When it comes to testimonials, few deliver them with such colour as the late Johnny King, who signed John Aldridge for Tranmere Rovers in the summer of 1991.
“Aldridge is like a gunslinger, he shows no emotion. He kills people and goes away,” said the Birkenhead club's greatest manager of all time. If King was speaking about you in such tongues, you must have been doing something right. Not that the 32-year-old had returned to Merseyside short of pedigree of course. Having scored goals for fun, for both Newport County and Oxford United, Aldridge enjoyed a relatively short but successful stint at boyhood club Liverpool, helping the Reds to clinch the league title before scoring in the 3-2 FA Cup triumph over Everton at Wembley 12 months later.
The return of Ian Rush to Anfield saw Aldridge leave his beloved Reds for a new adventure in Spain with Real Sociedad. Here, he proved that such a natural goalscorer can do the business home or abroad, netting 40 goals in 75 appearances for the Spanish side - a feat made more significant by the fact he was the club's first non-Basque signing for a number of decades.
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But not all in San Sebastian were appreciative of having an English striker on their books and as his family struggled to adapt to life in southern Europe, Aldridge put in a transfer request to former Liverpool great John Toshack, who was by now manager at Sociedad.
There was perhaps then some fortune about the opportunity Tranmere found themselves in when they managed to convince Aldridge to return to Merseyside, but in the white shirt of the Birkenhead club. Rovers paid Sociedad £250,000 for the 32-year-old. It would turn out to be one of the best investments that they ever made.
With Rovers on the up in the football league, the charm of chairman Peter Johnson and King was enough to get their man, as he later admitted.
“It was a lovely place (San Sebastian) but I just could not settle. I had to do it for my family," said Aldridge. "Peter Johnson sold me the club. The selling points were there; manager Johnny King, where the club wanted to go, and Peter had money, Prenton Park was being redeveloped, so I thought, yeah, it would be nice to try and get back into the Premier League.”
Manager King had promised Tranmere's loyal supporters a 'trip to the moon' and in Aldridge he surely had his Neil Armstrong to pilot the rocket. On signing his man, King said: “Aldridge is like a pair of shoes in a shop. You look at them over and over again and then you find you have enough money to buy them.”
Tranmere were in English football's second division, when their new gun-slinger made his debut against Brighton & Hove Albion on August 17, 1990. He scored twice in a 2-0 away win that filled supporters with boundless optimism. They were right to get excited. Aldridge would go on to score an incredible 40 goals in all competitions for the club in his debut season, scoring nine in his first five appearances.
His debut performance was one to live long in the memory, as former ECHO Tranmere reporter Nick Hilton explained.
"Looking back over five decades of reporting football for newspapers, I can't think of a better example of a wind-up turning into a fire-up than the occasion of John Aldridge's debut for Tranmere Rovers at the Goldstone Ground in 1991. 'What a waste of money," chimed the Brighton fans ahead of the opening game of the 1991/92 season in the division now known as the Championship.
"The transfer fee of £250,000 was a high number by Tranmere standards and large enough to fuel accusations on the lips of Brighton fans that the Cinderella club of Merseyside football had paid over the odds for a player who would be 33 on his next birthday. 'What a waste of money,' they repeated gleefully during the warm-up and the early minutes of the game. But the singing quickly dried up because Aldridge scored two clinically taken goals before half-time to secure a 2-0 win for Tranmere."
Although now plying his trade in the second tier of English football, Tranmere's new star striker was benefiting from having some proven talent for company. “I had good players around me, Johnny Morrissey, Pat Nevin, some really good midfield players. Up front, Chris Malkin was helping me, so I got loads of chances," he said. “When I got the chances there, and the reason that I got 40, was that I knew in my experience to make sure I made it count.”
The former Liverpool star's arrival was music to the ears of Tranmere's existing players, as popular Rovers forward Chris Malkin explained to the ECHO. Malkin said: "Everyone was buzzing when Aldo signed. You could see from his first pre season that he was really committed. He trained hard and was fiercely competitive. He would do finishing practice every day which made us all better players. Playing alongside him was an absolute privilege."
Aldridge's goal-scoring prowess was enough to convince Tranmere director Fred Williams, who became a friend to the Irish international, to place a £1,000 bet at odds of 25 to 1 on Aldridge to score 40 league and cup goals during the campaign.
He would reach the target in the final game of the season, a 2-1 home defeat to Oxford United. Aldridge recalled: "Fred celebrated his £25,000 win. He donated most of it to charity and gave the rest to the players for a night out. We enjoyed the proceeds of Fred's generosity, drinking long into the early hours of the morning, bonding together like old friends."
Scoring more than 20 league goals for five consecutive seasons, Aldridge helped Rovers to achieve three consecutive top-six finishes in the second-tier from 1993-1995 nudging open the door to the newly created Premier League. Sadly for Tranmere and their supporters they would suffer play-off heartbreak at the semi-final stage on all three occasions. It was as close as the Birkenhead club has ever come to making it into the top flight.
But if the Premier League had been their aim during this purple patch in the history of Tranmere, attention turned to Wembley during the 1993/94 season as the club found itself in a terrific League Cup run that came to a head when the only thing that stood in the way of Rovers reaching their first ever major cup final was Ron Atkinson's Aston Villa.
Premier League Villa boasted a side including established full internationals like Mark Bosnich, Paul McGrath, Dean Saunders and two of Aldridge's former Liverpool teammates, Steve Staunton and Ray Houghton. But when the red hot favourites came to Prenton Park for the semi-final first-leg they were in for a major shock.
A sell-out crowd of 17,140 witnessed Rovers pick their lofty opponents apart with one of the finest displays ever witnessed under the lights in Birkenhead. After Ian Nolan and Mark Hughes had put the hosts two up inside 25 minutes, Aldridge added a third 12 minutes from time when Kenny Irons played him in behind the Villa defence at the Kop end and although he initially hit the post, the gun-slinger was on hand to stroke home the rebound and send Rovers into dreamland.
Tranmere's 3-0 lead was a major upset, but did Johnny King's side have an unexpected advantage? One source tells an unverified tale that could have given Rovers the edge. Villa had reportedly stayed overnight at the Thornton Hall Hotel on the outskirts of Wirral and held their pre-match meeting there on the morning of the game.
The source claims that Tranmere received a phone call from the hotel later that afternoon, advising that Atkinson and his coaching staff had left a flipchart full of tactics in one of the meeting rooms, detailing their strategy for the match. This soon ended up in Tranmere's possession and a counter masterplan was hatched from thereon. The tale has never been substantiated but offers up a possible explanation for Rovers' dominance.
Sadly, the job was not done and an injury time goal from the late Dalian Atkinson handed Villa a lifeline for the second leg. That late goal would prove to be absolutely pivotal, as Atkinson's side turned the tables on their opponents back at Villa Park. In a mirror image to the first leg, Villa scored twice in the opening 25 minutes through Saunders and Sean Teale to pull the tie level on aggregate.
Rovers responded immediately with Aldridge converting a penalty, after he was brought down by Bosnich, to put the First Division side back in front on aggregate. But just like he had done at Prenton Park, Atkinson delivered another late blow to give Villa a 3-1 lead on the night - 4-4 overall. Although Aldridge would score again in the subsequent penalty shoot-out, it was Villa who progressed to the final in sudden-death, killing Tranmere's Wembley dream.
In seven seasons as Tranmere's main striker, Aldridge would score 174 goals in 294 appearances. During that time, he broke Jimmy Greaves' long-standing record of 465 for the most career goals scored. Given his exploits for Liverpool and Sociedad, it was perhaps no surprise that he went on to be such a success for Tranmere, but as TalkSPORT commentator and Rovers fan Nigel Adderley explains, it was no happy accident that Aldridge scored so many goals.
Adderley told the ECHO: "The difference with Aldridge compared to everyone else at that level was he was always on the move in the box so it looked like he scored tap-ins but it was all down to his craft. £250,000 for a 32-year-old looked a massive gamble at the time but he set the tone for our golden period - and he always scored big goals against big clubs - Newcastle, Sunderland, West Ham, Derby, Middlesbrough, Leicester, West Brom - look at his performance in the 5-2 win against West Ham in December 1992 and at Newcastle in a 3-2 win in March '92.
"He was probably secretly annoyed no else came in for him and took it out on them! Villa offered £400,000 after his first season I think, but he was settled by then."
In fact, manager King would relate how Aston Villa boss Atkinson telephoned him most weeks, offering £1 million for Aldridge. But thanks to having a wealthy chairman in the shape of Johnson, he was able to say "no thanks" to Atkinson and other suitors every time they came calling.
On March 12, 1996, King resigned as manager after nine years in charge and Aldridge stepped up to become player-manager of the club. A solid finish to that first season ensured that Tranmere's First Division status remained intact. The new gaffer would finally hang up his goal-scoring boots in style at the end of the 1998 season, scoring twice against Wolves to clinch a 2-1 win in front of over 11,000 supporters at Prenton Park.
It was something of a fairy tale finish to a remarkable playing career, but Aldridge later confessed the afternoon had been made especially poignant by thoughts of his father Bill, who passed away a few weeks before.
He said: "I vowed to score in my final match as a lasting reminder of what he had given me. In the event I scored twice and I should have had a hat-trick but throughout the game, I was aware of my father's absence. Part of me was looking towards the Main Stand where he would sit. Everything I did that day, I did for him. It was only the second time that season that I played the entire 90 minutes but if my body was suffering, it did not tell me."
Aldridge looked to instil his desire to win into his players, but that did not mean that he didn't have a light-hearted approach as Tranmere fan Mark Roberts recalls from the time he was club mascot away to Bolton Wanderers at the age of 12 during the 1998/99 season.
Now 37, he recalls the pre-match preparations. Mark told the ECHO: "He took so much time with me pre-game. I felt kind of like above a VIP. At Bolton’s ground they had a warm up area with AstroTurf all indoors before you went out onto the pitch. Players were in this warm up room doing some stretches. Aldo goes in sees them warming up so he grabs a bin, runs the other end of this room, throws a footy to Dave Kelly and says 'let’s play cricket!' Dave Kelly is bowling the ball at the stumps (the bin) and Aldo is using his leg as a cricket bat! One leg grounded and one swinging at the ball! Andy Parkinson, George Santos, Kenny Irons, Johnny Morrisey and Clint hill are all fielders."
His time in the managerial hot seat did not reach the heights of his legendary predecessor in terms of league position - posting a run a of mid-table or below finishes, but progression in the cup competitions was an altogether different matter.
In the 1999/00 season, Tranmere buried the memory of their gut-wrenching semi-final defeat to Aston Villa by reaching the League Cup final at Wembley - the first and to date only major cup final appearance in the club's history - after trouncing disliked North West rivals Bolton Wanderers 4-0 on aggregate in the semi-final.
Aldridge would lead Rovers out at Wembley to face Martin O'Neill's Leicester City. A crowd of 74,313 witnessed a Foxes side that included the likes of Tim Flowers, Robbie Savage, Neil Lennon, Muzzy Izzet, Emile Heskey and Tony Cottee overcome Rovers 2-1 thanks to two goals from centre-back Matt Elliott, either side of a Dave Kelly equaliser. Tranmere played most of the final half an hour with 10 men after Clint Hill was shown a red card.
When Leicester substitute Theo Zagorakis applauded Hill's dismissal, he got a slap in the face off Aldridge for this troubles, earning the Rovers manager an FA charge for misconduct. Afterwards, Aldridge explained his actions quite pragmatically. He said: "I felt he (Zagorakis) had disrespected Clint on one of the biggest occasions of his career so I slapped him."
The League Cup final would not be the end of Tranmere's great cup adventures under Aldridge. A 1-0 FA Cup fourth round victory over Sunderland was bettered a year later by an emphatic 3-0 triumph against considerably bigger neighbours Everton that left the Merseyside football community stunned.
An even greater occasion was waiting in a fifth round replay however, when Prenton Park wrote itself into FA Cup folklore with one of the truly great matches of the competition's proud history. Rovers were 3-0 down to Glenn Hoddle's Southampton at half-time before staging the mother of all second half comebacks to win the match 4-3 as Aldridge skipped along the touchline in celebration punching the air.
Rovers would go onto to face eventual cup-winners Liverpool in the quarter-finals at Prenton Park - another huge occasion - but while on-lookers enjoyed their moment in the spotlight, Tranmere's league form was nose-diving and relegation from the Championship was a realistic prospect.
With Rovers rooted to the bottom of the table, a crippling 3-2 defeat at home to Barnsley, after being two goals up, finally did for Aldridge, who left the stadium in haste before handing in his resignation, which the board accepted.
He later explained his decision, saying: "I've quit for the good of Tranmere Rovers. I've given them a lifeline. There are 11 games to go and the way things were going I didn't think they were going to get out of trouble. My leaving might just give them a bit of an impetus and just might get them out of the bottom three."
As it was, the damage was already done and Tranmere were relegated from the second tier of English football, a level they have never returned to since, 21 years later. It was a sad end to Aldridge's near 10 years at Prenton Park that brought the curtain down on his professional football career.
But despite the obvious lows at the end his time in Birkenhead, his achievements for Rovers overall are his lasting legacy, as explained by Tranmere supporter Seb Blair.
Seb told the ECHO: "I loved watching Ian Muir, Jim Steele and Steve Mungall as we got promoted from Division Four, but when Aldo arrived, I was immediately in love. The graft, the s**thousery, the way he demanded more from everyone. He made us a better club. He helped us hope and dream, then he helped us to 'expect'. Little old Tranmere had a proper gunslinger who we expected to score every week.
"He is one of the players to put us on the map."
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