PEARCEY WAS THE ULTIMATE
IPLAYED with many lads who came through from Non-League football, but the best was undoubtedly Stuart Pearce. was captain of Coventry City during the 1983-84 season when he came to us from Wealdstone. Famously, he was working as an electrician at the time.
For a lad of 21 with no professional experience it was a hell of a jump – Alliance Premier League all the way to the old First Division.
But Pearcey made the single best debut I’ve ever seen, something that is still talked about in Coventry to this day.
We beat Terry Venables’ QPR 1-0 at home and he was flawless – shy and quiet but totally fearless. I remember thinking to myself ‘God Almighty, we’ve found one here’.
Bobby Gould, our manager at the time, was someone who prided himself on spotting players at the lower levels, and especially in Non-League.
Nicky Platnauer started at Bedford Town. People like Micky Adams and Micky Gynn both came to us from the Fourth Division. But Pearcey – who went on to win 78 international caps for England – was the big one.
As a manager myself, it was never something I could emulate. I tried, but I was never particularly successful.
We took one or two from NonLeague whilst I was at Bolton, but nobody who ever made the grade at Premier League level. That said, I inherited a few. Probably the best was Steve Finnan, who I had as a young lad at Notts County in the mid-nineties. He went from Welling United to Birmingham then signed for Notts County in 1996, the season before I arrived.
Mainstay
He was a right-winger when I first got there, but we often played a back three so I converted him to a wing-back. He was a very good player, and a mainstay in the side that won the Third Division title in 1998. We eventually sold him to Fulham for £600,000, they sold him to Liverpool for £3.5m and he went on to win the Champions League and play in a World Cup for Ireland.
Then there was Michail Antonio, who joined Reading from Tooting & Mitcham and now plays in the Premier League with
West Ham. I didn’t sign Michail, but I did select him in my first squad as England manager. His stats in terms of assists and goals from a wide position were fabulous – by far the best of any English player available at the time, including seasoned internationals.
Sadly, things haven’t worked out for him since. He’s picked up a lot of injuries which have stopped him hitting those kinds of numbers again.
But when he’s fit and in form, he’s a brilliant player – someone West Ham miss whenever he isn’t on the pitch.
It would be great to see more players coming from the lower leagues, which was always the case when I was young. In the last ten years, it’s been all about the foreigners.
I don’t think top clubs have scouted the Non-League game extensively for many years now, which is a problem.
But who knows? If the current crisis has a severe impact on finances, it might force a lot more clubs looking for bargains. Maybe it’s time for all of us to get our sheepskin coats on and go looking for those hidden gems like Bobby did.