“Following the Malcom saga, it got me wondering about other last-minute transfer switches. What are the latest times in a transfer process that a player has backed out of one deal for another?” muses Stephen Dornish.

Let’s start with a transfer that pretty much changed the landscape of English football, when Roy Keane sent Kenny Dalglish into a fury by pulling out of a verbal agreement to join Blackburn in favour of Sir Alex Ferguson and Manchester United in the summer of 1993. Rob Smyth wrote about it recently.

“Keane asked for £500,000 a year, he eventually accepted £400,000. Those few hours of bargaining were crucial: when Dalglish phoned Ewood Park to see if somebody could prepare the contract, everyone had gone home or to the pub. He shook hands on the deal with Keane and said they could sort the contract on Monday. Instead he went back to the family home in Cork the following day and celebrated as approximately 100% of 21‑year‑olds would in such circumstances. He awoke on the Sunday morning with an intrusive hangover, when his older brother Pat told him Ferguson was on the phone.” From that moment, Keane was never going to sign for another club.

Norman Biggar points us in the direction of Frank McAvennie, who went so far as to pose in a Partick Thistle shirt after leaving South China. “On 30 December 1992, McAvennie had agreed a short-term deal with Thistle. A press conference was arranged and McAvennie was even paraded alongside Thistle’s manager at that time, John Lambie. The contract had been written up, gentlemen’s agreements agreed and all that remained to be done was a signature on a dotted line. The Celtic manager Liam Brady, however, got wind of McAvennie’s apparent availability and managed to put the kibosh on Thistle’s plans such that the player signed for his former club the very next day.”

“I give you Diego Forlán in 2002,” writes Garry Brogden. “He was put on a plane by Middlesbrough officials in Uruguay as he was expected to sign for us; as far as we were told it was a formality, and he was coming over to finalise the deal. He was met at Gatwick by Manchester United officials who whisked him to Manchester and he signed for United within hours.”

Diego Forlán didn’t make it to Middlesbrough. Photograph: Martin Rickett/PA

There is also the story of Dietmar Hamann signing with Bolton on a free from Liverpool in July 2006, only to have a sudden change of heart and join Manchester City the following day instead. For a £400,000 fee. Plus the whole Mikel John Obi saga with Manchester United and Chelsea.

Önder Susam points to “the golden days of Turkey’s transfer window, during which the big three tried to snatch upcoming talents from each other. One of these deals was between Fenerbahçe and Kayserispor, regarding Mehmet Topuz. After Beşiktaş agreed with the player and his club Kayserispor, Fenerbahçe decided to offer more money (€9m) and a player in return. In a matter of days, Topuz became a Fenerbahçe player.”

And we couldn’t cover changes of heart properly without referencing Harry Redknapp. Here’s Chris Wilcox: “It has gone down in Wigan Athletic folklore that, in summer 2003, Jason Roberts and his uncle and agent, the late Cyrille Regis, were driving up the M6 to join the Latics in the Championship from West Brom. Upon receiving a call from Redknapp with an offer to stay in the top flight with Portsmouth, Roberts and Regis did a U-turn at the next junction and ended up signing for the south coast side on loan.”



• Have we missed anybody? Let us know at knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.

Average teams

“Can any team to be more average than Bristol Rovers?” asked Gerry Prewett. “After the end of last season, the Gas had played a total of 4,030 league games from the time they joined the league in 1920 (including one Conference season). The stats are: W1,495 D 1,037 L 1,498 GF 5,767 GA 5,760.”

“As average as Bristol Rovers are, they are by my count only the second most average team in the English leagues (considering only those clubs with 1,000-plus games played in the Football League and Conference),” writes James Clarke, who we will now let take over the floor. “Rotherham United just about beat them on a marginal decision. Since forming in 1925 Rotherham’s league record is:



P 3,802 W1,426 D948 L1,428 F5,589 A5,581

“Rotherham have more games played than Bristol Rovers, and I’d also rank win/loss balance as being more important than goals for/against balance in a tie-breaker. West Ham get bronze, losing out on goal difference:

P 3,802 W1,425 D 950 L1,427 F5,611 A5,599

“Those three clubs are well clear of the rest when it comes to being generally average. But Colchester are worthy of a shout as well for having a perfect 1:1 win loss ratio: Won 1,135, Drawn 838, Lost 1,135. But they are well off the pace on their overall goal difference: For 4,354, Against 4,412. I did a graph of the most average average clubs to help me work this out. The closer they are to the bottom left corner, the more average they are.

Average teams. Photograph: James Clarke/Guardian readers

Knowledge archive

“With Scott Parker joining Spurs, it means he joins the fourth London club of his career (adding to Charlton, Chelsea and West Ham),” wrote Chris Nathans in September 2011. “Which player has played for the most London sides, or alternatively the most sides in the same city?”

Plenty of you pointed out that Clive Allen joined seven London clubs – QPR, Arsenal (without playing a game), Crystal Palace, Tottenham, Chelsea, West Ham and Millwall. No one could better that. Andrew Williams suggested Andrei Ivanov, who played for five Moscow clubs (FShM Moscow, Spartak, Dynamo, CSKA and Nika Moscow) in an 18-year career, while William Hogg, stretching the boundaries of Glasgow to breaking point, noted that the Scottish record was likely to be held by Max Murray, who turned out for Queens Park, Rangers, Third Lanark and Clyde (who played in Glasgow in the 1970s) in the 1950s.

• For thousands more questions and answers take a trip through the archive.

Can you help?

“The Bill Shankly documentary Nature’s Fire made reference to the fact that the village of Glenbuck in Scotland nurtured over 50 professional footballers. It is now a ghost village but at its height its population was still only 1,700. Can any other town or city lay claim to being more prolific at creating professional footballers per capita?” asks Gregg Bakowski.

Hey @TheKnowledge_GU - is this the first time a husband and wife have been officials of a match? https://t.co/b0C5XoycWZ — Jon Fox-Pitt (@JonFoxPitt) July 28, 2018

“What is the biggest altitudinal difference between two clubs that are still considered local rivals?” wonders Will Drabble.

“If Lucas Hernández was born a year and a half later, his age would be a lower than his shirt number (21). Have any World Cup winners achieved this?” muses Edward Gibson.

David Stockdale got called up to the England squad in 2011, although he never got a game. Would he have become the first player to play for both England and the England C team - or has it been done before? — Owen Collins (@OGBCollins) July 31, 2018

Has any player been recalled from a World Cup Squad to play a club match ? I know Stanley Matthews played an exhibition game in USA in ‘50 as the World Cup was going on. — Jim Hilton (@HiltonJim) July 31, 2018

This season, Tranmere Rovers return to contest League Two alongside eight teams with the suffix Town, including six successive fixtures against these clubs over the New Year. What is the record for successive fixtures versus clubs with the same (or no) prefix or suffix? — Kieho Várzea Ma'a (@topes_lose) July 29, 2018

• Email your questions and answers to knowledge@theguardian.com or tweet @TheKnowledge_GU.

