U8: Paul Dalglish, Newcastle United, Merlin’s Premier League 99 Official Sticker Collection, Transfer Update Edition

There are many signs you are getting old. It could be the three days of exhaustion you suffer after daring to take part in something resembling social activity. Maybe it’s the insidious emergence of more and more grey hairs everywhere and anywhere. Perhaps it’s the increasing level of effort needed to vacate a chair. Following any form of professional sport is unhelpful too. In this year’s County Championship the children of former England captains Mike Atherton, Michael Vaughan and Andrew Flintoff have all made telling contributions across the various cricketing formats. A few months earlier the progeny of both Neil Danns and Jason Koumas scored for Liverpool in their FA Cup win over Southampton while Ipswich Town celebrated their return to the Premier League by signing Rory Delap’s son Liam to join David Hirst’s lad George. Apparently Manchester City’s Norwegian goal robot also had a father who played in the English top flight but that would suggest he was in anyway human.

Football being a family business is hardly news and we’ve mentioned it once or twice on these very pages. What is perhaps more interesting is when players go into management and pull the ultimate Sunday league move by signing their offspring. It’s rare that they go full Greenwich Minor League U9s and make them captain but there have been some significant link ups. Jamie Redknapp topped and tailed his career under the watchful eye of his old man. Alex Bruce was also signed by his father twice during his career while Tom Ince joined his dad at Reading in 2022 having previously played under him at Blackpool. Gavin Strachan cut his footballing teeth at Coventry City while his dad took the helm as player manager in the same season his compatriot below moved to Newcastle United to play under another Scottish footballing hero.

Like his royal father Paul Dalglish began his career at Celtic before moving to Liverpool but unlike King Kenny he failed to make a first team appearance for either side. He joined a Newcastle side famous for its attacking potency albeit relying on the veteran combination of Ian Rush and John Barnes owing to the pre-season injury suffered by Alan Shearer and the erratic form of both Temuri Ketsbaia and Faustino Asprilla. Across two seasons Dalglish did manage fourteen first team appearances and three goals but played more first team football in loan spells at Bury and Norwich City. The weight of expectation owing to his surname probably didn’t help, nor the arrival of sexy football specialist Ruud Gullit in place of his old man, but Dalglish made minimal impact on Tyneside and headed to East Anglia with Norwich in 1999.

During three years at Carrow Road Dalglish spent nearly as much time on loan at Wigan Athletic and moved on to Blackpool for the 2002/03 season. He was again farmed out on loan, this time to the scourges of safe search Scunthorpe United, before heading to Northern Ireland with Linfield. This downward trajectory on the pitch convinced Dalglish to consider a media career through Sky Sports’ staple Soccer AM but perhaps the highlight of his brief sojourn in front of the camera was his cameo in cult classic Goal! Either inspired by his fictional performances for Newcastle United or trying to summon the greatness of the Dalglish surname Paul Lambert brought him out of retirement for Livingston in 2004. Solid performances in his homeland earned a move to Hibernian before a trip across the pond where he won two MLS Cups with Houston Dynamo. After a short spell back in Scotland with Kilmarnock he hung up his boots to pursue a managerial career across North America.

Following in a famous father’s footsteps is challenging in any field but in the cutthroat world of professional football it’s even tougher. Kenny Dalglish scored 345 club goals, earned over a century of international caps and won a host of trophies as both a player and a manager. In comparison Paul Dalglish won a pair of MLS Cups as a player, a range of minor league trophies as a manager and scored 22 club goals in 206 appearances never earning a full international cap. He was clearly a decent footballer but it’s hard to imagine him breaking into a Newcastle side awash with attacking talent without his old man in the dugout. Then again, in an era of “nepo babies”, you can’t fault him for making use of his old man’s pedigree.