The Players who will feature in this series of articles aren't household names amongst Leeds fans and rightly so, as they make Habib Habibou look like a Leeds legend in comparison. To put it into perspective, Armando Sa made 11 appearances for Leeds, that's eleven more than any of these players. All were signed permanently and all never played a game. We kick off the series with the infamous David Livermore.
Tiger, Lion, Bee and Seagull but never a white There was only one man who could start this series off, and he is David Livermore. Signed by Kevin Blackwell from the London supporter's branch of Galatasaray, he was seen as a bit of a coup at the time. Livermore was a left sided player and had captained Millwall in the previous campaign where he had played in the FA Cup final alongside fellow Leeds flops, Curtis Weston and Peter Sweeney. When he joined Leeds he said,
"This is a huge club, this is where you want to be playing - at the right end of the division. I just want to be part of things here. Every player wants to play in the Premier League. That's the aim."
As it panned out, Livermore, signed for £400,000 by Leeds, signed for Hull City only 9 days later, going on to achieve his aim of promotion with the Tigers. The staggering thing about this transfer is, that Leeds actually made a loss on Livermore, which goes to show that Ken Bates didn't always run a tight ship. He was shifted on to Humberside as Leeds had got a player whom they thought was better, embarrassingly for us, that man was Kevin Nicholls. Blackwell justified his decision to us by saying,
"With everyone fit, David is unlikely to play - so when the opportunity came up for him to talk to Hull, we gave him that choice."
but anyone with half a brain saw this as a horrific piece of business and from a man who claimed to have travelled all over Europe to a number of top clubs, this was not expected of Blackwell. It turned out to be a signal of things to come as Leeds went from play off finalists to relegation cannon fodder under first Blackwell and then the poison dwarf, Dennis Wise. After Leeds he represented, Barnet, Hull, Brighton and a number of other clubs. He was also player manager at Histon, who famously knocked Leeds out of the FA Cup and he scored the last goal in English League football of the previous millennium, netting an injury time winner against Brentford.
"This is a huge club, this is where you want to be playing - at the right end of the division. I just want to be part of things here. Every player wants to play in the Premier League. That's the aim."
As it panned out, Livermore, signed for £400,000 by Leeds, signed for Hull City only 9 days later, going on to achieve his aim of promotion with the Tigers. The staggering thing about this transfer is, that Leeds actually made a loss on Livermore, which goes to show that Ken Bates didn't always run a tight ship. He was shifted on to Humberside as Leeds had got a player whom they thought was better, embarrassingly for us, that man was Kevin Nicholls. Blackwell justified his decision to us by saying,
"With everyone fit, David is unlikely to play - so when the opportunity came up for him to talk to Hull, we gave him that choice."
but anyone with half a brain saw this as a horrific piece of business and from a man who claimed to have travelled all over Europe to a number of top clubs, this was not expected of Blackwell. It turned out to be a signal of things to come as Leeds went from play off finalists to relegation cannon fodder under first Blackwell and then the poison dwarf, Dennis Wise. After Leeds he represented, Barnet, Hull, Brighton and a number of other clubs. He was also player manager at Histon, who famously knocked Leeds out of the FA Cup and he scored the last goal in English League football of the previous millennium, netting an injury time winner against Brentford.