I’m a former Man Utd star, I signed a contract without any idea how much I would earn
MARK CROSSLEY knows all about playing at the highest level, making a name for himself at Nottingham Forest and even having a spell at Manchester United.
But his first contract under legendary boss Brian Clough earned him a mysterious salary!
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Crossley explains it all in his own words, exclusively on SunSport…
I made the worst prediction ever when we returned to the dressing room after this opening match victory in 1992 – the first to be shown live on the all-new Sky Sports.
We had just deservedly beaten one of the pre-season title favorites and there should have been more if only for a few great saves from opposite number David James, making his debut for Liverpool.
In the dressing room I told teammate Stuart Pearce that I really wanted to be in the top six that season.
We then lost our next six league games in a row, won just one of our next sixteen and ended up being the first team to be mathematically relegated from the all-new Premier League, which is a terrible situation even 32 years later. memory.
Pearcey has rightly never forgiven me, especially because I said it once before at the start of a new season and we then ran a horror campaign. You could call it Crossley’s curse!
Despite losing world-class defender Des Walker to Sampdoria in the summer of 1992, we still had a great squad.
But a fortnight later we sold Teddy Sheringham to Spurs, and the loss of two key figures from that side was perhaps too much.
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Teddy may not have been the fastest striker, but he more than made up for that with his brilliant football brain. It was no surprise to me what he later achieved at international and club level.
These were the days of the rigid 4-4-2, but Teddy was smart enough to break the ranks and slip into a gap and create and score so many goals for himself and others.
Even without Des and Teddy we still felt it was enough with Psycho (Pearce), Keano (Roy Keane) and (Nigel) Cloughie Junior in the squad.
But as the season progressed and we lost games, many decisions seemed to go against us and confidence decreased.
The media painted a picture of us as a team that was “too good to fail.” Unfortunately, we have proven that this is not the case.
This opening win against Liverpool was the best thing to happen in the entire 1992-93 season: these 90 minutes alone.
I don’t think any of us at that time could have ever imagined the kind of effect that Sky TV would have on the top flight of football at that time.
The only real difference for us from the end of the previous season in the old First Division was that this was the first league match shown live at the start of a new campaign.
We were brought up on a diet of watching a few matches with edited highlights on Match of the Day and a few more on ITV’s The Big Match.
Now every match of the highest level can be seen on Match of the Day and a few times a week viewers get the build-up, the full live match and all interviews afterwards.
It is taken for granted what we are looking at now. But then it felt a little different.
What is striking over the past thirty years is how the average crowd for a Premier League match has increased.
The influence Brian had on my professional life cannot be measured
Mark Crossley
During this first weekend of the season, the average attendance in the top flight was 21,642, compared to last weekend’s eight Prem matches which averaged 42,040 – almost double, illustrating how the league has improved the game both on and off the field to let grow.
I think all the Forest players hated that boss Brian Clough ended up in relegation that final season after his incredible managerial success.
It was also clear that Brian had also been ill during that campaign.
My honest opinion is that I think he would have quit if we had won the FA Cup in the 1991 final. It was the only trophy that had eluded him during his managerial career, but he still had a burning desire to win, so he carried on.
The influence Brian had on my professional life cannot be measured.
I am convinced that without him I would not have had the career I had.
He was truly a great father figure to me – and here is just a small example of our relationship.
When I first signed for Forest, the contract above my signature was completely blank. Cloughie said he would fill it out.
Excitedly, I rushed home to tell my father that I had signed a contract for the club. You can imagine that my father’s first question to me was, “How much do you get per week?”
Um, a pause, because I had absolutely no idea. Dad looked at me in complete bewilderment.
But that was the confidence I had in the man. He never let me down and I was completely happy with what Cloughie gave me.
But he knew he could trust me completely if I was happy for him to fill out my contract without my knowledge.