Getting to Division One: Alan Mullery's transfer budget

[Mackenzie]

Don't start!!!!

Maybank is much better than CMS!

You would say that.

Did you know that despite being 6"3' tall, Teddy only had size 5 feet.......probably why he fell over quite a lot.

 

[Diego Napier]

Lawenson was a massive signing for a 3rd div 'unknown'. Sayers showed that we were big spenders, buying a star player from a rival club. Maybank seemsed a bit silly and I reckon there was a bit of Mullers helping out his old club, Fulham.

Back in those days teams bought 3 or 4 players a season and teams evolved, rather than today where It's almost expected there will be 6-8 signings pre season and another 3-4 in the Jan window. Mullery inherited a very good team and many of those 3rd div players went on to play at div 1 level.

Indeed, Grummit, Rollings, Cattlin, the immense Horton, Wardy, O'Sullivan, Mellor, Morgan and even Piper & Towner were excellent division 3 players.

 

[GreersElbow]

Mullery in!

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

Indeed, Grummit, Rollings, Cattlin, the immense Horton, Wardy, O'Sullivan, Mellor, Morgan and even Piper & Towner were excellent division 3 players.

Oops, I missed out Sammy Morgan. Sold for £15,000 in 1977.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

Oops, I missed out Sammy Morgan. Sold for £15,000 in 1977.

Sammy Morgan was a great signing. 2 goals vs Palace if memory serves me right, then got a nasty cheekbone injury at some point.

 

[One Teddy Maybank]

You would say that.

Did you know that despite being 6"3' tall, Teddy only had size 5 feet.......probably why he fell over quite a lot.

He wasn't 6'3"........ I'm 6'2 and he wasn't taller than me. Never noticed his small feet though........

Of course scored our first ever goal in the top flight at Villa Park......

 

[Barrel of Fun]

So would the Craig Mackail-Smith signing for about £2.5 million be roughly the equivalent of the £238,000 we paid for Maybank in late 1977?

According to this calculator...


CMS' fee would have been £474,275.31 in old '77 money.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/...tion-calculator-value-money-changed-1900.html

 

[Goldstone Rapper]

Sammy Morgan was a great signing. 2 goals vs Palace if memory serves me right, then got a nasty cheekbone injury at some point.

Yes, he fractured a cheekbone in a pre-season friendly against Luton in August 1976. By the time he got back, it was the Ward-Mellor partnership running amok.

 

[drop dead fred]

(Remember at this time the UK record transfer was I think the £500,000 Liverpool paid Hamburg for Kevin Keegan. Prior to that the record had been the £375,00 Everton paid Birmingham for Bob Latchford!)
.

Liverpool signed keegan from Scunthorpe utd in 1971 and SOLD him to hamburg in 1977

 

[Jim Van Winkle]

What does £5.68m get you these days!

Neymar's left foot.

 

[drew]

Lawenson was a massive signing for a 3rd div 'unknown'. Sayers showed that we were big spenders, buying a star player from a rival club. Maybank seemsed a bit silly and I reckon there was a bit of Mullers helping out his old club, Fulham.

Back in those days teams bought 3 or 4 players a season and teams evolved, rather than today where It's almost expected there will be 6-8 signings pre season and another 3-4 in the Jan window. Mullery inherited a very good team and many of those 3rd div players went on to play at div 1 level.

It's often commented that unlike his predecessors, Alan Mullery had a massive transfer budget to get Brighton & Hove Albion into the top division. Trying to get beyond the opinion, I wanted to see to what extent this was true and have (to the best of my ability) tried to collate all the incomings and outcomings from 1976/77 to the end of 1978/79:

In
Steele £19,000
Lawrenson £112,000
Ruggiero £30,000
Potts £14,000
Williams swop
Clark £30,000
Maybank £238,000
Poskett £60,000
Sayer £100,000
Ryan £80,000
Chivers £15,000

Total: 700,000

Out
Beal free
Kinnear free
Cross Swop
Wilson Swop
Binney Free
Towner 65,000
Ruggiero Free
Potts £37,000
Mellor £30,000
Fell Swop

Total 132,000

At the time, would a deficit of £568,000 for transfer dealings of a Third/Second Division club be considered massive or a reasonable figure? Certainly Pat Saward didn't spend anything like this when Brighton reached Division Two earlier on in the decade.

Anyway, your thoughts are appreciated!

To be fair, when we made those signings we were 2nd tier, not 3rd.

Back then Bamber and Wickenden were considered the wealthiest partnership in English football, how true that is I haven't a clue.

I heard that Wickenden was the business brains of the operation and who knows how better we may have progressed had he not been killed.

Yes, he fractured a cheekbone in a pre-season friendly against Luton in August 1976. By the time he got back, it was the Ward-Mellor partnership running amok.

Surely the only time Ward and Mellor ran amok was 76/77 when we were getting promoted from the 3rd division. The following year Mellor was hardly involved and was sold to Chester in Feb 78.


With regard to some of the comments re Lawrenson, I seem to recall that Liverpool were after him as well at that stage but wouldn't pay that price for a someone who was little more than a teenager with less than a 100 games under his belt.

 

[Brovion]

Liverpool signed keegan from Scunthorpe utd in 1971 and SOLD him to hamburg in 1977

Good spot! The point about the fee stand though, if we paid a fifth of the record fee for Lawrenson then, using the simple maths that others have used, that would be the equivalent of us spending 16 million on a player now (working on Ronaldo to Real Madrid as being the record at 80 million)