There are few footballers to have ever been directly transferred across Stanley Park and with good reason.
In a football-obsessed city such as ours, passions run deep as those who remember the torrents of anger the moves of Peter Beardsley and Nick Barmby unleashed when jumping ship would testify to. Fury would not just always be confined to supporters either, Liverpool manager Bill Shankly threatened to resign in protest when hard-knock midfielder Johnny Morrissey was sold by the Anfield board to Everton without his approval shortly after the Reds’ promotion from the Second Division in September 1962, while the likes of David Johnson and Steve McMahon were only able to turn out for ‘the other lot’ after signing for another club in between.
In general, it would be fans of the selling club up in arms about one of their players swapping red for blue or vice versa but this week marks the anniversary of a cross-Merseyside deal which at the time had both sets of supporters up in arms at the transfer of a player going through a difficult patch of form but who in time would win them all round to become a much-loved figure on both sides of the park after carving a unique slice of history for himself and even making the reverse move later on in his career as a coach.
