“Has any player had a career featuring all of the common club suffixes? City, Town, United, Rovers, Wanderers, Albion, Athletic and County?” asks Andy Brook.
Our inbox has been bulging with suggestions this week – thanks to Kieran Whooley, Andrew Burrows and Pete Tomlin – mostly with players to have played for six or seven of these suffixes. A couple of players do seem to have collected the full set, though we’ll get to them later.
First up: an old favourite. Pretty much everyone suggested 29-club Knowledge regular John Burridge. But there’s a caveat. “It depends how we define ‘featuring’,” cautions Michael Pilcher. “Although Burridge can claim to have been on the books at seven (Manchester City, Southend United, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Derby County, Grimsby Town, Witton Albion and Dunfermline Athletic), he didn’t make any appearances for the last three. Although he can add Rangers (Queens Park), Villa and Spartans to his list.”
Another contender is moustachioed maverick Frank Worthington. “The legendary forward and playboy managed to check off everything but an Athletic (unsurprising given the story of his failed medical at Liverpool for ‘high blood pressure’ after a week in Mallorca),” writes Mike Coxon, “but can also boast Fury, Rowdies, North End, Spurs (Cape Town, not Tottenham), Celtic (Stalybridge, not Glasgow) and Borough amongst his clubs.”
Adam Clark suggests Paul Dickov (Luton Town, Brighton & Hove Albion, Manchester and Leicester City, Blackburn Rovers, Derby County, Leeds United, Oldham Athletic), who manages seven suffixes despite playing for only 13 clubs, but a couple of full eights are out there.
“As I have done in the past, I put Andy’s question to my football trivia WhatsApp group, FTWAG (FWIW, we run a regular football trivia night in London),” writes Mark Cooper. “We (Will to be precise) think Guy Branston meets these requirements.”
Branston indeed turned out for, among others, Bradford City, Rotherham United, Aldershot Town, Oldham Athletic, Burton Albion, Wycombe Wanderers, Bristol Rovers and Notts County. The Leicester-born defender also featured for Sheffield Wednesday and Plymouth Argyle in his 17-year career.
But that’s not all from FTWAG. “I missed the boat,” laments Paddy Pamment. “Great work from the team – sad to have missed out in contributing. I thus struck out on my own and found that Delroy Facey has also done so.” Facey played for (among others) Huddersfield Town, Bolton Wanderers, Hull City, Oldham Athletic, Tranmere Rovers, Rotherham United, West Bromwich Albion and Notts County to complete a full set of eight.
Bypassing English top flight to England caps
“Jude Bellingham is arguably the first name on Gareth Southgate’s teamsheet despite having never played a minute of top-flight football in England. How many England players can that be said of?” wonders Harry Skinner. “I can only think of players such as Owen Hargreaves and David Nugent, and Steve Bull, who later played in the Premier League after the national team came calling.”
“Joe Baker was the first such example,” writes Graeme Coleman. “Born in Liverpool, Baker moved north of the border to Motherwell (the town, not the football team) when he was just six weeks old. Despite this, and even though he considered himself Scottish, he was not eligible to play for Scotland under the regulations at the time, and therefore it was while he was a young player at Hibs that he made his debut for England in 1959. Indeed, he spent another three years at Hibs and then Torino before he made his league debut in England for Arsenal in July 1962.”
And a bit more detail from Michael Haughey: “Baker’s father was a Liverpudlian sailor, his mother was Scottish. In 1940 his dad died of injuries sustained when his merchant ship was torpedoed. His mother then took her two sons back to her family in Motherwell, where he spent the next 20 years. His brother Gerry was born in New York, played seven times for the United States and had a long professional career 1956-75 at both Scottish and English clubs.”
Matt Robb offers a more recent example. “Jack Butland made his England debut in 2012 before he made his Birmingham City debut,” mails Matt. “At that point, and still, Blues were a Championship club. On making his England debut, the highest Butland had played was on loan in League One at Cheltenham.”
And as Matt points out, Bull had played top-flight football before his England debut, having appeared in the First Division for West Brom in 1985-86, the only top-flight appearance of his career.
Nielsen v Norway
“John Aldridge scored eight of his 19 international goals for Ireland against the mighty Latvia, over 42% of his total,” notes Rhys Shakeshaft. “Other than Archie Thompson, who scored 13 of his 28 Australia goals against American Samoa (in one match), has any other international footballer with more than 10 goals scored such a high percentage of them against the same opponent?”
Step forward Denmark striker of the 1910s and 1920s, Poul Nielsen. He scored a remarkable 52 goals in just 38 games for his country, and was out on his own as Denmark’s leading goalscorer until Jon Dahl Tomasson drew level with him in 2010. There was no one Nielsen enjoyed playing against more than Norway. Between 1915 and 1925 he faced his Scandinavian neighbours 11 times, scoring 26 goals in the process – a remarkable 50% of his overall total.
Knowledge archive
“Down at the pub the other night, a friend of mine bullishly claimed he’d heard that a match was once postponed on almost 30 separate occasions. Is he having me on?” asked Jonathan Gainter in 2006.
Back in the icy winter of 1979, the Scottish Cup second-round clash between Inverness Thistle and Falkirk had to be postponed no fewer than 29 times. The original date for the game was 6 January, but the clubs had to wait 47 days until the Kings Mills ground was eventually declared playable, on 22 February. When the match finally took place, four first-half goals helped Falkirk seal their spot in the third round. However, because of the 71-day period between the second-round draw and Falkirk’s win, Billy Little’s side were forced to visit Dundee just three days later in round three, where a late penalty ended their cup journey.
Incredible as these 29 postponements are, the tie is still eclipsed by another Scottish Cup game that took place 16 years earlier, when sub-zero conditions again played havoc with the fixture list – and not just in Scotland but all across Britain. More than 400 English league and cup matches fell victim to the weather and the season had to be extended by a month on both sides of the border. While one FA Cup third-round tie between Coventry and Lincoln eventually took place at the 16th time of asking, the clash between Airdrie and Stranraer was busy setting a British record of 33 postponements. For Airdrie it was 34th time lucky as they ran out 3-0 victors.
Can you help?
“My local team in Spain, Ayamonte CF, who play in the Spanish fifth tier, have had their last two games refereed by a brother and sister,” writes Nicholas Head. “Are there other instances of a teams consecutive games being refereed by members of the same family.”
@TheKnowledge_GU Oxford United and Oxford City have zero rivalry. Are there any other British towns where a local derby would have no edge at all?
— Peter Hart (@Oxfordtimetours) October 15, 2023
“Graham Kavanagh scored against Leeds for Middlesbrough (1995-96), Stoke (1997-98), Cardiff (2001-02), Sunderland (2006-07) and Carlisle (2009-10),” begins Stephen Deacon. “He also scored a winning penalty in a FA Cup shootout against them for Wigan in 2006. Can any other player beat scoring against one club for more than five clubs?
What's the most goals an outfield player has conceded after coming on as an emergency keeper?
— Admiral J Plum (@Supermercado99) October 17, 2023
“Piggybacking off the recent question about both teams’ goalkeepers being sent off in the same match, has a team that was chasing a game like Genoa ever chosen to play without a goalkeeper?” wonders Tom Leonard. “Has a player ever put on the goalkeeper’s jersey to fulfil a league’s requirement for there to be a ‘goalkeeper’ but essentially carried on playing as an outfielder?”
Over the course of his international career, Cristiano Ronaldo has defeated 56 different national teams (or 58, if you count England and Poland, both of which he only ever won against via penalty shoot-outs).
— Ben (@BenJaneson) October 17, 2023
Can any other player match that?
(For Lionel Messi, it's 50 or 51.)
“Brighton have been managed by both Peter Taylor (Brian Clough’s former right-hand man) and Peter Taylor (the England international of the 1970s turned well-travelled manager),” mails Chris Matterface. “Which other clubs have had multiple managers with the same name?”
Bobby Wales recently played for Scotland under-19s against Ireland. Are there any other examples of a player playing for a country with the name of a different country on the back of his or her shirt?
— Adam Harcus (@AdamHarcus) October 17, 2023
“Liverpool currently have five national team captains (Van Dijk, Robertson, Endo, Szoboszlai and Salah) in their first-team squad,” writes John Hackwood. “Is this some sort of record?”
@TheKnowledge_GU Pascal Gross made just his third appearance for Germany this week in consecutive matches under three different managers. Have any other players had international records like this?
— David Williams (@DrDGWilliams) October 17, 2023
“Having seen a stat that Mikel Arteta has now beaten every team he’s faced in the Premier League, I wondered which manager has beaten the most different teams?” ponders Paul Savage.
Mail us your questions or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.
