The story of David Speedie could not be told by a contemporary player. He belongs to an era in which football players could work to the top of the tree through a form of internship – starting at the bottom and deserves the right to play for some of the best clubs in the country. The globalization of the game, in combination with the large number of young boys playing Academy Football, has more or less eradicated the old way to spot talent in lower divisions and to take the chance that it will be right.
His time in the game is quite literally told in his own words by Paul Hodgson in The David Speedie story (Pitch publishing). Hodgson, a lifelong Darlington supporter, one of the clubs of Speedie, and it is very much a “warts and all” biography that is entertaining, hard time and brutally honest.
It is not often that an end of 20one Century player can claim to have been a miner, but that is exactly what the young speedie was. “The most horrible job,” he recalls. “It made me even more determined to become a football player.”
For most people, Speedie was a Chelsea player and that is where he first became known after Stints with Barnsley and Darlington. He mentions Norman Hunter in Barnsley and George Herd and Billy Elliott on “Darlo” as enormous influences on his early career.
Chelsea saw him in Darlington and so they were so sharp to sign him that manager John Neal and chairman Ken Bates would have a reason to see the young striker play. Chelsea paid £ 80,000 for the 22-year-old who had scored 17 goals in the old fourth division in 1981-82. He scored twice in his first game against Oldham and in what was a terrible season 1982-83 for the club, Speedie was one of the few players who appeared with some credit. The fans, whose Speedie believes it was the best in the neighborhood, immediately went to the fiery and holding Scot, but Chelsea was not in a good place to avoided relegation to the third division. “I told John Neal, who was a manager I respected enormously, that I could not play in this team because it was not good enough to challenge a place in the first division, but he assured me that he brought in a group of players who were better than he let go,” says Speedie.
Neal was as good as his word, because a large team construction program started with players such as Pat Nevin, Kerry Dixon, Joe McLaughlin and Nigel Spackman who arrive in Stamford Bridge. In 1983-84, Speedie and Dixon formed an almost telepathic relationship on the field, although the relationship took time to flourish. The duo scored 41 competition goals when Chelsea won the title of the Second Division and for the next two seasons, Dixon and Speedie scored another 62 league goals when Chelsea claimed two top six finishes. In 1985-86, Speedie created a little history when he scored a hat trick at Wembley in the Full Members Cup final against Manchester City, who won Chelsea 5-4. “That was fantastic, but then my father told me I should have had five!”.
Things changed at Chelsea because Speedie found the new management team of John Hollins and – especially – coach Ernie Whalley, hard to work with. The 1986-87 season was not good for the club and sometimes Chelsea seemed in disorder. Speedie announced Ken Bates that he was not happy and so he was on his way from the club. Coventry City bought him for £ 750,000 and stated that they “shopping at Harrods”, which he found a bit embarrassing, but he loved his time at Highfield Road. “It was very nice and every day was fun. I loved Chelsea, but it had become sour to me; at Coventry working with George Curtis and John Sillett was great. I couldn’t wait to go into training every day, it was so good and perhaps the best time of my career.”
His next stop was Liverpool, who signed in January 1991. Kenny Dalglish was in charge at the time, but he left after four games that were replaced by Graeme Souness. Their relationship was not easy and Speedie knew he would not last long with Anfield with him in the Dugout. So it proved, because he was sold to Blackburn in the summer of 1991, where he again contacted Dalglish. He had a career-best season with 26 goals at Blackburn, but moved to Southampton for £ 400,000 in a deal in which Alan Shearer went in the opposite direction for £ 3.6 million. It was not a happy move for him or Kerry Dixon, who had acquired the saints in an attempt to reinvent the striking partnership of 1984. “It was a mistake to go there. They didn’t seem to like me and the attitude among the players was not good. It didn’t work and I was sent on loan a few times,” he says. His full-time career ended at Leicester City in 1993-94, where he played his role in their promotion to the Premier League.
Speedie also won 10 caps for Scotland and was very unfortunate not to be selected by his country for the World Cup 1986 in Mexico. However, he was in the Scotland side on the night that the legendary manager Jock Stein died in Wrexham: “Jock was a great man and a great football manager. We were all traumatized when we knew he had died in the room of the physio. I am sure I would have gone to Mexico if he was alive.”
We could continue because there is so much more in Paul Hodgson’s book to enjoy. It experiences a colorful career that reminds us that the game did not start with the Premier League and Skytv. Biographies can often be formal, but the real charm of the David Speedie story is that there is no attempt to remediate the story of a striker that always gave 100%.
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Game of the People was founded in 2012 and is on the 100 best football websites by various sources. The site consistently wins prizes for his work, about a wide range of topics. View all posts by Neil Fredrik Jensen
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