Which football clubs have statues of players who have not played for them?
Also included are teams with the same name in the top flight, qualifying for Europe with a -30 goal difference, and low-scoring title winners.
“Has a club ever built a statue in tribute to somebody who has never played for them?” asks James Preston.
Let us begin by addressing the obvious gap in this question: the managers. “There is a statue of Bob Stokoe outside the Stadium of Light, in the famous pose of him running on to the pitch at the final whistle of the 1973 FA Cup final,” Steve Hart tells me. “He never played for Sunderland.”
Other managerial examples include Brian Clough and Peter Taylor (Derby), Sir Bobby Robson (Ipswich and Newcastle), Alf Ramsey (Ipswich), Herbert Chapman (Arsenal), Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson (Old Trafford), Jimmy Hill (Coventry), Bill Shankly (Liverpool), John King (Tranmere) and many more.
The most interesting examples are those who did not play for or manage the club that later honoured them with a statue. “I’m probably not the first to note that Sheffield United have a statue of former chairman Derek Dooley outside Bramall Lane,” according to Michael Guest. “Dooley not only did not play for the Blades, but he was also a prolific goalscorer for rivals Wednesday.”
“Dooley told a remarkable story. He scored one goal per game for Wednesday before losing a leg when a fracture became gangrenous. He eventually became the team’s manager, but was cruelly fired on Christmas Eve, 1973. He later joined the Blades and held various positions, including commercial manager, director, and chairman of the board. At a derby match at Hillsborough, he was given a standing ovation by both sets of fans.”
Dooley’s statue, as Matt Kelcher points out, is dressed in a suit and tie rather than a football jersey. So is Jack Walker’s statue at Ewood Park, though he wears a Blackburn Rovers scarf around his neck. Walker owned Blackburn Rovers from 1991 until his death in 2000, during which time the club won the immortal Premier League title in 1994-95.
If Walker’s statue made perfect sense, the one Fulham unveiled at Craven Cottage in 2011 defied logic. “I might have missed it,” replies Gareth Rogers, “but I’m pretty sure Michael Jackson never turned out for Fulham.”
Fulham chairman Mohamed Al Fayed, a close friend of Jackson, commissioned a statue after his death in 2009. It was unveiled at Craven Cottage two years later and remained there for a few years before Fayed sold the club to Shahid Khan, who consulted with fans and quickly got rid of it. It was housed at the National Football Museum until last year, when it was removed following sexual abuse allegations in the documentary Leaving Neverland.
There is one more statue worth mentioning, even though it was commissioned by the local council rather than the club. “There is a statue of a World Cup-winning triumvirate outside the Tameside Stadium, home of Curzon Ashton,” says Evans. “It includes Jimmy Armfield, Geoff Hurst, and Simone Perrotta, an Italian midfielder born in Ashton-under-Lyme who went on to win the World Cup in 2006. He found out about the statue several years after it was installed.”
“After a bankruptcy, a Wimbledon-style relocation, and the founding of a fan-owned phoenix club, there will be two CSKA Sofias in the Bulgarian top flight,” says Daniel Koytchev. “Has anything like this happened before in a nation’s top division?”
There’s nothing new under the sun, Daniel, including this. “There were two clubs known as Bohemians Praha in the Czech League in 2007-08, and again in 2009-10,” writes Liam McGuigan in an email. “The original club, operating with the suffix ‘1905’ denoting their year of origin, separated from their parent sports club, which later found another club to fund under the same name. The former FC Strizkov Praha 9 quickly gained promotion to the top flight as Bohemians Praha, but finished last in both appearances.
If you thought that was a sad ending, there’s more. “After the courts revoked their right to the name, the club was disbanded,” Liam says. “Their final season was notable for their refusal to play against their namesakes, for which they were deducted 20 points and finished the season on a glorious -4.”
Alex Turpie provides another example from Russia: “Torpedo Zil Moscow were formed by directors of Torpedo Moscow in the 1990s and eventually ended up facing their namesake in the top flight in 2001.”
Qualifying for Europe with a negative goal differential (2)
In last week’s Knowledge, we examined teams that qualified for Europe with a negative goal difference. It was an impressive list that included Norwich (1992-93), Everton (2004-05), Parma (2005-06), St Johnstone (2011-12), and Salgueiros, who finished fifth in the Portuguese top flight in 1990-91 with a goal difference of -16. Is everyone happy with that? Everyone? Great, let’s all go down the pu…
“Oh come on!” exclaims Oliver Raven. “What a pathetic response from other readers this week. I did this research last week, but I assumed that someone else would have discovered it through lateral thinking. Two clubs qualified for Uefa competitions through the back door, with a -30 goal difference.
“Bradford City finished 17th in 2000 and competed in the following season’s Intertoto Cup after nine teams finished ahead of them refused to shorten their summer break. More recently, in 2015, Go Ahead Eagles finished 17th (in the 18-team Eredivisie) but advanced to the first qualifying round of the Europa League the following season under the old Fair Play rule.”
Knowledge Archive
Sophie Midwood posed the question, “Has a league’s lowest scoring team ever won the title?” in 2013.
As far as we could tell, it’s happened twice. In 1998, AIK won the Swedish title with only 25 goals in 26 games. Aduana Stars won the Ghanese championship in 2009-10, despite scoring only 19 goals in 30 games. They won due to their head-to-head record against Ashanti Gold, which they won 1-0 and drew 0-0.
Final standings: P30 W15 D8 L7 F19 A10 Pts53 Pos 1st.
Can you help?
“St Albans City (sixth tier) announced that their sponsor for 2020-21 season will be rock band Enter: Shikari (five UK top 10 albums),” according to Michael France. “That yields a small-big rating of thirty. I thought Margate (seventh tier) sponsored by The Libertines would be a good choice to beat this, but despite their popularity, they’ve only had two top-10 albums. Giving a score of fourteen. Can anyone beat St Albans City’s score of 30? “No side projects or solo albums are permitted to pad the numbers.”
Rudar Velenje went the entire 19/20 Slovenian season without a win, but still earned 12 points through draws. Has a team ever achieved a higher points total after a winless season?
— Richard Wilson (@timomouse), August 25, 2020.
“The majority of the Barcelona team that was thrashed 8-2 by Bayern Munich also appeared when Barcelona defeated Huesca by the same scoreline in 2018. Has anyone had even more highs and lows – nine or ten-goal victories and defeats – while playing for the same team? asks Russell Young.
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