Former Player Remembers: Tony Cottee

After further spells at Upton Park and in Malaysia, Tony then spent three years at Leicester City, winning the League Cup with the Foxes in 2000; his first trophy in a lengthy top-level career. 

Tony started by reflecting on this marvellous season for Leicester City. 

“This season has been incredible. I never saw it coming. Nobody in football did. It’s remarkable what Claudio and the players have done. I’m just really pleased because I had three fabulous years at the Club. I couldn’t be more pleased. Leicester is such a great city as well, with really good fans. 

“I saw Jamie (Vardy) at the PFA dinner a few days ago. I told him that I couldn’t believe he had broken my record (13 goals for Leicester in the Premier League). It is incredible how he has come from non-league football, after all the rejection he had as a kid at Sheffield Wednesday, and now he’s scoring goals for Leicester and England! I would have voted for Jamie as my Player of the Year.” 

Turning to his own illustrious career in football, Tony recalled: “I came through the Academy at West Ham, had my debut at 17 when I scored against Spurs. I was a regular when I had only just turned 18. I played a lot of first-team football early on. To be thought of as the main striker at 18-years-of-age was a bit surreal. There’s a little bit of luck in football. Mine came when Paul Goddard got injured. My manager, the great John Lyall, believed in me. He gave me the opportunity. Who’s to say that if someone had got injured at Sheffield Wednesday, Jamie wouldn’t have got into the first team and scored on his debut? Alternatively he might not have been ready for it. You don’t know. All players are different. You always find your level though. It might take some players longer. I found my level very young. Jamie has found his level now. 

“It was a huge honour to win the PFA Young Player of the Year Award in 1986. We had a fabulous season at West Ham that year. We finished third in the league. We played the best football and perhaps should have won the league. I got into the Under-21s and eventually got my full caps under Sir Bobby Robson. I had three years in the full England squad, from 1986 to 1989 and I had a fantastic time there. 

“I left West Ham for Everton in August 1988 because I got a bit frustrated. With the England squad, you get amongst players who were talking about all the trophies they were winning and all the money they were earning. I got frustrated. We finished third in 1986 and the next two seasons we nearly got relegated and I felt it was time for me to move on. I was a West Ham fan but from a professional point of view I wanted to go to a club where I would win the trophies. I chose Everton. We didn’t win trophies but I don’t regret signing for Everton because they were a fantastic club to play for. 

“Gazza had signed for Spurs from Newcastle for £2,000,000. My transfer was for £2,500,000; a British record. I could never quite get my head round going for more than Gazza because he was a far better player than me. Everton needed to replace Gary Lineker, who had gone to Barcelona, and they chose me. I was there for six years and scored 99 goals for the club. I did well enough but from a team point of view, apart from the 1989 post-Hillsborough FA Cup Final, I never got to winning anything with them.” 

Tony’s Everton career started with him scoring a hat trick on his debut against Newcastle United. 

“When you score after 34 seconds, you get a hat-trick and your team wins 4-0, debuts don’t come much better than that! It put even more pressure on my shoulders though. Everyone expected me to get 50 goals that year, but I was never going to score a hat-trick every game. 

“My first season culminated in the FA Cup Final against Liverpool. It was a good game. John Aldridge had opened the scoring. Stuart McCall scored a couple of goals for Everton then Rushy (Ian Rush) got a couple of goals for Liverpool. It was a good game and very emotional because of the Hillsborough disaster, which had happened the month before. For the Everton and Liverpool fans to come together, it was a wonderful experience. I didn’t have a good game. I didn’t sleep particularly well the night before. I felt tired and jaded at the end of a long season. Playing in an FA Cup Final was a dream come true. For lads growing up when I did, the be-all and end-all wasn’t to win the league but to play the FA Cup Final, so I was well pleased to have played in it, even though I didn’t play well. 

“My striking partners at Everton were Graeme Sharpe, Mike Newell, Peter Beardsley and Paul Rideout. They were top players. I really enjoyed my time at Everton. Looking back at my time there it was the right club at the wrong time. Everton won the league in 1987, I joined in 1988. I left in 1994 and they won the FA Cup in 1995. 

“When (Everton manager) Howard (Kendall) resigned, he was replaced by Mike Walker at a time when there were a lot of problems at Everton. On the last day of the season (1993/94) we had to beat Wimbledon to stay up and we were 2-0 down in a game we had to win. We were also relying on several other results to go our way. How on earth Everton stayed up I really don’t know!” 

The following season, Tony was back at West Ham United. 

“West Ham were looking for a goalscorer. I wanted to come back to London. I was delighted to sign for Harry (Redknapp) who was a tremendous manager. I had two more really good years there, and was top goalscorer. At the start of my third year Harry brought a few overseas players. If I wasn’t playing and scoring goals I wasn’t happy, so when the opportunity to play in Malaysia came up I took a chance and went. I thought it would be a little pay day at the end of my career and that then I would come back and play for one of my local clubs like Orient or Colchester or somewhere like that, which I would have been happy to do. 

“It didn’t quite work out in Malaysia for me and then Martin O’Neill and Leicester came knocking! 

“This came about because of my connection with Steve Walford, Martin’s first-team coach at Leicester. He had been a team-mate of mine at West Ham back in the early 1980s. He was an insurance broker. He looked after my dad’s car and house insurance for many years. When Wally used to ring up to renew the insurance, he’d asked my dad how I was doing. One of the times he did was when I was out in Malaysia and Wally said to my dad that he would speak to Martin about me. Leicester had just got into Europe as League Cup winners and they were looking for a player to boost the squad. And that was it. I met Martin at Watford Gap service station to discuss the move. I agreed a two-year deal. The transfer fee was £500,000 and I had three years at Leicester back in the Premier League, which in my wildest dreams, I couldn’t have anticipated.” 

Tony’s Leicester debut was the unforgettable 3-3 draw against Arsenal in August 1997. 

“I remember it well; Dennis Bergkamp’s hat-trick, and trying to separate Walshy and Ian Wright at the end who were trying to kill each other! It was a frustrating time for me when I first arrived because, although I believed in my ability and knew that I could score goals, I wasn’t fit. Martin knew that. I played in the debacle at Grimsby when we were knocked out of the League Cup. He sent me on loan to Birmingham to get a bit of sharpness back. When I came back to the Club, I was in much better condition .Then the Old Trafford game came round. We beat them 1-0, I scored and the Leicester fans still talk to me about that to this day. I first played at Old Trafford in 1983. That game was in 1998, so it took me 15 years to score my first goal there! It was great that we won and I was really pleased to have scored my first goal at Old Trafford. 

“I got the Club’s Player of the Year the following season (1998/99).The two League Cup semi-final games against Sunderland were wonderful memories. I scored two goals in the first leg at the Stadium of Light and got the goal that put us through to Wembley at Filbert Street. It was a good Sunderland side with Quinny (Niall Quinn) and (Kevin) Phillips. It was a tough game for us. 

“Then we lost to Spurs in the final at Wembley. I’d had such a great season and I had been trying for 16 years to win a trophy. I was 33-years-of-age and when we lost, it all got a bit too much for me. I was feeling a bit sorry for myself standing on the edge of the penalty area. A few of the boys came up to me like Marshy (Ian Marshall) and all of a sudden I had a big arm go round my shoulder. It was Martin who said: “Don’t worry we will be back next year.” 

I said: “Gaffer, I’m 33! It’s just not going to happen for me!” But he said: “Look I promise you we will be back next year.” 

“He was true to his word! 

“We went back the following year, we beat Tranmere Rovers in the final and I got that elusive winner’s medal that had taken me 17 years to get. I thought I might get on the scoresheet but dear old Matt Elliott beat me to that. I was hoping to get to his header which hit the bar, but I couldn’t get to it. It was fantastic. There is a picture of me holding up the cup .You can see the smile on my face! Back in Leicester we went round the town on an open top bus. It was just brilliant. Wonderful times. You look back and you realise how good the team was. Everyone used to call us the grinders but we had some really top players. 

“My first goal on my debut, for West Ham was against Spurs. My 100th league goal, for Everton, was against Spurs and my 200th league goal, for Leicester, was against Spurs. The Supporters’ Club gave me a glass bowl to honour my 200th goal which I thought was really nice. 

“Leicester was a wonderful time for me. I played in Europe for the only time in my career when we played Atlético Madrid. Playing for Leicester, I scored my first-ever goals at Old Trafford, Liverpool and Leeds. I probably achieved more at Leicester than for any of my other clubs. 

“When Martin left for Celtic (in June 2000) I knew that I would leave as well. Everything I’d done and wanted to do was with Martin. The next season, in the days before the transfer window, I played a couple of games for Leicester at the start of the season in the Premier League, went to Norwich City in the Championship, then went to Barnet as a player-manager in League 2, and then went to Millwall in League 1. I played for four different clubs in four different divisions in one season. People tell me what a great achievement it was but I tell them that I started the season in the Premier League and finished up in League 1. It wasn’t a great achievement! 

“I had a little go at management at Barnet but it didn’t work for me. I didn’t really know what to do with myself so I made a couple of phone calls and got on Sky on Soccer Saturday in 2001. 15 years later I am still there. I must be due a testimonial I suppose. I love the show. For any football supporter that cares about football, it’s the one show you would watch on a Saturday.”