Last weekend the media confirmed yet again their inability to know football facts prior to the introduction of the Premier League. Mo Salah scored his hat-trick at Old Trafford, but nowhere did we learn the identity of the last player to do so in a league match against Manchester United. The answer is that it was one time Charlton loanee Dennis Bailey who scored three times for QPR on New Years Day 1992 in a match that ended 1-4. Rock on Dennis.
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BTW - personally I think the worst thing to ever happen to football was the creation of the Greed League©️
More money in sport = better sport. Simple. Take the ECB 100...
Better teams, better players, better stadiums, capacity crowds.
Before Heysel our teams dominated Europe but the ban and its aftermath naturally affected teams. Some of the England team went to play for Rangers just so they could play in Europe. Even after the ban our teams struggled and it wasn't until 1999 that another English side reached the champions league final.
Look at average attendances in 1991:
Man Utd 45k
Liverpool 34k
Arsenal 31k
Man City 29k
Spurs 28k
Aston villa 25k
Everton 23k
Newcastle 21k
Chelsea 18k
In most cases due to the influx of money, these clubs have rebuilt stadiums or built new ones. Most of these clubs now average attendances which are close to, or more than double what they were getting in 1991.
A club like Spurs were in financial trouble and forced to sell Lineker and Gascoigne. Lineker just 2 years on from Italia 90 and who was only 31 chose a move to Japan over staying here. That would never happen now.
As the players were warming up a stray ball found its way into my mates possession and one of the Gillingham players trotted over to reclaim it, seeing the slight, athletic and crucially, black player my mate took his opportunity to ask one of footballs cult heros a question
"Here, Dennis, whats it like scoring a hattrick at old Trafford mate"?
As he tossed the ball into the arms of the player.
"Dunno bruv, you'd better ask Dennis" said Kevin Rattray
My laughter at my pal making himself look both stupid and a bit accidently racist was stopped in its tracks by thw not unintimidating Leo Fortune-West staring at the pair of us and then pissing himself laughing when we both shut up and put our heads down
The Taylor report led to the government providing finance stadia improvements, not the early money from Murdoch: As always that was spent on players. Nearly all the best footballers of the 90's came from 80's old school team's youth teams. You only have to look at the quality of the '90 WC team and compare to the '02 team and see that virtually every position the best of 80's footballers wiped the floor with the Prem age: Attacking wise I can only think of Scholes and Owen that compared, maybe Beckham for consistency: but the 80's had Rocastle and even our own Mortimer with more mercurial talent than the prem years' players, amongst plenty of others.
The Premier League was going to happen. Man U, Liverpool, Arsenal and Everton were trying things from at least '85. It did align it and allow it access to the liberalisation in the finance markets. Eventually that allowed to cheaper financing via huge bond raising like Arsenal's for the Emirates. But it's hard not to be nostalgic about paying a quid to get in at Highbury around '89, with no worries about getting in: don't miss the random threat and very real likelihood of violence at matches.
when all the dust settled it was classic cafc underwhelming.
A bit like when we signed Ralph Milne and everyone was stating he was a record European Cup scorer or record international scorer Karim Bagheri.
https://twitter.com/skysportsstatto/status/1452315191862038530?s=21