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Blackburn are the enemy aren't they but it's surprising how tolerant both sets of fans are when a player moves from one club to the other, either directly or indirectly with stays at other clubs between the two.
Some iconic players too, so let us have a quick look at one or two of them.
Kevin Davies
Bolton legend (although the way he left the club with his wife sounding off via twitter was undignified to say the least) and a £7.5 million buy by Rovers - which was big money back in those days!
Cyril (his middle name - surely you knew that!) started his career at Chesterfield playing mostly as a wide midfielder before moving on to Southampton.
Before he did he knocked in a hat trick against us in Chesterfields fantastic run in the FA Cup to the semi's before they were well and truly robbed by Middlesbrough.
Davies moved to Graeme Souness’s Southampton in May 1997 and, in his first spell with them, scored nine league goals and impressed many.
This led current England Manager Roy Hodgson signing him for £7.5 million in July 1998, ten times what Southampton had paid for him a year earlier and also a club record. (Chesterfield received no more money from the switch, having failed to negotiate a sell-on clause.) As part of the deal, James Beattie went the other way. However, Davies scored just one league goal, in 21 appearances for the club.
At the end of the campaign, Blackburn were relegated a year after finishing sixth in the league and a mere four years after winning the league.
Southampton re-signed their former striker in exchange for Egil Østenstad in August 1999. However, just two league matches into his return at Southampton, Davies found himself sent off in a defeat against Liverpool after coming on as a substitute for Mark Hughes. He struggled to gain a first team place throughout the next four years, and was more often than not a substitute. For the 2002–03 season, Davies went on loan to Millwall in the First Division, where he played 9 times, scoring 3 goals.
In the summer of 2003, he joined Bolton having been released by Southampton - and the rest as you know is history!
El Hadji Diouf
A fans favourite - but not one of mine!
Old 'spit' first appeared on the scene when Liverpool's Gerard Houllier bought him from French club Lens for £10 million.
Just like Davies above, Diouf scored against us in March 2003 but he is more remembered for his following game, a UEFA Cup game away at Celtic where he spat at a Celtic fan, Disgusting.
His career at Liverpool quickly went downhill after that.
He failed to score for the remainder of the 2002–03 season or at all in the 2003–04 season which saw him pick up 13 yellow and one red card. By then he had become unpopular due to both his attitude and his lack of goals.
Jamie Carragher later said of him "He has one of the worst strike rates of any forward in Liverpool history. He's the only no. 9 ever to go through a whole season without scoring, in fact he's probably the only no. 9 of any club to do that. He was always the last one to get picked in training." At the beginning of the 2004–5 season he was loaned to Bolton Wanderers. At the end of the season-long loan and after scoring a mere six goals in 80 appearances with only three in the league, he left Liverpool signing permanently for Bolton in the summer of 2005.
We all know what he did for us but yet again his leaving was less than classy when he basically quit with a number of matches left to play with relegation seeming certain and said that he expected a big club to come in and sign him.
Well if you call Sunderland a big club he was right.
As I say, not one of my favourite players at all.
Diouf made a promising start for Sunderland but failed to score in any of his sixteen appearances.
Diouf then signed for Blackburn Rovers for an undisclosed fee on 30 January 2009, signing a three-and-half-year deal after just six months at the Stadium of Light, re-joining former Bolton manager Sam (I'm leaving to spend time with the family) Allardyce at the club.
Well Diouf eventually showed his true colours at Blackburn too and on 20 August 2011, Rovers manager Steve Kean confirmed that Diouf was not in his first-team plans and that he expected him to leave before the end of the 2011–12 transfer window.
On 31 August 2011 Blackburn terminated Diouf's contract by mutual consent. He had fallen out with manager Kean after returning late for pre-season training.
Diouf has messed around at a few clubs since then and is surprisingly still registered as a player at Leeds but hasn’t been in the first team in a long time.
Good riddance to him.
Oh one small bit of trivia - for a while he lived across the road from my brother!
John Byrom
One for us oldies and a true Bolton legend.
John Byrom (born 28 July 1944 in Blackburn, Lancashire) is an English former footballer.
Signed by his home town club, Blackburn Rovers where he had won England international youth honours, he played over 100 games for them before being signed in the summer of 1966 by near neighbours Bolton Wanderers for £25,000. Originally signed to partner Francis Lee and Wyn Davies, when both players quickly left, Byrom became the senior striker.
As Bolton moved between the second and third divisions of English football, he scored 130 goals in his ten years at Burnden Park, including twenty when Bolton won the Third Division title in 1973, before moving back to Blackburn for a final season, retiring in 1977 with a knee injury.
The Bolton fans' song for him was "Someone scored a goal, John Byrom" to the tune of cumbaya.
On retiring, he took many jobs including driving, sweeping and selling cars before finally setting up his own gas cylinder business, from which he retired in the mid-1990s.
Great, great player, you young ones don't know what you missed!
Hope you enjoyed this article and would want to add your memories of these three players and any others who 'Played for both Sides'.
Author: Sluffy
Some iconic players too, so let us have a quick look at one or two of them.
Kevin Davies
Bolton legend (although the way he left the club with his wife sounding off via twitter was undignified to say the least) and a £7.5 million buy by Rovers - which was big money back in those days!
Cyril (his middle name - surely you knew that!) started his career at Chesterfield playing mostly as a wide midfielder before moving on to Southampton.
Before he did he knocked in a hat trick against us in Chesterfields fantastic run in the FA Cup to the semi's before they were well and truly robbed by Middlesbrough.
Davies moved to Graeme Souness’s Southampton in May 1997 and, in his first spell with them, scored nine league goals and impressed many.
This led current England Manager Roy Hodgson signing him for £7.5 million in July 1998, ten times what Southampton had paid for him a year earlier and also a club record. (Chesterfield received no more money from the switch, having failed to negotiate a sell-on clause.) As part of the deal, James Beattie went the other way. However, Davies scored just one league goal, in 21 appearances for the club.
At the end of the campaign, Blackburn were relegated a year after finishing sixth in the league and a mere four years after winning the league.
Southampton re-signed their former striker in exchange for Egil Østenstad in August 1999. However, just two league matches into his return at Southampton, Davies found himself sent off in a defeat against Liverpool after coming on as a substitute for Mark Hughes. He struggled to gain a first team place throughout the next four years, and was more often than not a substitute. For the 2002–03 season, Davies went on loan to Millwall in the First Division, where he played 9 times, scoring 3 goals.
In the summer of 2003, he joined Bolton having been released by Southampton - and the rest as you know is history!
El Hadji Diouf
A fans favourite - but not one of mine!
Old 'spit' first appeared on the scene when Liverpool's Gerard Houllier bought him from French club Lens for £10 million.
Just like Davies above, Diouf scored against us in March 2003 but he is more remembered for his following game, a UEFA Cup game away at Celtic where he spat at a Celtic fan, Disgusting.
His career at Liverpool quickly went downhill after that.
He failed to score for the remainder of the 2002–03 season or at all in the 2003–04 season which saw him pick up 13 yellow and one red card. By then he had become unpopular due to both his attitude and his lack of goals.
Jamie Carragher later said of him "He has one of the worst strike rates of any forward in Liverpool history. He's the only no. 9 ever to go through a whole season without scoring, in fact he's probably the only no. 9 of any club to do that. He was always the last one to get picked in training." At the beginning of the 2004–5 season he was loaned to Bolton Wanderers. At the end of the season-long loan and after scoring a mere six goals in 80 appearances with only three in the league, he left Liverpool signing permanently for Bolton in the summer of 2005.
We all know what he did for us but yet again his leaving was less than classy when he basically quit with a number of matches left to play with relegation seeming certain and said that he expected a big club to come in and sign him.
Well if you call Sunderland a big club he was right.
As I say, not one of my favourite players at all.
Diouf made a promising start for Sunderland but failed to score in any of his sixteen appearances.
Diouf then signed for Blackburn Rovers for an undisclosed fee on 30 January 2009, signing a three-and-half-year deal after just six months at the Stadium of Light, re-joining former Bolton manager Sam (I'm leaving to spend time with the family) Allardyce at the club.
Well Diouf eventually showed his true colours at Blackburn too and on 20 August 2011, Rovers manager Steve Kean confirmed that Diouf was not in his first-team plans and that he expected him to leave before the end of the 2011–12 transfer window.
On 31 August 2011 Blackburn terminated Diouf's contract by mutual consent. He had fallen out with manager Kean after returning late for pre-season training.
Diouf has messed around at a few clubs since then and is surprisingly still registered as a player at Leeds but hasn’t been in the first team in a long time.
Good riddance to him.
Oh one small bit of trivia - for a while he lived across the road from my brother!
John Byrom
One for us oldies and a true Bolton legend.
John Byrom (born 28 July 1944 in Blackburn, Lancashire) is an English former footballer.
Signed by his home town club, Blackburn Rovers where he had won England international youth honours, he played over 100 games for them before being signed in the summer of 1966 by near neighbours Bolton Wanderers for £25,000. Originally signed to partner Francis Lee and Wyn Davies, when both players quickly left, Byrom became the senior striker.
As Bolton moved between the second and third divisions of English football, he scored 130 goals in his ten years at Burnden Park, including twenty when Bolton won the Third Division title in 1973, before moving back to Blackburn for a final season, retiring in 1977 with a knee injury.
The Bolton fans' song for him was "Someone scored a goal, John Byrom" to the tune of cumbaya.
On retiring, he took many jobs including driving, sweeping and selling cars before finally setting up his own gas cylinder business, from which he retired in the mid-1990s.
Great, great player, you young ones don't know what you missed!
Hope you enjoyed this article and would want to add your memories of these three players and any others who 'Played for both Sides'.
Author: Sluffy
Last edited by karlypants on Fri Feb 28 2014, 12:59; edited 1 time in total
