Even 22 years on from the transfer's completion, the deal to take Nick Barmby from Everton to Liverpool still prompts intense and varied emotions from supporters on each side of the Merseyside divide.
The midfielder's defection across Stanley Park from Goodison Park to Anfield in 2000 inflamed passions across the city and when it comes to what they see as acts of betrayal, football fans retain memories to put elephants to shame.
Last summer, Sol Campbell, who crossed north London’s great divide to quit Tottenham Hotspur for Arsenal a year after Barmby’s switch, found himself involved in an x-rated spat in Rome with a Spurs supporter who was still irate some two decades on.
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Having travelled to the Italian capital ahead of England’s 4-0 win over Ukraine in the European Championship quarter-finals, social media footage showed the retired centre-back being met with: “Here he is, Sol Campbell. Judas c***. Jelly and ice cream when you go mate.”
Barmby was met with similar sentiments when the first Merseyside Derby after his switch came along three months later with significant numbers of Evertonians chanting: “Die, die, Nicky, Nicky, die” to the tune of She’ll be coming round the mountain .
Barmby’s position as public enemy number one among Blues fans in the first year of the new millennium though was a curious one.
Usually it’s the prising of a megastar at the peak of his powers that inflames such a response like the pig’s head thrown at Luis Figo on his return to the Camp Nou as the Portuguese winger made his move from Barcelona to Real Madrid in the same month as Barmby’s switch after they met his €62million buyout clause to break the transfer world record at the time.
Fellow wide man Barmby seemed a less obvious candidate to court such controversy though in what both player and purchaser knew would be a deal that would cause uproar.
In truth, for the greater part of his four-year spell at Everton, the little man from Hull was something of an enigma.
Snapped up for £5.75million from Middlesbrough in the autumn of 1996 – a fee that was still a club record when he left and would remain so until the Blues paid Southampton £6million for James Beattie in January 2005 – Barmby struggled to find his most effective position in the side.
Manager Joe Royle was attempting to add a bit of panache to his self-styled ‘Dogs of War’ and Barmby was earmarked to fill the Peter Beardsley-style second striker role, operating as a foil to Duncan Ferguson who spearheaded the attack.
However, his first three campaigns at Goodison Park brought Premier League goal returns of four, two and three – measly figures for a supposed forward player.
Barmby was also infamously the man who had seen his penalty saved in front of the Gwladys Street by Coventry City’s Magnus Headman on the final day in 1997/98.
If his 84th minute spot-kick had gone in, Everton would have gone 2-0 up but instead Dion Dublin headed in an equaliser five minutes later and the hosts were forced to cling on for a 1-1 draw.
The result ensured that the Blues avoided the drop by mere goal difference with ‘The Great Escape Part Two’ some four years after Wimbledon showing that sequels are rarely as good as the originals.
Come 1999/2000 though, Walter Smith finally managed to start getting a tune out of Barmby by regularly deploying him on the left wing.
Netting nine Premier League goals – including a hat-trick in a 4-0 away win at West Ham United – Barmby equalled his total for his three previous seasons at Everton combined.
Such was his return to form, club chairman Bill Kenwright wrote a personal letter to England manager Kevin Keegan, championing his player’s cause for a Three Lions recall.
However, by doing so and bringing Barmby back onto the international stage for that summer’s European Championships in Belgium and the Netherlands, the theatre impresario may have unwittingly helped sow the seeds that led to the player’s painful exit for him.
While away with his country, Barmby was mixing with colleagues who were mostly turning out for the most-successful clubs in the land. Although Everton had managed to steer clear of a relegation battle that year, they’d still only finished 13th in the Premier League.
As well as being in a squad that contained a quartet of existing Liverpool players that summer – Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Robbie Fowler and Emile Heskey – Barmby shared an agent with another of the Reds England internationals, Jamie Carragher who was aware of his own club’s interest in him.
Speaking to the Athletic in 2020, Carragher revealed that manager Gerard Houllier arranged a secret midnight rendezvous with Barmby to discuss the possibility of a move.
He said: “A meeting had to take place at 12 o’clock at night for obvious reasons.
“Gerard and Nick couldn’t be seen together. It was very cloak-and-dagger.”
With Barmby only having a year left on his contract at Goodison Park, Everton were not in a strong position to stop him when his intentions to quit the club were outlined.
Kenwright offered the 26-year-old a bumper new deal that would have made him the Blues highest-paid player at the time but Barmby reiterated that he wanted out.
His chairman didn’t mince his words over the bombshell that had been dropped.
Kenwright said: “If my highest high this year was taking the telephone call from my lawyers to tell me I’d finally got Everton, the lowest low was hearing the news about Nick Barmby.
“It was hearing he had used the six of the worst words in the English language as far as Everton fans are concerned. He had said: ‘I want to play for Liverpool’. To say I was shocked and surprised doesn’t begin to describe how I felt about it.”
Although Scousers would struggle to make the direct switch unless they were surplus to requirements like Gary Ablett at Anfield in 1992 – Steve McMahon captained both Everton and Liverpool but had a spell at Aston Villa in between – Carragher insists that the opportunity for what was seen as professional advancement would be an aspiration for outsiders, even though he felt the move was a bigger deal for the sellers than the buyers.
A fanatical boyhood Blue who was subsequently schooled by the Reds from a young age, he told the Athletic: “If I’d signed for Everton as a teenager and played for the first team, there’s absolutely no chance I could ever make that move.
“But it’s different if you’re not from Liverpool. They don’t like to hear it but I think that almost every other Everton player would want to do it because of the chance of European football and trophies.
“He was regarded Everton’s best player but I don’t think anyone in the Liverpool squad thought we’d signed a superstar. Instead, it was recognised we’d got a good English player who would do the job we needed.
“We had a lot of wide players at the time and the manager was starting to rotate. Barmby would fit into that.”
Overcoming the taunts, Barmby rubbed salt into Evertonian wounds by opening the scoring just 12 minutes into the first Merseyside Derby since he swapped side before celebrating wildly with his arms aloft and sliding along the turf.
The game finished 3-1 to Liverpool and there was no muted respect for his former employers here from Barmby.
With a hat-trick of medals come the season’s end thanks to the Reds’ cup treble of 2001, the player will have felt vindicated in his decision but after a strong start, he’d faded quickly.
Barmby started 22 games in the first half of the campaign but just nine in the second.
He was a substitute in the League Cup final against Birmingham City – converting the second penalty in the shoot-out win – but was left out of the FA Cup final squad against Arsenal and was an unused substitute in the UEFA Cup final against Alaves.
In 2001/02, a combination of injuries and loss of form saw Barmby virtually disappear from view at Anfield and he featured in just six Premier League matches that term before being packed off to Leeds United in August 2002 for £2.75million – less than half the fee Liverpool had paid for him – despite still only being 28, an age at which he should have been at the peak of his powers.
Which makes you wonder whether it was all worth it.
As Tony Tighe, the Everton Shareholders’ Association spokesman, said at the time: “The fans will never forgive him for this. His career was in the doldrums for three years after he came here but we stood by him and kick-started his career.
“Now he has kicked us in the teeth by saying he wants to move across the park. That will hurt the supporters deeply and he’ll never be welcome at Everton again.”
They reckon time is a great healer. Just try telling that to Sol Campbell though.
