259: Robbie Fowler, Liverpool, Merlin’s Premier League 95 Sticker Collection

Mat Jolin-Beech takes a look at man seen by a deity by some and with a left foot capable of producing magic. Not afraid to play close to the line he pushed his luck with hardman Graeme Le Saux, became a little too acquainted with the goal line in the Merseyside Derby and served a ban for showing his support to Liverpool’s striking dockers. Over to Mat for more.

Underappreciated. Underrated. Or maybe overrated. Played above his station. Or property magnate? They are the many sides to one Robbie Fowler. To those on the red half of Liverpool, he is still referred to as God. He plundered 183 goals in 369 games for the Reds. And yet, he only managed to get 26 caps for England and a mere seven goals.


Now, even though he played at a time when top players in the English Premier ship were on only £50,000 a week (how did they manage?), he is now said to be worth £31m. That wealth, while started through football, has come through investing in property and running courses telling people how to make money like he did. But without the football. Obviously.

To me, Fowler is a complex character. There is disdain because he is, not only a Liverpool player, but a legend. There should be ingrained hate. What’s worse, is the ’96 Liverpool kit, one of the iconic ones from premier league history, looked pretty good on Fowler. Plus, you don’t score that many goals, and lose in and FA Cup final if you’re a bad player. But, was he the complete striker, that best natural born finisher that England has ever seen that some would have us believe?

His record would suggest not sitting behind his contemporaries like Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole on the all-time Premier League chart, one of whom helped keep him out the England team, the other more successful in the domestic game, but also curiously never having much success internationally.

Fowler’s time at Liverpool started coming to an end at the turn of the millennium, when the mighty new strike duo of Michael Owen and Emile Heskey game to the fore. An escape route to Leeds United came although that didn’t last long as the Yorkshire club was sinking in debt. A move to Manchester City followed, another reason for me to hate Fowler, with an average return rate o just over a goal every four games. Not too shabby for an average City team.

Then God returned. Although the second coming wasn’t as fruitful as the first with only eight goals in thirty games. A journeyman ending to his career followed, with stints at Cardiff City, Blackburn Rovers, North Queensland Fury, Perth Glory, and finally Muangthong United. During this time, he was building up his property empire and setting the stage for his wealth to flourish in his post-retirement days with more than eighty properties. He’s also dallied in racehorse ownership and he has a sports promotion company.

So, to answer the question at the start: Overrated, underappreciated, or property magnate? Maybe. Definitely internationally. And definitely again. But for me, his standing is about right. A very good, but not world class striker loved by those fans he calls his own and not so much by everyone else. What makes this more amusing is that he helped to bankrupt Leeds United, which is always a plus for any Man United fan (I’m glad they’ve bounced back by the way), and that the player who led to his Liverpool exit and demise sits below him in the all-time goal rankings 163 to 150.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

N/A: Chris Kamara, Sheffield United, Chris Kamara’s Street Soccer, Midas Games

Image
In November 1972 the arcade game Pong made its debut and the gaming industry was born. While not the first attempt to make some computer pixels do not very much for the amusement of the masses it was by far the most commercially successful and, by the end of the decade, the first ever football game was unleashed on the world in the form of NASL Soccer. Judging by the YouTube footage it seemed to involve lots of brightly coloured stick men over hitting through balls and running in the opposite direction to oncoming forwards which may well be what the likes of Trevor Francis , Johan Cruyff and Gerd Muller were getting up to over in the US at the time. Throughout the 1980s the games became more realistic and a host of star players and managers put their names on products of variable quality. Peter Shilton’s Handball Maradona (not that he is anyway bitter about being out jumped by a midget) gave youngsters the opportunity to fulfil their goalkeeping fantasies in a range of scenarios with r
Read more

269: Trifon Ivanov, Bulgaria, USA ’94 World Cup, UK and Eire Edition

Image
The 1994 FIFA World Cup in the USA was my introduction to football and, nearly thirty years later, probably the international tournament I remember most fondly despite the fact that I realistically don’t remember too much about it. I can attest to having witnessed Ray Houghton’s wonder goal/flukey lob in the Republic of Ireland’s shock victory over Italy as it was the centrepiece of a First Holy Communion celebration my family was attending. The joy and shock experienced by the predominantly Irish and Italian guests crowded around what seemed like the world’s biggest telly spilled over into the garden for all of us kids present and led to an inevitable kickabout. A few weeks later the quarter finals coincided with a primary school barbecue which, again, saw lots of people crowded around a telly watching Italy take on Spain . I remember very little about the game as my primary focus was the kickabout in the school playground and trying to digest ropey veggie burgers but one parent said
Read more

44: Savo Milosevic, Aston Villa, Merlin’s Premier League 98 Official Sticker Collection

Image
Nearly a quarter of a century ago The Guardian published an article entitled ‘The 10 Worst Foreign Signings in History’. Focusing almost exclusively on British football in the 1990s the list is hardly exhaustive and mentions many names that will not come as a shock to any football nostalgic or reader of these pages over the last three years. Serie A imports Tomas Brolin , Andrea Silenzi and Marco Negri featured with particular disdain reserved for the latter’s regular take home of £18,000 per week for contributing about as much as Winston Bogarde did for Chelsea which seems harsh for a man who actually lit up Ibrox with 23 goals in his first ten games. George Weah’s “cousin” (not his actual cousin ) Ali Dia is of course included alongside Marco Boogers and Michele Padovano who managed just one goal in his twelve games for Crystal Palace and returned to the club a year after leaving demanding £1m in unpaid wages. The common denominator between the article’s inhabitants was the posit
Read more