Gillespie was on around £250 a week at Man Utd and when Newcastle agreed to sell them Andy Cole for £7million, Kevin Keegan insisted on having the flying winger as part of the deal. So when Keegan along with some Newcastle directors and Gillespie were set to meet to sort out his contract, Fergie went along too acting on behalf of his Class of '92 graduate.The Scottish cheat was on top form once negotiations began as he blagged that Gillespie was on £600 a week. Not only this he managed to get our genius directors to stump up £1,200 a week in order to seal the deal. Unbelievable. You would think we were absolutely desperate to sell Cole to be fooled into such nonsense so easily.
So we lost Andy Cole and got ripped off on Gillespie. Whether this transfer was actually a good thing in the end is up for much debate on Tyneside. After all, without the sale of Cole we would not have brought in Ferdinand. The 95-96 season would never have happened and we wouldn't have had such great memories of Big Les dominating the Premier League to within a whisker of us being Champions. Plus everything that happened off the back of this like Asprilla's hat-trick with Gillespie being a major part of that game or Shearer choosing us over Man Utd for the next 10 years.
Then there's the other argument of, well we didn't win anything and Man Utd with Andy Cole in their side did end up as Champions in '96, he also went on score plenty of goals against us and who knows maybe Gillespie would have kept Beckham out of the team and the ex-England captain wouldn't be what he is today. Now there's a thought.Pros and cons on both sides but fact is facts and what happened, happened. Good or bad.
What wasn't a fact was how much Fergie told us Gillespie was on and happily ripped us off. Fergie telling porky pies and getting away with it?...now there's a fact. Rafa would agree.
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We were hardly ripped off by paying those wages. Gillespie was part of the youth setup at Man Utd, but I seem to remember went straight in as a regular starter for Newcastle. Overall it was a good deal - Gillespie was rated at £1m in the swap with Cole. He was probably the most outstanding of the class of 92 up to that point, because of his pace. Those who had seen him, knew Keegan had secured an excellent player, which somewhat softened the shock of losing Cole.
ReplyDeleteWell we were ripped off in the sense he blatantly lied about his wages, which we were basically looking to double to get him in. Should have been less.
DeleteCracking player though. One of our most underrated ever