Remembering When Leicester City Broke The British Transfer Record In 1968
Fifty-three years ago this summer, on 11 June, 1968, Leicester City smashed the British record for a transfer fee when they signed England Under-23 international forward Allan Clarke from Fulham for £150,000. This broke the record that had been set the previous season when Tottenham Hotspur signed Martin Chivers from Southampton for £135,000.
The 22 year-old Clarke was the up-and-coming star of English football. A native of Staffordshire married to a Nottingham girl, he had joined Fulham, then in the old First Division, from Third Division Walsall at the end of the 1965/66 season.
At Fulham he was an immediate success. He scored 29 goals in his first season and during the season leading up to his signing for Leicester, he scored another 26 goals even though he was playing in a side about to be relegated from the top division.
He was a clever, fast-moving centre-forward, who was a good header of the ball. He had been selected for the England Under-23 side and had represented the Football League. He had also been called up for England but had yet to win a full cap. The view was, though, that he would be a certainty for the England World Cup Finals squad in Mexico in 1970.
Leicester had been angling after Clarke for nearly nine months. Manager Matt Gillies had made an unsuccessful attempt to sign him at the beginning of the previous season when it became known that Clarke was unsettled at Craven Cottage and that Fulham were ready to sell their star forward.
The deal which eventually brought Clarke to Leicester had been under negotiation since 16 May, 1968. As part of the deal, Leicester City’s cult hero Frank Large, who had made such an impact in his seven months at Filbert Street, went to Fulham. He was valued at £50,000, even though Leicester had only paid Northampton Town a fee of £18,000 to bring him to Leicester.
There was some resistance to Leicester losing Frank Large. Frank’s son Paul told us that his father really did not want to leave Leicester. The Leicester coach Bert Johnson was also very opposed to him leaving the Club. Bert’s daughter Chris told us that had it been left to him, Bert would have called the deal off rather than lose Frank.
Had the Filbert Street club not flown to Zambia on a close season tour on 18 May, the deal would have been concluded sooner. Paul Large recalls that Frank realised that he was going to be part of the deal when he was at the airport prior to departure, but he was still determined to go on the tour. Fulham announced that they would await City’s return on the 8 June.
Negotiations were resumed as soon as Leicester City’s tour was over. They were complicated by the fact that seven other clubs made late bids. The decisive factor working in Leicester’s favour though was Fulham’s insistence on signing Frank Large.
Within a day, both Clarke and Large had agreed terms, but other hitches 'of a business nature' cropped up. Both clubs held special board meetings and by the evening of 10 June the deal had reached the stage that all that was required was a meeting in London of the people concerned to complete the formalities.
These were concluded on 11 June. The next day, Allan and his wife Margaret were pictured on the Filbert Street pitch and it was reported that they were already house hunting in Leicester, whilst staying with relatives in Nottingham before going on holiday.
The view in Leicester was that his signing really augured well for the future success of the Club, which had already been established in the top division for eleven successive seasons. In the end, it didn’t work out this way.
There is no doubt that Clarke was a supremely gifted player. A hat-trick in his second home match against Manchester City boded well. However, Leicester had a disastrous season. In November, Johnson was sacked and Gillies resigned in protest.
Frank O’Farrell was appointed manager in December and although he guided Leicester to their third FA Cup Final in nine years (when Allan Clarke was the Man of the Match), they not only lost this final but were also relegated when they lost the final game of the season 3-2 at Old Trafford.
O’Farrell has said that although he managed to keep stars such as Peter Shilton and David Nish at the Club, Clarke just wasn’t interested in staying. He was determined to leave Leicester and was transferred to Don Revie’s Leeds United for another British transfer record fee of £165,000, only twelve months after signing for Leicester City as Britain’s most expensive player.