57: Lee Sharpe, Bradford City, Merlin’s F.A. Premier League 2001 Official Sticker Collection

Today Mat Jolin-Beech has a look at one of the great ‘what if’ stories in English football and revisits the age-old ‘left sided problem’. Sadly, this is not a second post on Steve Guppy but at least it takes in the story of a man who took part in ITV’s Celebrity Wrestling dressed as his Napoleonic War namesake. Obviously he couldn’t hold a candle to the great Sean Bean but, as we can see below, he knew how to wear a questionable necklace. Over to Mat.

England’s fabled left sided problem could have had a simple solution. It should have had a simple solution. For season after season, Three Lions’ fans were crying out for an English Ryan Giggs. A skilful, fast, tricky left-winger. Instead, we got experiment after experiment. The Bridge/Cole episode. Alan Thompson’s single cap against Sweden in 2004. The infamous Scholes solution. Steve Guppy.


The answer could have come from Newcastle upon Tyne, via Torquay and Manchester. The left-winger in question: Lee Sharpe. Definitely Lee Sharpe. Well, almost definitely Lee Sharpe. But, it wasn’t Lee Sharpe. In the late 80s Alex Ferguson scooped up Sharpe for £200,000. His 265-game Manchester United career had highlights: playing a key part in the 1990/91 European Cup Winners’ Cup, a hat-trick against Arsenal in the League Cup, an England call up before his twentieth birthday, seven major trophies and 36 goals.

However, injuries and the emergence of the Welsh Ryan Giggs brought an end to his career at the Theatre of Dreams. That and his ‘difficult’ relationship with Fergie. After the 1996 FA Cup final, in which he did not leave the Wembley bench, he was destined to depart the Red Devils. As a side note, he would have comfortably fitted in with the Scouse Spice Boys in their white suits. A move to Leeds United and Howard Wilkinson followed although his new boss did not last long: one month to be precise. Injuries curtailed that stay, but opened up a loan stint in Serie A with Sampdoria, before the big money loan-to-permanent deal to Bradford City.

Another loan to Portsmouth happened before a trip to St James’s Park. No, not that one, but the one in Exeter. It is here Sharpe scored his last professional goal in 2002 at the grand old age of 31. A move to the exotics of Europe followed, with a spell at Grindavík in Iceland. A year later, he announced his retirement. This was short lived, with a brief return in February 2004 in the Kidderminster Sunday League with Hoobrook Crown, before signing for Northern Counties East Premier League side Garforth Town the following summer. Then he retired again – permanently – allowing him time to embark on his new career as a TV personality and Love Island contestant, as well as a joke in The Inbetweeners.

But Sharpe’s story is very much a case of what could have been. With an English Ryan Giggs, who knows what Euro 96, France 98, or even the 2002 World Cup in Japan and Korea could have produced. The Golden Generation may have actually lived up to its name and brought home some gold.  More significantly, for United fans, of both the Manchester and Leeds variety, there would have been another superstar (well one in Leeds’ case) who could have driven them forward in their quest for glory.

But then again, as a Man United fan, the choice was Giggs or Sharpe? Beckham or Sharpe? Irwin or Sharpe? The answer? Simple. Definitely, definitely Lee Sharpe. Or not. Definitely not.

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