Danny Granville ⭑ From A-Z since '92
Although the later arrivals of Duberry, Mills et al made Danny Granville seem like exactly the sort of player David O'Leary was shopping for, George Graham had brought him in. And before long every player Graham had signed was sold.
This is part of my (eight year long, it'll fly by) attempt to write about every Leeds United player since 1992. For more about why I'm doing this, go back to Aapo Halme, and to read all the players so far, browse the archive here.
Danny Granville was a Chelsea hero and a Chelsea anomaly. When he moved to Stamford Bridge from Cambridge United in March 1997, aged 22, he stood out in their transfer activity. He was joining from a mid-table, fourth tier team, for a not inconsiderable £500,000. But the other new Blues had come from Juventus, Lazio, Parma, Anderlecht, Feyenood, Real Zaragoza.
Those players had names, names like Gianluca Vialli, Roberto Di Matteo, Gianfranco Zola, Celestine Babayaro, Gus Poyet. Even their one other domestic signing, from Blackburn Rovers, was £5m Premier League champion Graeme Le Saux.
Danny Granville was, well, Danny Granville. He was from south London, or when you heard him speak, Sahrf Lahndan. 'Arf his dear old mum's family were Millwall, 'arf were Crystal Palace. He'd gone to school a stone's throw from where the Emirates Stadium is now in Islington and played for junior teams that shared Arsenal's cannon. And, despite only being dear old Danny Granville from dahn the road, not anybody more glamorous, he scored a cracker on his European debut against Slovan Bratislava and was one of the players of the match in May when Chelsea beat Stuttgart, in the final, to win the European Cup Winners' Cup.
Granville was knocking on a door that could admit him to the Premier League's highest paid echelons of stardom. But he was a left-back, and the £5m spent on Graeme Le Saux hadn't stopped manager Ruud Gullit from unsuccessfully bidding £8m for Paolo Maldini. Nor was it holding new manager Gianluca Vialli back from capitalising on their European success. Pierluigi Casiraghi arrived, Marcel Desailly, Albert Ferrer. Granville's glory night was his last match for Chelsea.
Leeds United would, later, make a speciality of signings like this. Granville's clubmate Michael Duberry was a frustrated evacuee twelve months later, Leeds snapping up a highly rated England Under-21 international with eighty games under his belt who couldn't get past the imported star names. Danny Mills was a hot property, Darren Huckerby and Michael Bridges two of the best young strikers in England, the latter stuck at Sunderland behind Kevin Phillips and Niall Quinn.
But in summer 1998 Danny Granville was the forerunner of them all, and perhaps paid the price for arriving too soon. First, there was his own stuttering start to life in Yorkshire. After spending a season vying with Graeme Le Saux, he lost early ground to his new rival, Ian Harte, in summer. Granville was injured in Sweden in pre-season; Harte, coming on as sub for him, was scoring four goals in one friendly — all headers, all assisted by Bruno Ribeiro.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Four Ribero free-kicks! Four Ian Harte headers!
Two yellow cards in a reserve match for Leeds at Birmingham City then meant a Premier League suspension for Granville, so his first proper kick of a ball for the Peacocks was in Europe. No pressure, but it was in a penalty shoot-out after coming on as a sub away to Maritimo. Fortunately he scored and Leeds won, but the game was a footnote to George Graham leaving Leeds for Spurs.
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