Trevor Francis has passed away

[craig 5,199]

Just reading H&H posting about the passing of Trevor Francis.

 

Very, very sad - what a wonderful player he was too.  Sleep easy Trevor

[Scott7 5,172]

Always sad to learn that an old player has died.

 

He performed well for Rangers just a pity for the team he hadn’t been at Ibrox earlier in his career.

 

The black tights weren’t a great idea.

[yuddie 1,012]

RIP.

 

I've got friends and family who are bluenoses (Birmingham City+Rangers) so it's pretty gutting, he was before my time but every child growing up in Brum who loved football knew who he was regardless of who you followed.

[Gonzo79 13,637]

Sad news. Always remember him as a classy player.

[compo 6,141]

Sad news indeed I remember him as a young player at St Andrews with Birmingham.

[Scott7 5,172]

First English £1M player.

[compo 6,141]

1 hour ago, compo said:

Sad news indeed I remember him as a young player at St Andrews with Birmingham.

I think the fee was one pound under the million mark 

[Bluedell 5,330]

Was extremely immobile when he played for us, but made up for that with skill and experience. I enjoyed his time with us.

 

And his penalty against Aberdeen at Hampden 😍

[Uilleam 5,429]

 

 

OBITUARY

Trevor Francis: First million-pound British footballer dies aged 69

Former England striker scored winning goal in 1979 European Cup final for Nottingham Forest

new

Monday July 24 2023, 2.20pm, The Times

 

DAVID CANNON/ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES

 

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/trevor-francis-dies-football-player-manager-jdvfbqjqd

 

Trevor Francis, the former England international, European Cup winning hero and Britain’s first £1 million footballer, has died at the age of 69.

The forward, who famously scored the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup final as Nottingham Forest beat Malmo, died in Marbella, Spain. Francis became the first British footballer to command a £1 million transfer fee when Brian Clough’s Forest landed the striker from Birmingham City in 1979.

In a statement on social media, Forest said: “Nottingham Forest is deeply saddened to learn the passing of two-time European Cup winner, Trevor Francis. A true Forest legend who will never be forgotten.”

 

Francis lifts the trophy after the 1979 European Cup Final between Nottingham Forest and Malmo in Munich

ALLSPORT/GETTY IMAGES/HULTON ARCHIVE

Trevor Francis scored the winning goal in a European Cup final, represented England 52 times and enjoyed a long and varied career as a player and manager after making his debut for Birmingham City aged 16. Yet he will always be remembered primarily as Britain’s first million-pound footballer.

It was in February 1979 that Brian Clough paid a seven-figure sum to take Francis from Birmingham to Nottingham Forest — having told him to “Take your hands out of your pocket, young man,” at an awards ceremony the previous year — and was rewarded in May with the header that decided the European Cup final against Malmo of Sweden.

 

Francis went on to play for Manchester City, Sampdoria, Atalanta and Rangers. Fabio Capello, the former England manager, described him as the best English player to play in Italy’s Serie A. He became player-manager at Queens Park Rangers and Sheffield Wednesday, returning to Birmingham for five years as manager. But as he admitted in 2009, “I’m always introduced as ‘the million-pound man’. I played first-team football at 16. I was 39 when I finished at Sheffield Wednesday. I had nine years with England winning 52 caps. I played in the World Cup. I also played in Italy and Scotland for very big, prestigious clubs. But sometimes you’d think the only thing I did was to be transferred for £1 million. And, do you know, I’m quite proud of it.”

 

Trevor John Francis was born in 1954 in Plymouth to Roy Francis, a shift foreman at the South West Gas Board, and Phyllis, a seamstress. He was educated at the city’s Public Secondary School for Boys, and spotted by Birmingham, then in the second division of the Football League, who persuaded his family to allow him to move to St Andrew’s, helped by Don Dorman, the scout, buying them a new washing machine. He became Birmingham’s youngest-ever first-team player when he made his debut as a substitute in a match against Cardiff City at the age of 16 years and 139 days on September 5, 1970. His record was recently broken by the now England midfielder Jude Bellingham.

 

He leapt to national attention later in the season when he scored all four goals in a 4-0 victory over Bolton Wanderers on February 20 — which did not excuse him from his duties as an apprentice professional, including cleaning his team-mates’ boots. He ended his first season with 15 goals from just 22 games and the nickname “Superboy”, and the following campaign ended in promotion to the top flight, Francis forming a potent spearhead with Bob Latchford. Birmingham also reached the FA Cup semi-finals in 1972 and 1975, losing first to Leeds United and then Fulham.

 

In 1977 he won his first England cap, under Don Revie, in a 2-0 defeat by Holland, and the following year he was allowed to sign a contract to spend the next three summers playing for Detroit Express in the North American Soccer League [NASL], scoring 22 goals in 19 appearances in his first season and being named in the NASL all-star team alongside Franz Beckenbauer and Giorgio Chinaglia.

But Birmingham were struggling and when they sank to the foot of the first division table in late 1978, Francis was made available for transfer after 133 goals in 328 appearances, and Clough almost doubled the British record of £516,000 to take him to the reigning champions.

 

It has been reported that Clough arranged to pay £999,999 before tax, so that the milestone figure did not go to his head, but Francis, who learnt from the Birmingham manager Jim Smith that the actual fee, with league levies and taxes, was £1.15 million, found it more of a burden. Peter Taylor, Clough’s assistant, claimed to have agreed the fee for fear that Clough’s haggling would jeopardise the deal, which was done despite misgivings on the part of Clough and Taylor about the arrangement with Detroit.

 

It seemed that neither party need have worried when Francis, ineligible for European Cup matches until Forest reached the semi-finals, made his mark in the final itself, stooping at the far post to head home the only goal of the game against Malmo from John Robertson’s left-wing cross just before half time.

However, Francis’s career with Forest failed to live up to that auspicious beginning. In his second summer in Detroit, he suffered a groin injury that kept him out of the first two months of the league season, and Taylor said that he and Clough had found it hard to motivate an easygoing character whose natural abilities had never required him to fight his way up from the bottom, as some of his team-mates had. They played him out of position on the right wing, and later he suffered an achilles tendon injury that kept him out of the 1980 European Cup final and England’s squad for the European Championship.

 

In 1981 he was sold on at a profit of £200,000 to Manchester City, with John Bond, the City manager, threatening to resign if the money could not be found. But once again he proved injury-prone, although he was able to make England 1982 World Cup squad that promised much in winning its qualifying group, Francis scoring twice, including the only goal in the 1-0 victory over Kuwait, but could only manage two goalless draws in the second group stage.

 

Back at his club, financial problems were again an issue. City could not afford to pay £100,000 plus bonuses per season to a player who regularly sustained injuries. As a result, Francis was sold for £700,000 to Sampdoria in 1982, where he played alongside Graeme Souness, the former Liverpool captain, and Roberto Mancini, a future manager of Manchester City, in a team that won the Genoa club’s first Italian Cup.

After scoring 17 goals in 68 games, he moved on to Atalanta of Bergamo three years later for £800,000 but scored only once in 21 appearances, and he failed to add to his 12 goals for England in his 52nd game for his country, against Scotland. It proved to be his last cap, and he was not selected for the 1986 World Cup squad.

 

Francis returned to Britain in 1987, but to Scotland rather than England, joining the Rangers team being assembled at Ibrox by Souness, his former team-mate, for only £75,000. His next stop was Queens Park Rangers, where he scored some memorable goals before becoming player-manager in November 1988. However, the team failed to perform well and he earned negative headlines when fining Martin Allen two weeks’ wages for attending the birth of his son rather than playing against Newcastle United.

He did better at Sheffield Wednesday, whom he joined as a player in 1990, despite their relegation in his first season. They won promotion back to the top flight and won the League Cup — although he did not play in the final and he was popular with supporters who appreciated his skills even if his pace was now limited.

 

When Ron Atkinson left, Francis took over as manager and guided the club to a third-placed finish in 1992, the last season of the old Football League first division, and the finals of the League Cup and FA Cup in 1993, both lost to Arsenal. The team was an attractive, attacking outfit, and Francis could afford to retire as a player in 1994 without weakening the club. So it was a surprise when he was sacked in 1995 after his first disappointing season, when the club finished 13th. One of his few poor decisions had been the failure in 1992 to sign Eric Cantona without a second trial, the Frenchman choosing to join Leeds United instead, helping Wednesday’s Yorkshire rivals to win the league title.

 

Francis worked as a media pundit before returning to St Andrew’s in 1996 as manager of Birmingham. Supporters dreamed of his homecoming sparking a revival in the club’s fortunes, but although he improved the team, reaching the play-offs on three occasions and the League Cup final in 2001 (lost to Liverpool on penalties), he was unable to deliver promotion and was replaced by Steve Bruce in October 2001. Bizarrely, he took over from Bruce as manager of Crystal Palace, but with even less success than he had enjoyed at Birmingham.

 

Thanks in part to a namecheck in the Only Fools and Horses theme tune — about buying “Trevor Francis tracksuits from a mush in Shepherds Bush” — his name had by then been immortalised in popular culture.

He turned once again to media work, which was interrupted in 2012, when he suffered a heart attack. To look after his health after that he powerwalked every day and rarely drank alcohol.

 

In 1974 he married Helen and had two sons: Matthew, who runs Francis Homes, a housebuilding business, and James who became a professional footballer, playing centre forward for Tamworth, before also working for Francis Homes. Helen died of cancer in 2017. “It’s hard because of the deep love I felt for Helen — and because I’m useless in the house. She did everything for me,” Francis admitted in an interview. “All of a sudden I am living by myself and I suppose I never contemplated this would happen. It’s a tougher challenge than anything I ever faced in football.”

 

Trevor Francis, footballer and manager, was born on April 19 1954. He died of a suspected heart attack on July 24, 2023, aged 69

[BlackSocksRedTops 3,480]

My abiding Trevor Francis memory in a Rangers jersey was our win at home Vs Dynamo Kiev. What a night that was against a top drawer team.