Totally Gold 92/93: The Premier League begins

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2:14The Athletic FC Podcast Network.

2:24Hello, listener. It's totally gold time, revisiting five years ago, a time when no football was on, so we all came together to look back on some of the greatest seasons in history. Today, it's the one where Michael Cox, Daniel Storey and Matt Davis Adams join me to look back on where it all began for the Premier League.

2:54Unbelievable, unbelievable this.

3:18The rarely heard sounds of Simple Minds with Alive and Kicking soundtrack to what was, listener, a paradigm shift in the nation's favourite sport. Football, the proud but previously rather plain passion of the people with its Brian Moore and its Milded Sea Facts, had just tarted itself up, picked out a fancy new moniker and sold itself to the hairy fingers of brash young satellite channel Sky Sports. Wow. Summer of 1992, for supporters, supporters who might have been a little bit older than you guys were at the time, how big a change was this? How much of a sea change, Michael? Yeah, well, I think it was a change primarily in terms of how people viewed football and television.

4:02It was kind of sold as a television event as much as it was a going to the games event. It's very obvious when you watch back the pictures that Sky were really giving it some almost American style razzmatazz with fireworks and cheerleaders. They really bigged up the concept of Monday night football in particular, which, you know, almost 30 years on is, albeit in a different form, still a kind of very prominent part of the week. so yeah it was a it was a big um a big change but it's worth pointing out i think that i think i'm right in saying that at this stage only one or two games a weekend were actually live on television so it was really you know when the sky sports tv cameras went to anfield or hybury or wherever it was it kind of seemed like a big event and it's funny when you read the quotes from managers after games whenever the tv cameras are there they're always like oh we really put on a show for the sky sports tv cameras so it was still a kind of relatively novel thing to have your match on television.

4:54Right. Unless they were Italian games because they were on all the time. Because this is all new to me because this is the moment at which I kind of did one for the faraway land of Syria. Missing out on, as you mentioned, cheerleaders, collar strings. I asked actually listeners what memories they had of the opening season. Some of the responses, Simon Martin, Shearer, banging them in for fun. Ed Quoth the Raven says, guys, use of alive and kicking. Do half an hour, please, on this advert. Jack Potkestrel agrees. I mean, John Walk, says Jack Potkestrel, followed by an Oldham player after Tony Daly, I think, has been smashing weights.

5:31How much stuff was the team that made this on? Do you remember this advert, guys? Yes, it was fantastic. And we were all kind of working out in their kits as well, wasn't it? Which looked like a good way to get sweaty and smelly. I think Gary Charles was the Forest representative. I think it was Andy Ritchie for Oldham. Yeah, lovely times. It was kind of, it was almost as well a reaction to football rebranding itself in the wake of the, obviously, Hillsborough, but the hooliganism that had kind of taken over the English game in certainly the late 80s. And this was all part of that, wasn't it? You mentioned the shirts and things, James.

6:05It's kind of selling replica kits was a thing that came along around this time on sort of big scale. I remember getting the Arsenal shirt the year before 1991, and my mum had to order it from a sports shop in North London and have it posted up to Nottingham because you couldn't buy it anywhere else in the country but London. But this was that kind of the time of the commercialisation of football through the Premier League, which we kind of think of as being a Sky thing exclusively. But I think it was a bit of a broader reaction to the problems that English football had had from the sort of mid to late 80s through to around this kind of time.

6:37So that's why you ended up with cheerleaders on the pitch instead of police horses. it should also be said that the football was was still pretty much you know division one rolled in glitter it was of the of the 13 players who scored 15 or more league goals only cansonar was non-british the names you know mickey queen and players like that there was still a very old school feel to it it was just as i say rolled in glitter until until a time when the football and the you know the signing of foreign players and the money caught up with it it was very much just the rebadging of the old Division 1, certainly for this season, and probably 93-94 as well, I think.

7:14Yeah, just 13 foreign players in that inaugural Premier League season, but a whopping 22 teams, among them the last First Division champions, Leeds, and the three sides that would contest the first Premier League title race. Man United, who were very much the Liverpool of the era, eager to end a 25-year wait for the title, Aston Villa and Norwich. What on earth were Norwich doing there? The Norwich story is mad, mainly because in hindsight, they're viewed as a kind of statistical quirk in that they finished third with a goal difference of minus four. I looked through their results and they lost 7-1 to Blackburn.

7:52They lost 5-1, they lost 4-1. They lost 3-1 four times and they lost 3-0 twice. They got hammered when they did lose. But they had Jeremy Goss, who was the hero that they then went, obviously, to play against Bayern Munich in the following season. It was a mad, mad story. They were seen as being in the title race and they probably just about were, but I don't think there was ever really a sense at the time that they were going to hold on. It was always a case of really which side would pit them. It's worth pointing out that it did really come from nowhere. They finished 18th the season before and missed out on the relegation places by only three points.

8:26So it really was a huge shock. And they had Chris Sutton converted centre-half midway through the season, went up front. But it's the other names, isn't it, that roll off your tongue. Daniel's already mentioned Jeremy Goss, but Ian Crook, John Polston, Rule Fox. Effort of Koku. Gary Mixon. Not so much. Not so much. Ian Culverhouse. There's another one for you. Canary Mark says, they were the team of the 90s, managed by Mike Walker using a groundbreaking back five with overlapping fullbacks. They led the Premier League by six points at Christmas, eventually ending up third. It's true. As you say, 18th the previous season, and they'd sold off probably their biggest star over the summer and replaced the manager with the man from the youth team, Mike Walker.

9:10Michael, do they deserve a little bit more praise now that we look back at what they were trying to do? Yeah, definitely. I think they were the best footballing side in the league when you look at the way that they passed the ball. You mentioned the full-backs with Colverhouse and Butterworth getting forward. I think that was seen as quite exciting, quite progressive at the time. In the first few years of the Premier League, it wasn't always the best footballing side of the title contenders who won the league. I think Norwich were the best passers this year. I think generally Manchester United was slightly more ruthlessly efficient than the teams they were up against, particularly Newcastle, you know, the entertainers.

9:44And the one season they didn't win, it was the Blackburn team. And that was a year where United probably were playing better football than the eventual champions. But yeah, Norwich were an excellent side. And as Daniel alludes to that, they did lose a lot of games quite heavily and they did lose the big games quite heavily. They lost 3-0 to Manchester or 3-1 to Manchester United in a title run-in. And they even lost both home and away to their local rivals, Ipswich. And Ipswich were, I think, three points off relegation at the end of the campaign. So they're an attractive side, but maybe not one that relished the big occasions.

10:10All right. Well, that was Norwich. Eight points clear they were in December, but they weren't to win it. That glory went to Man United. Now, we mentioned at the top that they've been waiting a long time, a quarter of a century since their last league title. This campaign didn't start very well. They lost their opening two matches. But in November, something very significant happened. United lying in eighth place when their chairman, Martin Edwards, receives a phone call from Leeds United. A phone call that turns out to be possibly the most significant call since before or after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.

10:44Daniel, why? They got Eric Cantona. How? Well, the slightly apocryphal, I think, or the slight myth of this is that Leeds were intending to sign Dennis Irwin, I think. and Manchester United laughed out of the room. But Dion Dublin, their summer signing, had broken his leg and they needed something. They'd put a£4 million bid in for David Hurst and that was their first choice. But when Ferguson got a sniff that Cantona might be available and he'd pretty spectacularly fallen out with Howard Wilkinson at Leeds, he got the deal done. It seems very easy now, but this was not a popular signing. Manchester United players thought that Cantona was a lunatic.

11:27They thought he was a risk they didn't need. Graeme Souness at Liverpool had turned down Cantona in 91 because he thought he couldn't be trusted. And as I said, he'd burned his bridges at Leeds as well. The expectation was that he would leave the country, either back to France, although he'd caused some problems there, or to Serie A and Inter, I think. But yes, they got Cantona and it completely turned around the season. I think they lost two of the 26 matches after he signed. They basically scored two goals a game after he signed and were scoring one goal a game before. So, yeah, that was the title decider.

12:00Michael, is that your understanding of the phone call? Yeah, Philippe Auclair has written a very good biographie of Cantona. And he suggests that United had been tracking Cantona for a while. And I think there was one game Ferguson was at where he was sat alongside Gerard Houllier, who was the France manager at the time. And Cantona got himself sent off. And Houllier said something like, oh, God, we'll have to find him yet another club. And from that, Ferguson thought, well, OK, we'll have a look at him. I mean, I think the strangest thing is the fact that United actually had a four million bid turned down for David Hurst of Sheffield Wednesday.

12:32And then it ended up getting Cantona for, I think, 1.2 million. So it was, you know, as Daniel says, it was a real steal. It was completely unexpected. And there was no sign at that point that he was going to be a success, let alone probably the man that transformed Manchester United into the side that has dominated the Premier League for the last 25 years. Why was his arrival so key? Why was he the catalyst for that transformation? I think there was two reasons. One was tactical. I mean, he was a number 10 that United didn't really have before that. He allowed Mark Hughes to play a little bit higher up and actually score some really good goals that season.

13:08Hughes was often criticised for not scoring enough. But I think with Cantona dropping deep and creating, Hughes came into his own. And I think just his attitude as well. I mean, again, Daniel will know maybe more about this than me, but that younger generation of Manchester United players really all cite Cantona's work rate, his dedication and training, staying behind to work on free kicks and long shots and that kind of thing. And they say that at the time, you know, the existing experienced bunch of Manchester United players, if you would have done that in front of them, basically you would have had the piss taken out of you for being almost like a teacher's pet and trying hard at your game.

13:43And Cantona basically just professionalised things and made everyone realise that although he did have a great talent, really he was a great player because he worked really hard at his game and was just always striving to improve. Just on David Hurst to kind of peep best of this scenario, he's almost worth a flip reverse of his own in this because he was apparently in the dressing room at Sheffield Wednesday's training ground when Trevor Francis, the then manager, brought in a fax from Alex Ferguson with the bid from Manchester United for his services. Trevor Francis tore it up and said, we're not entertaining this, you're staying here.

14:17and David Hurst then went on to have massive problems with injury throughout the rest of his career. He was a really, really promising striker but later on in this season and throughout 1993-1994 he barely kicked a ball so you think how different his career could have been not just in terms of the fact that he would have won the Premier League but he might have played a heck of a lot more games in the top flight and maybe for England as well so I wonder how many times a day he curses Trevor Francis. If we talk about the way that Cantona enabled Man United to play Would the greatest example of his impact be the day when they travelled to their title rivals Norwich at Carrot the 5th of April 1993, 27 years ago to the day that we're recording this podcast, Michael?

15:01Yeah, that was, I mean, when I was in the book and looking at Manchester United's early years, that was the game I looked at. The most famous game, I guess, is the one the following weekend when they came from behind to beat Sheffield Wednesday with two Steve Bruce goals. And that was what gave rise to Fergie time. But in terms of the approach and the tactics United used, I mean, as we say, Norwich were a brilliant footballing side. They're comfortable in possession. They like to take the game to the opposition. And United just soaked up pressure and scored three absolutely remarkable counter-attacking goals with the pace of Giggs, who was playing up front unusually for Manchester United that day.

15:32And it's measured. The flag stays down. Here's Giggs. Still Giggs. It's going to be a United goal. And Ryan Giggs puts Manchester United into the lead. Ince does well Giggs, McLear lovely movement from United and Kanchalskis here is one on one he's got Cantona square he goes alone and he scores Andre Kanchalskis with a remarkable goal from Manchester United really has put them into the box seat now look at Ince here they've gone through again men in support as well and here is Cantona and that's three you can't believe this and you can look at them now and they're impressive even now but i think in the context of football that season where you know the speed of the game is nothing like how we see it today um for united to feel gigs and koncelskis and sharp in the same side almost you know bombing forward uh on the flanks with cantonal orchestrating things in the middle it was just an incredible performance at a time where united had you know suffered a bit of dip in form I think in around this time around Easter but yeah that really was the performance that certainly put Norwich out of the title race and was yeah the foundation for United's successful running.

16:50As you say watching those goals back it's like watching proper modern football. It reminds me of one of the other famous Manchester United counter-attack performances which was the one against Arsenal in the Champions League when Rooney and Ronaldo were at their pump and cutting through a pretty flimsy of well-intentioned Arsenal team. And it also feels like a side that was prepared to sacrifice having the ball and was prepared to sacrifice playing on the front foot to decimate an opponent, which I think was a very early example of Ferguson's pretty enlightened tactical thought about how to break down other teams.

17:26Michael, in your book, The Mixer, you call this game the single most influential team performance in the history of the Premier League. Norwich had started that weekend in first place with United third. And as you were explaining, Norwich playing the possession game. Daniel, as you're saying, United very much the counterattacking, a force. Are you saying that the fact that United ended up the winners, that kind of laid the template, if you will, for successful Premier League tactics that everybody then subscribed to? Yeah, pretty much. I mean, over the next 10 years, the general approach of sides is to have a couple of defensive midfielders, as United did, and flying wingers and someone in the hole.

18:04and that's pretty much how every other Premier League title winner played for the next few years. And, you know, it sounds like a grand statement, but I say that because the thing we haven't mentioned yet was 1992 was also the introduction of the back pass rule, which completely changed the way teams played. And I think if Norwich, who were kind of the most progressive and most comfortable in possession side in the league, if they had won the Premier League, I think a lot of other sides, not just mid-table sides, but a lot of the top sides would have said, oh, OK, you know, that's how we're going to have to play in the modern game.

18:33and maybe would have followed Norwich's approach. But it takes quite a few more years before you see a side that is really a possession-based team winning the Premier League. I'd probably say Arsenal in 2003-04 was probably the first example because I think the Arsenal sides before that were a little bit like this. Manchester United probably more famous for their counter-attacking ability than their tendency to dominate possession. Well, the title went to them, ending their long drought. Norwich, after spending the most days of any club on top of the table that season, ended up in third, as you mentioned, with a negative ball difference.

19:06But what else happened in that inaugural season?

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21:23This is the Totally Football Show part of the Athletic FC podcast network The Athletic is the only place you can read articles by Daniel Taylor Amy Lawrence, Phil Hay, James Pearce Olly Kay and the very best football writers around

21:38Here's some of your other golden memories Big Ron's Villa with Dean Saunders of course and their incredible 4-2 with Liverpool Lots of listeners mentioned that. Saunders on his home debut instrumental in downing his former club in a game that's mostly infamous for what, Matt? Ronnie Rosenthal and his inexplicable thumping of the crossbar when the goal was gaping. Liverpool, oh, he's hit the bar!

22:05What a let off for Villa and what a miss by Rosenthal. Underlining perhaps the folly of selling Saunders by Graeme Souness. Villa who were two points clear with eight games to go but didn't make it across the line in first place partly according to their manager Ron Atkinson because Dalian Atkinson missed three months of the season Dalian Atkinson who goal scorer challenge sites in their memories of 92-93 for his incredible goal against Wimbledon Atkinson trying to see his skill and pace Saunders outside him, Atkinson going through on his own Saunders to his right, tries a chip and that's a superb individual goal by Damien Atkinson.

22:47Goal scoring challenge, wow. I was out of the country at the time and watching that back this week, absolutely astonished. What a goal. The thing that's always impressed me about that is with those kind of goals where, for anybody who hasn't seen it, gets it in his own half, dribbles past X number of opposition players. Usually, like with that famous George Ware goal that we mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the finish is the least impressive part of the whole thing because you've had the brilliant dribble but it's a beautiful deft little chip from outside the penalty area and you get that wonderful shot of a goalkeeper looking over his head as the ball sails past him which makes it even better and then the bloke with the umbrella coming out of the crowd to shield Atkinson and Saunders from the ring.

23:29I kind of boiled the title race down to three injuries in 92-93. The first is Dion Dublin's broken leg which forces Ferguson to seek other options and as we've said ends up with Cantona joining the second is Dalian Atkinson being out for three months obviously Ron Atkinson would say that they would have won the league without it because it alleviates him or absolves him of any responsibility and the third is Alan Shearer doing his ACL in December 92 he'd scored 16-21 Blackburn were three points off top behind Norwich when he got injured and had beaten, as I said earlier they'd beaten Norwich 7-1 at home with Shearer absolutely brilliant So I think Blackburn eventually finished 4th, 13 points off top, but Villa finished 10 points behind.

24:15Ron Atkinson says that Dalian was the reason they didn't win the league. So I think there's an argument to say that if Shearer stays fit for that season, Blackburn get a heck of a lot closer than Villa do. OK. Other memories of 1992-1993. James Phillips and Danny Tolhurst citing Mickey Quinn, his extraordinary goal-scoring exploits for Coventry. Richard Moorcroft, as a Leeds fan, starting off as champions and ending up without an away win all season. In fact, Leeds, one of the worst ever title defences, they came in 17th that season. Bit Dub 1878, says Richard Keyes' jackets, which looking back were extraordinary.

24:51I suspect even at the time, extraordinary. Adrian Bassett, the shaman, being booed off at Highbury and flicking V's. This was part of Sky's initiative to have chart hopefuls for performing their recent output at halftime of games, which is always fraught with danger. Jordan Ray also mentions a Highbury memory, having fake fans in the North Bank stand. Tell me more about this. Yeah, it was a bit of a clangor because they were all white, all the fake fans that they painted on the mural. Why were there fake fans there anyway? They were redeveloping the North Bank. And this is one of the things that actually stood out to me looking back at the season.

25:28And a lot, if not most, of the grounds in the Premier League are unrecognisable. You know, Ewood Park, Villa Park, other ones out of the Suffolk Park particularly stood out. Stamford Bridge, yeah, of course, where you used to have the cars parked behind the goals. They just look completely different from the way they do now. And as part of the redevelopment of Highbury, they built a new North Bank and decided that instead of having cranes and scaffolds there, they'd put up a big mural of fans. And yeah, it was kind of weird. Well, they had to paint it three times, apparently. The first time there were no black faces or any kind of people of different ethnic heritages in there.

26:05They repainted it, but then came in under criticism because there were no women in the crowd and there were a lot of children who appeared to be next to people who weren't their parents. So they finally did it again and off they went. Arsenal, for their part, finished 10th that campaign, but they did win both domestic cups, beating Sheffield Wednesday in both finals. How very curious. Who were the kings of London? Who were the top London side that season? QPR. Remarkable. A lot of people know that stuff about Leeds, that they came 17th having been first the previous season. And I think that's partly attributed to the back pass change.

26:39What people might not know is that Arsenal had an even more astonishing collapse in some ways because the previous season, the old first division season, the final old first division season I should say they scored the most goals in the league and then this season they scored the fewest goals in the league that's the only time in football league history that that has happened and it was again attributed to the fact that Arsenal played a pretty simple game that depended a lot on David Seaman smacking the ball downfield for Alan Smith or Kevin Campbell and Ian Wright running onto it and now that they were forced to embrace more of a patient build-up kind of game they really struggled and yeah I think they They scored more goals the previous season at home than they scored in this season home and away, which was a remarkable come down.

27:20So the issue there was that David Seaman just simply didn't receive the ball enough because of the back pass rule to launch it back downfield. A little bit. Before, if the defenders were under pressure, they just used to pass the ball back to Seaman. He could pick it up and then he could launch it downfield properly. But until this point, goalkeepers have never really had to kick a moving ball before. And as stupid as it sounds, the concept of, yeah, a rolling ball or them having to kick when under pressure from attackers meant that their distribution was pretty woeful. I mean, I think Seaman probably was one of the better goalkeepers with his feet.

27:50Norwich's Brian Gunn actually was a very good goalkeeper in that regard. But yeah, a lot of the times players who were playing in these teams were complaining basically just the goalkeepers weren't kicking the ball far enough. You know, that was quite a basic consideration at this stage. More memories. Ryan Hamer, amongst many people, mentioning Oldham Athletic, who were in the Premier League and not just in the Premier League, but heroes of one of the original great escapes, Daniel. Yeah, absolutely. They basically had to win all of their last three games, have a chance of staying up. And not just that, but had to win them all in the space of, I think, six days.

28:27And the opponents as well. Liverpool, Villa and Southampton. Yeah, Villa first. So they beat Villa. That's the game that confirmed Manchester United's title win. They then beat Liverpool at home. Liverpool, it should be said, were kind of half in flip-flops. And it was pretty clear that Oldham wanted it more. And then the final day, they needed to beat Southampton and hope that Palace lost to Arsenal, which, as Michael has explained, was no given at the time, especially given Arsenal's dismal home record. They didn't win at home between, I think, November 7th and late March. Richard. Here's Haller.

29:03It's opened up for Gunnar Haller. It's four.

29:10And now, surely, as long as Crystal Palace do not come back at Arsenal, Oldham are staying in the Premier League. And Oldham won 4-3 despite Matt Letizia scoring a hat-trick, which, as a Forest fan, I know is the first of two times that Letizia scored a hat-trick and lost in the Premier League. I can't imagine who the other one was again. No, you can't, you can't. Speaking of Forrest, this was the season that they went down and also waved goodbye to Brian Clough. Yeah, very sad way for him to finish at 58. You know, if you look at the footage of him, he looks much older than that and in a really bad way.

29:48He was in the grip of alcoholism. At this time, Forrest had sold Teddy Sheringham, who'd scored the first goal of Super Sunday as Forest beat Liverpool 1-0 in their first game of the season. Sheringham left a couple of weeks later. Wasn't replaced until January and his replacement then was Robert Rosario. Des Walker had left in the summer. Stuart Pearce missed most of the season injured. So yeah, the troops who could have helped hide Clough's deficiencies at this point were not available to him and it was a really, really sad way for him to leave English football. Matt mentions about the fact that Clough looked older than he was, and he's absolutely right.

30:25It should be said that, you know, as sad as it is, Brian Clough was barely a functioning person at that point, never mind a functioning football manager. He was, you know, to euphemistically put it, his alcoholism had very much caught up with him and caught up with Forrest. He was out of control in terms of his personality, basically. He couldn't function. And relegation, in hindsight, although Forrest were a pretty attractive team, certainly in 91-92, relegation was a formality, to be honest. Thanks to Michael, Matt, Daniel and producer Charlie. And we'll be back on Monday with another Totally Gold.

31:02See you then.

31:07You've been listening to The Totally Football Show, part of the Athletic FC podcast network. For more great podcasts just like this one, including The Athletic FC and our dedicated club podcasts, search for The Athletic on Apple, Spotify and all the usual places. We're also at The Totally Football Show on Insta and at The Totally Show on YouTube. The Totally Football Show is an Athletic Media Company production.

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