Fotherby on Tour: Paul Gascoigne
Bill Fotherby was keen to stress that this wasn't a spur of the moment urge. Buying Paul Gascoigne was the culmination of a plan that began when Howard Wilkinson took over at Leeds in 1988 and made headlines by taking his ball-clutching nemesis, Vinnie Jones, to Division Two.
Transfers are one of modern football's obsessions, because they represent football without its messy reality: why watch some donkey playing for your team, when you can imagine the difference being made by a prime stallion? The best players are usually out of reach for all but the richest clubs, but in the 1990s Leeds United's managing director, Bill Fotherby, had his own ideas about the word 'unattainable'.
As the Peacocks returned from Division Two to Europe with one of the best teams in our history, Fotherby's pursuit of top transfer targets created a shadow team of world stars fans could keep in the back of their minds while watching, say, Carlton Palmer instead.
This series follows Fotherby on his travels around Europe, chasing the biggest and best transfers, wondering how close he got to his targets, who we signed instead, and what might have been if Bill's will could have forced history into being just a tiny bit different.
Who was signing?
Gazza. Do I need to say anything else?
Paul Gascoigne was the greatest English player of his generation but by summer 1995 he was looking for a way of reinforcing that claim. His club in Italy, Lazio, were keen to bring their enigmatic liaison to an end. They'd agreed to buy him from Tottenham in spring 1991, finally got him onto a Roman pitch in September 1992, and enjoyed the joie de vivre he brought to their midfield when he wasn't fighting with reporters, insulting the club president's daughter, putting on weight, playing with a broken cheekbone or not playing with a broken leg. From 1994 Lazio were managed by strict disciplinarian Zdeněk Zeman, and Gazza responded to his regime by stealing his whistle and putting it round the neck of a nearby goose. Do not question why there was a goose nearby. This was Gazza's life. Geese were just living in it.
The Leeds United midfield, as 1994/95 drew to an end, had got Leeds into the UEFA Cup by finishing 5th in the Premier League. Gary McAllister and Gary Speed were excellent players. Carlton Palmer was there too. Gordon Strachan had sent himself to Coventry City. Managing director Bill Fotherby's quest for a European star had procured a striker of extraordinary power, Tony Yeboah, but it wasn't clear who other than McAllister was going to keep feeding his net-busting hunger. Breaking up the classic 1992 midfield was still regretted at Elland Road, but filling David Batty's absence with Paul Gascoigne might help everyone get over it at last.
Moxcowhite • Daniel Chapman
Here's Carlton Palmer's A-Z entry, if you want to torture yourself
How close did we get?
According to Bill Fotherby, Paul Gascoigne was signing for Leeds and that was that. Fotherby had been back and forth to Italy throughout the early nineties, trying to buy this player or that player and coming home empty handed, but in April 1995 he revealed how all along he'd been lining up the transfer of his career. "We've been monitoring developments in Italy for the past two years, and our interest is as strong as ever," he said.
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