Nicknames for groups of players

[ad hoc]

It's amazing to think the Arsenal back 4 of Dixon, Bould, Adams and Winterburn didn't have a nickname back in the day.

Some of us had names for them

[tee rex]

The Magic Square French midfield of the mid-80s: Platini, Giresse, Fernández and Tigana

Three names and styles etched on my memory, plus Fernandez. Couldn't pick him out in a line-up.

[tee rex]

But what about the cups and the support?

Undone at the back?

[Lang Spoon]

I prefer 'Class of '92' because it sounds more like a cheapo exploitation film.

Brian Dennehy would be in that, either as grizzled weary cop or sinister school janitor.

[Lang Spoon]

I think Sellick’s reserve team (containing the Imperious Danny McGrain, Lou fucking Macari, Davie Hay, some wee scrote called Dalglish who was probably too wee and lacking a massive obstructing arse to ever make it) of the late sixties/early seventies was nicknamed “the Quality St Gang”.

[ChrisJ]

IIRC, the Shrewsbury back 5 of 2002-03 - Ian Dunbavin, David Artell, Matt Redmile, Darren Moss and Jason Van Blerk - were known collectively as That Useless Shower of Cunts.

[elguapo4]

I'm pretty sure "Fergies Fledglings" were a different group of players than "the class of 92", The former included players like Deniol Graham,Russell Beardsmore and Lee Sharpe who came through a couple of years earlier

[Lang Spoon]

Oh Christ, Lee Sharpe. The English Babel.

[3 Colours Red]

And of course you could add Giggs to the list of Fledglings.

[Satchmo Distel]

re France midfield 1982-86: Fernandez superseded Genghini, who had been the regular choice in the 1982 finals. I was surprised to see that Giresse made his France debut way back in 1974 although he didn't become a regular until 1981 in his late 20s.

[EIM]

I think Sellick’s reserve team (containing the Imperious Danny McGrain, Lou fucking Macari, Davie Hay, some wee scrote called Dalglish who was probably too wee and lacking a massive obstructing arse to ever make it) of the late sixties/early seventies was nicknamed “the Quality St Gang”.

The Quality Street Gang were (also) a Manchester criminal gang of the 60s. There's a famous story about the Krays coming up to Manchester to expand their cockney knees up empire, looking to take over clubs where George Best filled up Champagne Towers and dolly birds with short skirts on danced to The Hollies, only to be met at Piccadilly and turned around by angry locals. Well those locals were said to be the Quality Street Gang. The story is bollocks according to "Mad" "Frankie" "Fraser", so named because his name is Frank Fraser and he was once curator of the Museum of Art and Design in New York, and he's probably right. But let's not let the truth get in the way of a good tale.

There's a book called 'George Best, Mussolini and Me' by a fella called Sid Otty, real name Sadotti Cladinoro. He died last November and a load of his friends met at the Circus Tavern near mine before and after the funeral in Stockport. I'd never heard of him, but one of his friends came in my pub before The Circus as I always open at 11, an hour before them. Sid ran nightclubs in the 60s and was a close personal friend of George Best. He was also closely connected to the Quality Street Gang, or was according to a book about Jimmy the Weed, who shares the same middle name as Thomas the Tank-Engine and Rupert the Bear. It's unclear what Mussolini's role was in 1960s gangland Manchester, but some claim he was a confident of Gary Two-Dicks and Benny "Idiot" Barry.

None of this has anything to do with groups of players with a nickname, and I've not read the end of page 1 of this thread. Has anyone said the Spice Boys yet? Proboscis Spice - Ian Rush. Bulbous Spice - John Barnes. NotSureHowBeingALandlordAndDoingConferencesOnHowTo MakeMoneyFromPropertyStacksUpWithThatDockersTShirt Spice - Robbie Fowler. Little Davey Thommo Spice - David Thompson. And not to forget Phil Babb, who was probably just Phil Babb Spice, as there's nothing memorable about him apart from when he smashed his danglers against the post.

Apparently Michael Thomas played in the 1996 Cup Final. This seems ridiculous for some reason.

[EIM]

Oh Christ, Lee Sharpe. The English Babel.

Sharpe was brilliant, you madman. A product of his era, a totem for a new and swaggering Manchester. Young, exciting, twatted on E, Sharpe was as essential to Manchester shedding of post-industrial decay as the Hacienda was. As I wrote on this very board in 2016:

Lee Sharpe. In the 1980s Manchester was a dull rainy city wallowing in post-industrial decay. Then Tony Wilson formed Factory records and signed Lee Sharpe from Torquay. His debut album was a hattrick against Arsenal in a speckled blue adidas kit that was, for a while, the only colour in the North of England. I remember seeing him play live for the first time, in the Hacienda. I was stood next to Joy Division, John the Postman, Mick Hucknall and John Cooper Clarke. They went on to form Happy Mondays and open Dry Bar. Lee Sharpe died in 1995 and was sold to Leeds.

I think I'd been drinking, but be that as it may, it's still a fairly faithful retelling of the Lee Sharpe story.

[Gangster Octopus]

Martin Butler, Michael Proctor, Chris Sedgwick and Andy Monkhouse were known as the Four Fair-Haired Fops up Front. By me and Shorty Medlock's co-catsitter...

[Benjm]

I'm pretty sure "Fergies Fledglings" were a different group of players than "the class of 92", The former included players like Deniol Graham,Russell Beardsmore and Lee Sharpe who came through a couple of years earlier

I think the 'Class of '92' tag came later as their achievements mounted; they were originally seen as a second wave of 'Fergie's Fledglings'.

[ursus arctos]

Rob Smyth claims that the Arsenal quartet were called the Back Four

[blameless]

That article isn't bad, but I'd still have made space for Juve's brilliant but utterly ruthless Thuram-Ferrara-Montero-Zambrotta defence in that list somewhere.

[Various Artist]

Unless I'm missing something obvious here, that article is by Rob Smyth, not Barney "Barry" Ronay...

[ursus arctos]

No coffee plus Autocorrect.

Changed

[tracteurgarcon]

I can't get that list to show up for some reason, therefore the ones I'm thinking of (BBC, MSN, Wigan's Three Amigos of the 90s) might already be there. I'll make one up then.

For Wales: Bale, Ramsey and Allen should be known as the WonderBRA - they give us all our oomph and without them, there's not much there.

And, of course, they gave you a semi...

[sw2borshch]

The Rioch era Boro phoenices that rose from the ashes were 'Bruce(y)'s Babes'.

[Pérou Flaquettes]

Sharpe was brilliant, you madman. A product of his era, a totem for a new and swaggering Manchester. Young, exciting, twatted on E, Sharpe was as essential to Manchester shedding of post-industrial decay as the Hacienda was. As I wrote on this very board in 2016:

I think I'd been drinking, but be that as it may, it's still a fairly faithful retelling of the Lee Sharpe story.

*applause*, bravo EIM.

Spoon is so wrong with his risible Babelisation of Sharpe but maybe he is not entirely at fault here. I think I know why our Spoony is way off beam on this one: it is much easier to apprehend and really get under the skin of the Lee Sharpe thing if you lived through that late 1980s-early/1990s era, and preferably in the Manchester/Yorkshire area (and even better if you partied these years away). I would go as far as saying that this prerequisite is essential to fully appreciate why Lee Sharpe is like no other in English football. Empathy and insights are key here. Anyone who tries to get into the Lee Sharpe story but feel alienated by the context should use their imagination and let it run wild, otherwise all this will be lost on them.

In 2010, I wrote an 8,000-word piece (4 parts) on Lee Sharpe, here (in French).

I adore that era, the main northern clubs involved, the protagonists, the shifting sands, the frissons of leaving behind a century-old era for the unknown. I love this Baudelairian dramaturgy of a world being destroyed before one’s own eyes (for the Haussmanisation of Paris, read the Scudamorisation of English football), the sense that the domestic game was undergoing a painful revolution but that a handful of key players, such as Lee Sharpe, wilfully refused to acknowledge this and continued to cling on to the old world, purblind to events around them and the wretched march of history. There was a bit of the nostalgic Che in Sharpe. Forget Cantona as some sort of romantic rebel, the Marseillais simply cannot be that revolutionary, he was too outrageously successful; the real poète maudit of footballdom is Lee Sharpe. He screwed up big time, but with extraordinary obduracy and panache.

I love the whole Lee Sharpe story, from the very beginning (how he was "let go" at 15 from the Birmingham City centre of excellence after a few months only – he saw football as one big joke to enjoy with mates, not for him the rigid and ruthless youth development system), to how he came to sign for Man United at 17 as an apprentice (complete fluke, at Torquay – he impressed Fergie so much that the Scot signed him there and then, at 2am in Sharpe’s £10 a week bedsit, after seeing him play for the first time a few hours before), right to the bitter end, the WTF Michael Jackson season at Exeter City as well, of course, as the Grindavik and Garforth cameos. Only Lee Sharpe in British football could have found himself in the midst of such fuckwittery. Gazza too of course, but there’s a tragic edge to Gazza that runs counter to the memories we want to treasure about that era, the insouciance, the very bearable lightness of being, of being a complete fraud too, a gate-crasher... And it’s harder to warm to Gazza on some levels.

I love the beginning of the Fergie years, how that era of the nascent PL grew and was shaped, the characters of the time, what Sharpe symbolises within that transitional context (the big-bang of the Premier League and how he failed to adapt), I love Madchester, the early 1990s, Leeds etc. The whole 1986-1996 footballing decade is supremely interesting and Sharpe is central to all of this. Not only did he define that seminal era, he was that era, which is the essence of EIM's message I believe.

He was an endearing character too, fun, generous but also mentally fragile, wracked by doubt and guilt. He was the languid kid from the Black Country who didn’t even want to become a footballer, and carried with him the feeling that nothing in this fairytale was ever supposed to happen to him just like sinners carry a metaphorical cross throughout their life, as a penance. But he could also be a pain in the arse, an arrogant sod (eg at Bradford City). He frustrated the hell out of people, he was someone who just wouldn’t change his festive ways when he had what it took to become a superstar for United and England.

There were plenty of better players than Sharpe in that era (Platt, Hughes, Robson etc.) but only Sharpe dazzled crowds. Has anyone ever fantasised about Platt? Nope. Did many kids dream of being Mark Hughes? I don’t think so. Even Lineker hardly set the pulses racing. At some point in the late 1990s England briefly had Steve Guppy on the left wing… Steve fucking Guppy ffs! Sharpey had two Guppys in each calf for Christ’s sake. But the immature idiot wouldn’t bow to the will of Fergie, wouldn’t buckle down like his mates Beckham & co, and screwed up a glittering Giggs-type career because of all this tomfoolery.

The French language has a useful word to encapsulate the likes of Lee Sharpe: "attachiant". It’s (Guardian link) "a combination of attachant (captivating, endearing) and the slang word chiant (bloody nuisance) to denote someone you cannot live with but cannot live without.". There was a lot of that in Lee Sharpe, and more, right until he hung up his boots. At Garforth Town, with Socrates. 13 minutes of pure bliss.

[treibeis]

"Did many kids dream of being Mark Hughes? I don't think so."

Maybe not kids, but I reckon quite a few blokes dreamt of being Mark Hughes. Me, for a start.

[EIM]

Jesus Christ. Why can't someone write 8000 words on Lee Sharpe in ENGLISH?! Kev's response is more beautiful than my post deserved. Not much could get me Googling Haussmann at 1am, but OTF and Lee Sharpe have managed it. The Cantona and Sharpe comparisons interest me. If they were magazines then Sharpe would be the Just 17 to Eric's Cosmopolitan or Vogue. Sharpe was the teenage crush that shaped my adult crush on Cantona. And where Sharpe was the transitional figure representing a changing Manchester, Eric became symbolic of a new, confident, continental city. Gary Neville's role in all this remains to be determined, the hotel building dickhead.

Anyyyyway. I'm off to learn French to read that article. J'ai perdu mon stylo dans le jardin de ma tente. Est qu'il y a un singe dans l'arbre? Lee Sharpe était plus rapide que les guêpes.

[EIM]

I too used to want to be Mark Hughes, but only so I could kick balls really fucking hard in mid-air.

[EIM]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiIIr1xX1lU

sigh