On this day in 1995, Liverpool broke the British record to sign Stan Collymore from Nottingham Forest for £8.5m.
The striker scored 35 goals in 81 games for the Reds, a good return, but his time at the club ended just two years later with a move to boyhood club Aston Villa.
Dan Kay recently wrote about his career..
It is a long time now since Liverpool last broke the British transfer record in the summer of 1995 and, given how the football financial landscape has changed since, it may never happen again.
On three previous occasions - the signings of Kenny Dalglish (for £440,000 in 1977), Peter Beardsley (£1.9m in 1987) and Dean Saunders (£2.9m in 1991) - the Anfield coffers were plundered to bring a top-level forward to L4 and send out a message to the rest of the league that the Reds meant business.
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The three record buys in question enjoyed varying degrees of success but the most recent time Liverpool splashed the cash in such a manner was on one of the English game’s most mercurial talents and, over 25 years on, examination of his time of Merseyside still makes it impossible not to wonder what might have been had a Reds side with such rich potential fulfilled its undoubted promise.
The lavishly-gifted Stan Collymore arrived at Anfield for £8.5m in July 1995, smashing the £7m Manchester United had paid Newcastle for Andy Cole seven months earlier, with the hope being he might be the final piece of the jigsaw to restore Liverpool to power after the Old Trafford club’s dominance of the opening years of the Premier League era.
Despite more than respectable goal tallies for him and strike partner Robbie Fowler amid some of the most swashbucklingly entertaining football seen at Anfield in years, Collymore would spend only two seasons with the Reds during a period largely now looked back on through the frustrated prism of wasted opportunity, even though there were sparkling moments which hinted that a club initially seemingly left behind by a new brand of football and breed of footballers was ready to strike back.
The summer of 1995 saw the biggest wave of optimism around Anfield for quite some time.
The dismal opening couple of Premier League seasons which had seen Liverpool stumble to previously-unthinkable league finishes of sixth and eighth had led to manager Graeme Souness being replaced by the succession from within of Roy Evans, the 'last of the Boot Room boys', in chairman David Moores’s words when appointing him in January 1994.
Evans’s first full season in charge saw silverware return to Anfield with the League Cup won following Wembley victory over Bolton Wanderers as the Scouse coach’s tactical innovation of playing three central defenders with wing-backs started to get the best of a Liverpool squad which featured an intriguing blend of young talent like Fowler, Steve McManaman, Jamie Redknapp and Rob Jones, experienced older heads like Ian Rush, John Barnes and Michael Thomas, and shrewd defensive acquisitions like John Scales and Phil Babb.
With the League Cup triumph having secured the Reds a return to Europe in the UEFA Cup, there was real expectation that 1995/96 would see Liverpool build on the undoubted promise of the previous campaign and launch a credible assault on the league title with the absence of the championship trophy from Anfield already stretching to half a decade.
With legendary striker Ian Rush who as club captain had lifted the trophy at Wembley set to turn 34 soon into the new campaign, many fans hoped steps would be taken to bolster the young but raw talents of a strikeforce led by 20-year-old Fowler who had rattled home 31 goals in all competitions the previous season.
Having begun his career with his local non-league side Stafford Rangers, the 24-year-old Collymore had gained a grounding in league football with spells at Crystal Palace and Southend United before a £2.2m move to Nottingham Forest in 1993 saw him over the course of the next two years carve a reputation for himself as one of the most exciting young strikers in the country.
His power, pace and eye for goal saw him score 22 times in 1994/95 to help newly-promoted Forest gain a third place Premier League finish and receive a first England cap against Japan in that summer’s pre-cursor to Euro 96, the Umbro Cup.
Collymore was hot property and destined to be targeted by the country’s top clubs but Liverpool had clearly decided he was the man they wanted and, despite FA Cup holders Everton agreeing a fee with Forest and holding talks with the player, once the Reds made their interest known it soon became clear Anfield would be the destination of choice.
The high-profile nature of the transfer in the ever-increasing media spotlight of those early Premier League years meant Liverpool were keen to things under wraps until the deal was sealed which meant Evans, on holiday in St Lucia at the time, received the news of Collymore’s decision by way of a coded message through a hotel receptionist which said simply, 'the Man from Del Monte would like to say Yes'.
He interrupted his family holiday to fly back to Liverpool in order to complete the deal and later told LFC History : "The cloak-and-dagger stuff was necessary, even if it did give people the impression that I was a dealer in canned fruit!
“We didn't want the news broadcasting until he had actually put pen to paper. He was the man we wanted and the market price had to be met. Other clubs were also bidding.
“I believe a great relationship will be built up between Stan and our supporters."
Collymore himself admitted he had considered a move to Goodison Park but said the progress the Reds were making under Evans had been a key factor in his decision.
"I didn't want to look back at my career and say I hadn't achieved as much as I might have done”, Collymore admitted.
“That's one of the reasons I came here. I want to win things and I do believe I can do that sooner rather than later with Liverpool.
“I met Joe Royle [at Everton] and was very impressed with him. He spoke about a lot of things which appealed to me, but the fact that the new lads at Liverpool are so good really swayed my decision."
The stage was set then for British most football’s most expensive player to help lead the country’s most successful club back to the top after a period of sharp decline and he could not have made a better start.
Leading the line with Rush in the Liverpool’s opening game of the season against Sheffield Wednesday at Anfield after Fowler had been surprisingly left on the bench, Collymore scored the only goal of the match just after the hour mark with a strike which showed the depth of his unique talent and illustrated why the Reds had been prepared to pay so much money for him.
Receiving a pass from Barnes with his back to goal 35 yards out and surrounded by three opponents, Collymore turned Julian Watts one way and then another before advancing away from Chris Waddle and curling a low drive with his supposedly-weaker left foot beyond goalkeeper Kevin Pressman and into the bottom corner of the net.
He raced away to celebrate in front of the Centenary Stand before being mobbed by jubilant team-mates and supporters alike with the relief at getting off the mark in Liverpool colours at the earliest opportunity being etched all over his face, commentator Clive Tyldesley later exclaiming to Match of the Day viewers later that night: “You only get what you pay for in this world and Liverpool have paid top price for a top finisher! An hour into his Liverpool career and Stan Collymore strikes.”
Afterwards he spoke of his emotion at making the perfect start and silencing the inevitable taunts from the away end as well as the initial promise of his fledgling partnership with the legendary Rush.
"I had a shot early on and the Wednesday fans were chanting, 'what a waste of money'. It had the right effect, because it made me want to do better and to score a goal like that on my debut was a dream for me.
"I've had my ups and downs over the last three years, but now to come to a club like this, where they all want you to do so well, it was a bit emotional.
"When the ball went in, it felt as if my head exploded. This is just why I wanted to be a footballer.
"I'm pleased with the way it's working with Ian. You can only learn from playing with someone like that and the ovation I got at the end was fantastic. It's always nice to score, whether it's a tap-in or a long-range shot, but it couldn't have gone much better."
Yet a little more than 48 hours later, in a sad forerunner in many ways of how his Liverpool career would play out, Collymore was prevented from building on the momentum of his dream debut.
Early on in the Reds’ match against Leeds United at Elland Road made famous by Tony Yeboah’s stunning second-half volleyed winner, Collymore was hacked down as he raced into the penalty area by defender John Pemberton after only eight minutes and had to be substituted with an ankle problem, insult being added to injury with referee David Elleray not even awarding the foul and what would have been had to have been a spot-kick.
He was able to return just under three weeks later when Evans’s men suffered a second league defeat of the season at Wimbledon and scored his second Liverpool goal a week after that with another left-foot curler from almost the exact same spot as his first when champions Blackburn Rovers were blown away at Anfield by a three-goal blast in the opening half hour from a rampant Reds side.
It would be his last goal for two and a half months however as the problems away from the pitch which had already marked his career to date began to reveal themselves.
Years earlier his first boss Tommy Coakley, who had him as a YTS trainee at Walsall, had encountered difficulties, saying : "Even at 16 Stan was very much his own man, with his own ideas about absolutely everything.
“Sadly, most of his ideas were usually wrong and even when he was right he didn't realise hardened professionals weren't ready to listen to a kid of his age. It didn't help that he was also a very poor trainer who never realised that application was just as important as ability.
“I felt from day one that he'd either be one of the best players in the world or that he'd have a very short career and finish up as a nothing."
Nottingham Forest boss Frank Clark had also been forced to handle his temperament carefully, saying: “I’m not sure I will live long enough to understand exactly how the boy's brain works.
“Some people might accuse me of treating Stan with kid gloves on most occasions. My answer would be: `You try and cope with the lad, because it's not easy'. Stan didn't really get close to his teammates.
“There was often a certain cool in the air. I remember him decking Alf Inge Haaland with a left hook during training. I described it as a Henry Cooper special."
And before the winter of 1995 had properly set in, Collymore had given a high-profile interview to Four Four Two magazine, expressing frustration at how his initial months at Anfield had gone so far, criticising manager Evans for not discussing properly the role he wanted him to play in the side and even suggesting he could quit football if things didn’t improve.
"If I felt now that I'd be stuck at Liverpool for the next two years and just be average, and just go through the motions, I would give up football tomorrow without a doubt," Collymore said.
"I don't know of any other industry that would lay out £8.5m on anything and then not have some plan from day one on how they're going to use it.
“My ideas on big clubs have changed. You think you're going to something superior in every way.
"So many clubs - I've got to be careful here - are a shambles. You go there thinking they're going to be centres of excellence and they are far from it. I thought the training would be as good, if not better, than at Forest."
Liverpool and Evans made it clear they took a dim view of such grievances being made public and Collymore imposed a ban on himself doing any more interviews for a time, his settling in period not being helped by his preference to commute to Merseyside and still live in his hometown of Cannock where he could be close to his mother who was suffering from ill-health at the time.
A 6-0 win over Manchester City in late October had put the Reds third in the Premier League but the Collymore saga seemed to cast a shadow over their fortunes with November passing without a victory of any sort and including damaging league defeats to Newcastle, Everton and Middlesbrough as well as a home League Cup exit to Kevin Keegan’s Premier League leaders.
The arrival of advent calendars on the wall brought a gradual change in fortune as on 2nd December Collymore ended his goal drought which stretched back to Blackburn on 16th September by firing home an equaliser against Southampton at Anfield in an otherwise uninspiring 1-1 draw which dropped the Reds to eighth.
The following weekend a Collymore solo strike at Bolton brought Liverpool’s first league win in six matches just at the right time with Manchester United due at Anfield eight days later.
Collymore did not find the net against Alex Ferguson’s but gave arguably his finest performance in a Liverpool shirt to date, running the United defence ragged in a powerhouse performance which saw him hit the crossbar and being denied on a number of occasions by the heroics of Peter Schmeichel as Fowler found the net twice in a victory which could have been by a far wider margin.
With Rush recovering from a cartilage operation, the signs of a blossoming relationship between Collymore and Fowler were becoming more evident every week and after the new boy had laid on a hat-trick of assists for his Scouse strike partner to notch another hat-trick against Arsenal, the visit of his old club Nottingham Forest to Anfield on New Year’s Day 1996 illustrated further the damage Liverpool’s dynamic duo were capable of inflicting on opponents.
Forest stunned Anfield initially by taking a two-goal lead inside 18 minutes through Steve Stone and Ian Woan but Fowler had levelled matters by half-time, twice heading home from pin-point Collymore crosses from the left flank, and the former Forest man eventually got the goal he inevitably craved when capitalising on a Mark Crossley error to put Liverpool in front just after the hour mark, a Colin Cooper own goal sealing a 4-2 win for the hosts four minutes from time.
Although they did not spend a lot of time together off the pitch, Collymore and Fowler were gelling increasingly effectively on it with the pair being jointly awarded the Premier League Player of the Month award for January 1996 at the same time Evans received the Manager of the Month award with Liverpool now comfortably sat in third place behind runaway league leaders Newcastle and chasers Manchester United.
The pair’s form played a key role in the Reds going 20 games unbeaten from late November to 23rd March before Collymore’s return to Nottingham Forest’s City Ground saw him relentlessly barracked by the hostile home crowd and Liverpool defeated by a Stone strike following a mistake by goalkeeper David James.
The Reds bounced back immediately the following weekend by beating Aston Villa 3-0 in the FA Cup semi-final at Old Trafford to set up a Wembley showdown with Manchester United and three days later came the inarguable high-point of Collymore’s Anfield career in a match still regarded by many as the most exciting of the Premier League era.
Keegan’s Newcastle had set an electric pace from the start of the campaign and had enjoyed a 12-point lead at the top in mid-January but the arrival of Colombian maverick forward Faustino Asprilla along with defensive vulnerabilities had enabled Ferguson’s gnarly outfit - determined to win the title after the last-day-of-the-season concession to Dalglish’s Blackburn the previous campaign - to overtake them by three points although Newcastle had two games in hand.
Liverpool were only four points behind the Geordies having played one game more and knew victory could put them back into the title race and, with adrenaline coursing through the veins of players and a capacity Anfield crowd alike in the wake of reaching Wembley, tore into the visitors from the first whistle with Collymore again showing the wide range of his footballing talent by creating the opening goal for Fowler inside two minutes.
Jones cushioned Redknapp’s cross field switch of play into Collymore’s path down the left flank and, barely breaking stride, he advanced towards the byline before swinging a perfect curling cross with his left foot towards the back post and on a plate for Fowler to nod home and ignite the fuse on an already electric Anfield atmosphere.
Newcastle hit back swiftly through Les Ferdinand and David Ginola to lead at the break but, as Collymore remembered to The Mirror some years later, the message from Evans and his backroom staff was simply to keep on playing the football which had got them that far.
“When we got back to the dressing-room at half-time, the message from our manager Roy Evans was simple: 'Just continue in the same vein'," he recalled.
“Yes, we were losing 2-1, but the game was developing well, we were playing some really good, attacking football and we had the belief that there was plenty more to come.”
That belief was proved correct and then some. Fowler equalised ten minutes after the break cracking the ball home with his left foot from the edge of the box after a devastating counter led by McAteer and McManaman only for Asprilla to restore the visitors’ lead two minutes later after Beardsley and Robert Lee opened up the Liverpool defence.
Neither side was prepared to take a backward step and, with the privileged 39,206 people inside Anfield and millions more across the world watching in wonder, kept attacking each other in one of the most memorable end-to-end encounters anyone could recall.
Collymore got his name on the scoresheet after 67 minutes when he prodded home McAteer’s wickedly curling right-wing cross to level matters at three apiece before, with the game edging in stoppage time, he grabbed the winner and wrote his name into Liverpool folklore with one of the most talked about and replayed goals in modern football history.
A series of one-twos between veterans Barnes and Rush, on as a late substitute, left the England man surveying his options on the edge of the box and, with McManaman free and screaming for a pass to his right, Barnes calmly rolled the ball to his left where Collymore had found space and he took one touch with his right foot to control the ball at pace into his stride before unleashing a venomous drive with his left that was past Pavel Srnicek and inside his near post before the Czech goalkeeper could even smell it.
Collymore raced towards the Kop to celebrate wild-eyed with ecstatic Liverpudlians as television cameras captured Keegan slumped in dejection over the advertising boards in front of the dug-out as the realisation his title dream was slipping away became further evident to him and the watching world, with even the normally loquacious Andy Gray asked over the air: “Just how do you put words to what we’ve seen tonight?”
Collymore himself revealed even he and his team-mates could not initially quite take in the magnitude of what they had just been part of.
“It was a blistering game and as I walked off the pitch I knew I’d been involved in a classic," he said.
“My mum hadn’t been well and had spent three or four days just before the game in hospital, which had knocked me sideways.
“So when the Sky cameras came up to me as I walked off, I looked straight down the barrel and said, 'that was for you, mum', because I knew she’d be watching.
“I recall both managers’ post-match press conferences as well, with Roy and Kevin Keegan like, 'wow', but with the caveat, 'we can’t take too many games like that because as managers they give you kittens'.
"Keegan, remember, had slumped over the advertising hoardings as my winner had gone in.
“And never as a kid could I have dreamed that one of the iconic English football moments would see little Stan Collymore from Cannock intertwined with the great Kevin Keegan, the dominant football figure of my childhood.
“I’ve seen him a few times since and when I tapped him on a shoulder at a function a few years back, he turned round, rolled his eyes, laughed and said, '****ing hell!'
“It won’t surprise anyone to hear that after the game, everyone was buzzing back in our dressing-room and when we’d showered and changed, a few of us went into Liverpool.
“I seem to remember it being Jamie Redknapp, David James, Jason McAteer, maybe, and Phil Babb, and we found a restaurant in one of the back streets, a trendy, new Italian.
“We were all saying things like, 'what have we just played in?' And it’s unusual for players to do that.
“Often, you get back to the dressing-room, warm down, have your shower and head home, but we knew that night had been really special.
“Going into the game, I’d been very aware we were two teams going for the title and I thought we’d go on and win it.
“Although there was always that nagging feeling in the back of my mind that we’d need to score four to win every game because a lot of times we’d concede twos and threes.
“Despite feeling we were in a position to win the title, perhaps we knew in our heart of hearts that Manchester United had the better all-round package.”
That proved to be the case almost immediately as despite the Newcastle win putting Liverpool in with a genuine chance of the Double, the very next match just three days later away at relegation-threatened Coventry City saw Evans’s side slump to an abject 1-0 defeat essentially ending their title hopes almost as soon as they had gathered real legs.
And, after treading water in their final few league matches in advance of Wembley, the Reds were unable to lift themselves when the FA Cup final against Manchester United finally came about, being stifled tactically by a side now crowned league champions despite losing four league points to Liverpool that season, Evans's team being sucker punched by Eric Cantona’s 86th-minute winner after James’s attempted punch from David Beckham’s right wing corner fell to the Frenchman.
It was a heartbreaking end to a season of such entertainment and promise but, as the disappointment began to fade and some hope was restored by the likes of Jamie Carragher and Michael Owen helping FA Youth Cup go to Anfield for the first time, there were a renewed belief that a young Liverpool side now possessing arguably the best strike partnership in the league - Collymore with 19 goals in all competitions and Fowler with 36 had notched 55 between them in 1995/96 - may yet be able to take that final but hardest step the following campaign.
Liverpool were top of the league by the end of September having won six and drawn two of their opening eight games but the strike duo were only able to contribute one goal each up to that point, with Collymore’s distance both geographically and socially being rumoured to be causing unrest in the dressing room.
He opened up again about his difficulties although this time was more circumspect in his comments, saying: "I fully admit that my form so far this season could be better.
"I'm not about to go into the ground and start banging on the manager's door. Shouting your mouth off about being dropped is a big mistake."
Again a mid-season visit from Nottingham Forest provoked a reaction with another brace in another 4-2 win in December 1996 prompting a run of seven goals in the next ten matches.
His public utterances also hinted the penny was beginning to drop over what would be needed to succeed at Anfield.
“If Forest had ever dropped me, I would not have been able to accept or handle the situation but at Anfield, it's different”, he said.
"I want the manager to know this: There isn't a single individual on the books who is more determined to be in the line-up than me. Roy Evans left me out three times before, even though I scored in each game prior to being dropped.
“Each time I bounced back with a goal. I have hit the target in Liverpool's last three matches. And in case people aren't getting the message, I believe I am the best partner for Robbie Fowler - over and out!"
The arrival of Czech Republic attacking midfielder Patrik Berger had provided Evans with another credible option up front and he made it clear what he expected from Collymore.
"Stan knows the reason why he has been in and out of the team. In a word, inconsistency," said Evans.
“It's up to him. If Stan wants to prove me wrong by sticking the ball in the net every week, I will be delighted.
“The rules are the same for everybody: Produce or else."
Liverpool began 1997 with a five-point lead at the top of the league table but a New Year’s Day defeat at Chelsea followed by another loss at Stamford Bridge later the same month, an abject 4-2 FA Cup fourth-round reverse after the Reds had been two goals up at half-time, demonstrated the soft underbelly which had scuppered the previous season’s hopes of silverware had still not been eradicated.
It was a far from vintage Premier League season, certainly by modern-day points tallies, and on the first weekend in April Manchester United’s shock home defeat to Derby County meant Liverpool could go level on points with their main rivals with six games to go if they could beat Coventry, fighting for their lives in the relegation zone, the following day at Anfield.
Fowler gave the Reds the lead just past the hour mark but an increasing erratic James and his defence were unable to deal with two Gary McAllister corners allowing Noel Whelan and Dion Dublin to snatch three points for the Sky Blues, with further calamitous goalkeeping and defending in the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final against Paris Saint Germain and against Manchester United in the final throw of the title dice at Anfield in late April again causing a season of real promise and at times scintillating football to end in empty-handed misery. Liverpool actually managed to finally finish fourth in what had been a two-horse championship race, thus missing out on Champions League qualification with it being the first time league runners-up would gain entry to the competition.
Collymore scored 16 times in 37 appearances in his second and final season at Anfield, Fowler’s total of 31 meaning another healthy joint tally of 47 between them, but his inconsistency and seeming inability to really fit in to the squad meant his departure felt inevitable and he was sold to Aston Villa, the team he supported as a boy, for £7m before May 1997 was out.
His career would never again reach such a rarified level and, after well-publicised struggles with his mental health (which he remains a vocal advocate of and continues to raise awareness while working these days in the football media) and spells with Fulham (on loan), Leicester City, Bradford City and Oviedo in Spain, he retired from playing football at the age of only 30 in 2001.
Anyone who saw him in full flight in a Liverpool shirt - his balance, physical strength and fluent football ability when all in sync led to comparisons to the Brazilian Ronaldo also emerging at that time as one of the world's best young talents - could only look back with regret that his time at Anfield did not work out better, with Evans’s comments in a 2003 interview showing that was very much how he felt.
"Stan was a great lad, still is a great lad and I've always said that in his time at Liverpool, particularly the first season, he and Robbie were brilliant together," said Evans.
“Even now if you look through Robbie's career, the best partner he's ever had was Stan. Stan did a lot of things we didn't want him to do but he had the ability to do a lot of things no one else could.
“But we started getting problems with him in his second year when sometimes he didn't turn up for training. You could see the other players wondering what was going on."
Collymore received some boos when he returned to Anfield with Villa in September 1997, describing it as the ‘lowest moment of my football career’, and his remarks shortly afterwards illustrated that feeling of what might have been over his Liverpool still lingered with him also.
“I would love the chance one day to go back to Anfield, either as a fan or maybe to go onto the pitch, and say thank you to everybody because they are the most special fans in the world," said Collymore. "To play in front of them was the best experience of my career."
*A version of this article was originally published in January 2022.
