Transfer market memories

[Luke Pawley]

Hi all,

 

I am currently writing a book about Leicester City's endeavours in the transfer market throughout the 21st century. I've already done an awful lot of research but there's bound to be a few interesting things I've missed.

 

Can anybody remember any interesting transfer stories? I'm thinking of things that stood out for a particular reason. Maybe a transfer had an interesting back story or was a bit left-field and came out of nowhere. Maybe there was a trialist you remember seeing in a friendly or ressies game and never heard of again. Even any scouts or agents you recall having particular links with the club.

 

Would love to hear everybody's thoughts and memories!

[KFS]

Nicky Maynard made 100 pages.

 

Leon Crncic

Danny Uchechi

[Xen]

@SheppyFox and the Iheanacho saga

 

The Kramaric will-he-wont-he permit issues.

Nigel Pearson saying that we were unequivocally not looking at signing Chris Wood (around Christmas) then him signing on the 1st of Jan.

Obviously the infamous 14-second debacle for Silva

[sylofox]

I seem to remember a few problems with the Silva transfer. 

[urban.spaceman]

The whole of FoxesTalk once spent a whole day tracking Vichai’s private plane across the Atlantic in the hope that it was on the way to Brazil to pick up Charles Aranguiz, only for us to eventually realise that it was on its way to its annual service in Texas.

 

Aranguiz eventually turned us down after a long bidding war with Bayer Leverkusen, calling us a ‘small club’. He then ruptured his Achilles’ tendon and was out for the whole of the 2015/16 season, while little Leicester City signed Kante instead and went on to win the Premier League....

[Bossman Blessed It]

When the Mercury described Gareth Williams as the ´Midlands Zidane´ just before we signed him from Forest. 

 

 

[RumbleFox]

The Beckham rumours when Sven was here caused a bit of a stir as I recall?

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2020730/David-Beckham-Leicester-Sven-Goran-Eriksson.html

[Luttfox]

The war over signing Jordan Veretout. He eventually chose Villa over us. That season we won the league and Villa were relegated

[SouthStandUpperTier]

Just a wee bit before my time, but apparently we nearly signed Johan Cruyff in 1981. I'm sure someone like @davieG could fill you in on the details.

 

Edit - sorry didn't see the 21st century bit. Ignore me.

[SheppyFox]

Frequent chest pains and cold sweats. No specific memories because the human brain is hard wired to forget trauma.

[boots60]

Johan Cruyff to sign for Leicester

 

Lee Chapman's brought a house in Oadby

 

Martin Allen signs 13 new (mostly free) players in a week

[Ric Flair]

The Cambiasso saga was agony, if you can find the transfer thread for it (I've just searched but couldn't track it down) the highs and lows of that were horrible.

[Tuna]

Jimmy Flloyd Hasselbaink turning up for a medical and being turned away by Martin Allen was an interesting one.

 

Nicky Summerbee and Billy McKinlay playing for free in 02/03.

[ealingfox]

Signing Schmeichel for £1m and Leeds fans thinking they'd mugged us off

[RumbleFox]

I suppose in terms of a whole "story" nothing beats Vardy really.  X

[Sol thewall Bamba]

Maynard

Ulloa (when NP said we weren't after him the thread died and then 2 weeks later he's holding the shirt) 

Prekki 

[StriderHiryu]

One of the most legendary threads in FoxesTalk history:

 

 

I'll put my hands up and say I was one of those initially disappointed we didn't sign Maynard and instead "threw our money away" on signing some non-league no-hoper named Vardy. 

 

How good could a non-league striker be? And there was no way he'd be good enough for the Premiership if we ever got back there... 

[Sol thewall Bamba]

2 hours ago, RumbleFox said:

The Beckham rumours when Sven was here caused a bit of a stir as I recall?

 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/football/article-2020730/David-Beckham-Leicester-Sven-Goran-Eriksson.html

That Photoshop of his head on Gallagher's body ahahahah

[HankMarvin]

Hargreaves 

Fowler 

Edgar Davies

R Keane

Lewandowski

[HankMarvin]

The return of Heskey

[Luttfox]

Mahrez sitting around various airports on deadline day thinking he was on his way to Spain

 

Hossein Kaebi

[Footballwipe]

Interesting that many of these are modern memories. Gone are the days of the simple transfer that'd come out of the blue, or be done quite easily. I was too young but I imagine the likes of Draper, Elliott, Eadie and Akinbiyi (just going for the record signings) were quite straightforward without weeks and months of paper speculation.

 

I have this strange memory of reading Ceefax in my parent's bedroom on the "old" deadline day in 2001 and being excited we'd spent £600k on Lee Marshall. Or being even more giddy when we got Dean Sturridge, in what I considered at the time as an 11 year old a bargain, for just £350k.

 

The summer of 2003 when we signed everyone for free and started building brand new team. Paul Brooker, Les Ferdinand and the exotic Lilian Nalis. It seemed so exciting through my young, naive eyes. Even the summer of 2004 when we put a Football Manager-esque age filter of 30+ on the transfer search to buy players that made me think we'd storm the league easily.

[crisp packet]

The signing of a “cart horse “

from up the road ...

 

[The whole world smiles]

how about those 3 Argentinian boys we had on trial from bocca in the 90s? must be some interesting content around that. or when we had a deal where Cork city were going to be our feeder club but the only player we got from them was Damien Delaney who was deemed not up to much by the fans and management then had a good career with Palace and Hull.

[David Guiza]

2 hours ago, Ric Flair said:

The Cambiasso saga was agony, if you can find the transfer thread for it (I've just searched but couldn't track it down) the highs and lows of that were horrible.

 207 pages