't follow this. Thanks for your cooperation.

[Evertonscouser]

William Ralph 'Dixie' Dean
Footballer-Gentleman-Evertonian

The greatest goalscorer ever to play in the English League. The highligh being 60 goals in one league season. During an Everton tour of Nazi Germany, he lead the team in the refusal to salute Hitler.

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Dixie was a real legend of the game. His dribbling, running, shooting and ability to create goals for others were exceptional. But his most prestigious ability was his heading, he was known as one the most remarkable headers the game has ever seen. Dixie used to practice heading by using a medicine ball with fellow player Tommy Lawton. Many believe that he should be talked about in the same sentences as the likes of Pelé and Alfredo Di Stéfano but due to his achievements being pre-war, this is rarely the case. Bill Shankly, then manager of local rivals Liverpool, said (on the BBC) "those of us privileged to see Dean play, talk of him the way people talk about Beethoven, Shakespeare or Mozart, he was that good"

His goalscoring achievement, a lifetime record of 0.94 goals per game (Pele achieved 0.93), puts him in the same league as the true greats of sport, such as Bradman or Mark Spitz.

Born in Birkenhead, Merseyside, Dean initially played for his local club, Tranmere Rovers, before moving to his boyhood side, Everton, for a fee of £3,000 in 1925, and immediately made an impact, scoring 32 goals in his first full season.

Despite a serious motorcycle accident in 1926, in which he suffered a fractured skull and jaw, Dean fully recovered and went on to greater success at the club. He is still the only player in English football to have scored 60 League goals in one season (1927/28), a total that the entire Everton squad have surpassed just once since the inception of the Premiership. In the same season Everton won the Division One title. Although Everton were relegated to Division Two in 1930, Dean stayed with them, and the club subsequently, and uniquely, won the Second Division in 1931, followed by the First Division again in 1932, and the FA Cup in 1933 - a sequence of success not matched since.

By then, Dean was captain of the side. However, the harsh physical demands of the game took their toll, and he was dropped from the first team in 1937. Dean went on to play for Notts County and then Sligo Rovers in Ireland. After retiring, he went on to run a pub known as the Dublin Packet, and work at Littlewoods Football pools as a porter at their Walton Hall Avenue offices, where he was remembered by fellow workers as a quiet, unassuming man.

In total, Dean scored a total of 383 goals for Everton, in 433 appearances, an exceptional strike-rate. With modern scoring rates being much lower, both that record, and the record of 60 League goals in a season, are unlikely to ever be broken. He was also known as a very professional player, having never been booked or sent off throughout his entire career.

Only Arthur Rowley has scored more English league career goals, although it should be noted that while Rowley made 619 appearances, scoring 433 goals (0.70 goals per game), Dean scored 379 goals in 438 games (0.87 goals per game), and while Dean spent one prolific season in the Second Division, that was all, while Rowley spent several seasons in the third and fourth divisions.

He also made 16 appearances for England, scoring 18 goals. Six of those goals came in the way of hat-tricks. Dean scored three against Belgium in May 1927 and then another three against Luxemburg 10 days later.

His nickname "Dixie" is said to have been given to him by fans due to his dark complexion and curly black hair, which was, in their perception, similar to that of African-Americans in the Southern United States. Dean himself deeply disliked the moniker, preferring to be known as Bill.

Dean died from heart failure in 1980 at Goodison Park, Everton's home ground, whilst watching a match against their closest rivals, Liverpool. In 2001, a statue of Dean was erected outside the Park End of the stadium carrying the inscription, "Footballer, Gentleman, Evertonian." In 2002 Dean became an Inaugural Inductee to the English Football Hall of Fame. In 2003, Littlewoods Football pools sponsored the ‘Dixie Dean Award’ for Everton Personality of the Year, at the Merseyside Sports Personality of the Year Awards. It was won by former Everton boss Howard Kendall.

[Jager]

Bump...we need more in this thread.

[MUMUFMUFCOK!]

ERIC CANTONA: The greatest fucking enigma in the English game, an absolute genius on and off the field. The impact this man had on Manchester United, and English football as a whole, cannot be understated.

I'm not going to rave about Eric's footballing brilliance, there is enough evidence of that here. Instead here's a short collection of musings and memories collected from myself and other United fans a few years ago.

Fighting with the Turkish police on the pitch in Galatasaray
Turning up to training in beaten-up cars and, on occasion, a bike...class!
Twatting a reporter on holiday
Living in a cave as a kid
Doing this...and then justifying it with this!
Scoring away at Elland Road and standing there goading the Leeds fans, arms open, as they were going absolutely fucking livid.
Scoring on his return game at home to Liverpool and celebrating on the net supports.
Climbing the 39 steps at Wembley after winning us the FA Cup, with the scousers spitting all over him. He didn't react, and kept smiling as he wiped the stuff from his face.
Scoring a majestic chip against Sunderland and just standing there arms raised, face expressionless, as every other fucker in the ground went mental.

[Jager]

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[MUFC]

Fuck beat me to it.

Roy Keane





Manchester United and Blackburn Rovers competed to sign Keane after Nottingham Forest's relegation in 1993. Manchester United were successful, signing Keane for a then-record £3.75m transfer fee. Keane immediately went into the first team, playing in centre-midfield alongside Paul Ince.

Although he maintains a low profile off the pitch, Keane was involved in numerous controversial incidents while at Manchester United, earning 11 red cards in the process. In 1995, he was sent off from an FA Cup semi-final for stamping on Gareth Southgate, for which he was suspended for three matches and fined £5,000.

After the retirement of Éric Cantona in 1997, Keane became team captain, although he missed most of the 1997/1998 season because of a cruciate ligament injury, caused by an ill-timed challenge on Leeds United player Alf Inge Haaland. As Keane lay prone on the ground, Haaland stood over Keane, accusing him of feigning injury. United were top of the league at the time, but their form dropped and they finished the season without a trophy.

Keane returned, however, to captain the club to an unprecedented treble in 1999 including the FA Premier League, FA Cup, and UEFA Champions League. One of his finest performances included an inspirational display to haul his team back from two goals down to win 3 – 2 during the semi-final second-leg against Juventus, scoring a header to start United's comeback. This was despite earlier in the match receiving a yellow card that ruled him out of the final after a trip on Zinedine Zidane. United defeated Bayern Munich at Nou Camp 2-1 to win the Champions League, scoring twice in injury time after trailing one-nil for most of the match. Keane received a winner's medal though he said that he has not looked at it. That year, Keane was named Man of the Match in the finals of the Intercontinental Cup, scoring the only goal of the game as United defeated Palmeiras. As a recognition for his efforts, Keane was voted PFA Players' Player of the Year in 2000.

In 2001, Keane played against Alf-Inge Haaland for the first time since their clash in 1998, and was sent off for a blatant knee-high foul on Haaland. He initially received a three game suspension. Keane subsequently admitted in an autobiography that he intended "to hurt" Haaland, which saw him banned for a further five matches and fined £150,000. Haaland retired from football shortly afterwards, stating on his website that the cause of this was a recurring problem in his leg, rather than an injury resulting from Keane's tackle.

In 2001-2002, Manchester United finished the season trophyless. Domestically, they were eliminated in the FA Cup by Middlesbrough in the fourth round, and finishing third in the Premiership. They made the semi-finals of the UEFA Champions League, their furthest advance since 1999 but they were knocked out by Bayer Leverkusen. After their defeat to Leverkusen, Keane blamed United's loss of form on the players’ Rolexes, the fleets of cars, the multi-millions, and told them they had lost their hunger. (Keane in particular was supposedly to have targeted one of the England players, Wes Brown, or Nicky Butt amongst others.) Earlier in the season, Keane had publicly advocated the breakup of The Treble-winning team as he believed that his team-mates, who had played in United's victorious 1999 Champions League final, no longer had the motivation to work as hard. (Keane himself had been forced to sit out of the 1999 final due to suspension and though he received a winner's medal, he felt that he had never really won the competition.)[1] [2]

In August 2002 he was fined two weeks' wages, £150,000, and suspended for three matches for elbowing Sunderland's Jason McAteer. This caused much controversy in the English press as Keane booked himself in for a hip operation and thus would have missed those three matches anyway.

In the 2000s, Keane maintained a healthy rivalry with Arsenal captain Patrick Vieira. The most notable incident was at Highbury in 2005, at the height of an extreme period of bad blood between United and Arsenal, where Vieira was taunting Keane's teammate Gary Neville. Keane afterwards criticised Vieira's decision to play internationally for France instead of his birthplace of Senegal. [3]

On 5 February 2005, Keane scored his 50th goal for Manchester United in a league game against Birmingham City. His appearance in the 2005 FA Cup final (which United lost to Arsenal in a penalty shoot out) was his seventh such game, an all-time record.

Overall, Keane would lead United to 9 major honours, making him the most successful captain in the club's illustrious history. Keane's trophy haul with Manchester United includes: 7 Premiership titles (1994, 1996, 1997, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2003), 4 FA Cups (1994, 1996, 1999, 2004), a European Cup (1999) and an Intercontinental Cup (1999).

Keane was inducted into the English Football Hall of Fame in 2004 in recognition of his undoubted impact on the English league.

Keane was also picked on the FIFA 100, a list of the greatest living footballers picked by Pelé.

[Jager]

Very nice, excellent work gents.

[russe||]

Originally Posted by Jager

YouTube - eric cantona

Great memories but that video makes me feel sad for two reasons: I was too young to really appreciate Cantona and I know I'll never see a player like him again.

It seems like ages since he retired (fuck isn't it 10 years ago this summer?), I wish he'd kept playing a few more years. Teddy Sheringham is older than him ffs and he won the treble with us two years after Eric left.

Oh and that video is great but doesn't do Eric's goal vs Sunderland justice, here it is in full:

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[NJ10]

Kenny Dalglish

"King Kenny", i'm told, was the greatest Liverpool player of all time. signed from Celtic for a club record £440,000 to replace Hamburg-bound Kevin Keegan in 1977, Dalglish settled nicely into the reigning European Champions' side, despite some doubting voices apparently. he scored on his league debut and come the end of the season he had scored 31 goals. undoubtedly the most important was his winner in the European Cup final against Bruges at Wembley, a typical Dalglish goal as he latched on to Graeme Souness' poked pass and chipped the ball over the diving keeper. A legend inside a season.

Dalglish was instrumental in Liverpool's sustained success over the next fewyears, he was a key player as they lifted back to back league titles in 1979 and 1980, and three more in a row 1982, 83 and 84, four successive league cups between 1981 & 1984, and two further European cups in 1981 and 1984, forming a deadly partnership with a young Ian Rush. Those achievements alone would have guaranteed him legendary status, but in 1985, after manager Joe Fagan's resignation, Dalglish became player manager at Anfield. His first season was a tricky one, the club were banned from Europe following the Heysel disaster at the previous seasons European Cup final against Juventus, but Dalglish still managed to lead the Reds to their first ever League & Cup double, scoring the goal that clinched the league at Chelsea, before leading his side to a 3-1 win over local rivals Everton at Wembley in the FA Cup final.

A quiet 1987 was followed by 1988, and what many people have claimed since to be the finest Liverpool side of all time. The likes of Barnes, Aldridge, Beardsley, Houghton, Hansen, McMahon & Lawrenson were a class apart from the rest of the league, and reclaimed the title at a canter, at one point going 37 games unbeaten. However he was denied another double by one of the biggest FA Cup upsets of all time as Wimbledon defeated his allstars 1-0 at Wembley.

1988/89 was probably the beginning of the end of Dalglish at Anfield, the events of April 15th 1989 hit him hard, as did Arsenal's dramatic last gasp last day winner which took the league championship to Highbury. A 3-2 FA Cup final win over Everton paled into insignificance, Dalglish became increasingly detatched from the emotions involved in the game. Even another league title in 1990 couldnt paper over the cracks, and on Feb 21st 1991, following an epic 4-4 draw with Everton in the FA Cup 5th round replay, Dalglish stunned the world of football by resigning as Liverpool manager,. citing the pressure he was putting himself under. Liverpool havent won the league since.

Since then, Dalglish has won the Premiership (ironically, at Anfield) as Blackburn manager in 1995, with a side that was in the Old second division only 3 years earlier, but again stunned football by quitting to become Director of Football at Ewood Park straight after. He again replaced Keegan, this time as Newcastle manager in January 1997, but his reign was not particualarly successful, bar an FA Cup final appearance in 1998. he left and formed a largely unsuccessful managerial partnership with old pal John Barnes at Celtic, the only high point coming with a Scottish cup win in 2000 (four months after Barnes had been sacked).

Dalglish's main attributes as a player were his exquisite touch, fantastic spacial awareness, ability to use either foot to deadly effect, and tremendous work and team ethic. Ask any Liverpool player/fan/manager who witnessed those great days of the 1970s/80s who their favourite player was, and 9 out of 10 will say Kenny Dalglish. He was that good.

All in all, a great player, a great player manager, a great guy. His charity, the Marina Dalglish Appeal (Kenny's wife battled and overcame breast cancer) was set up in 2004 and has raised thousands for cancer awareness through a variety of special events and fundraisers (many of them in conjjunction with Liverpool FC).

Oh, and his daughter is pretty fit as well.

[Jager]

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Check out this classic footage...awesome.

[NJ10]

thats the shiznit my friend. what a player.

[Number9]

Beyond a shadow of a doubt:







Peter Schmeichel

Honours (Wikipedia)

Team

1992 European Football Championship, with Denmark

Brøndby IF

Danish Superliga Champions (4): 1987, 1988, 1990, and 1991
Danish Superliga Runner-Up: 1989


Danish Cup: 1989


Manchester United

FA Charity Shield (4): 1993, 1994, 1996, and 1997
FA Premier League Champions (5): 1992/93, 1993/94, 1995/96, 1996–97, and 1998/99
Football League First Division Runner-Up: 1992
FA Premier League Runner-Up: 1994/95 and 1997–98
FA Cup (3): 1994, 1996, and 1999
English League Cup: 1992
European Super Cup: 1991
UEFA Champions League: 1998-99
Sporting Lisbon

Portuguese Superliga: 2000


Aston Villa

Inter-Toto Cup: 2001


Personal
Brøndby IF Player of the Year: 1990
Danish Player of the Year (3): 1990, 1993, and 1999
World's Best Goalkeeper: 1992 and 1993
UEFA Club Football Awards: 1997-98
English Football Hall of Fame: 2003
Others

European Footballer of the Year: 5th in 1992
FIFA World Player of the Year: 5th in 1992, 4th in 1993
World's Best Goalkeeper: 4th in 1994, 2nd in 1995, 4th in 1996, 3rd in 1997, 2nd in


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