David Beckham? Who the ****ing hell are you?
72 minutes had passed of the Coca Cola Cup second round first leg tie at the Goldstone Ground when Alex Ferguson turned to his bench. As Tony Millard announced that Andrei Kanchelskis was to be replaced by a scrawny 17-year-old Manchester United debutant called David Beckham, the Brighton crowd greeted him with a roaring chant: “Who the fucking hell are you?”
It is safe to say that within 20 years, we would all know who Beckham was. England captain and record outfield caps holder. One of the best set piece takers ever to play the game. Ex-Real Madrid, AC Milan and Paris Saint Germain.
Premier League, FA Cup, Champions League, La Liga, Ligue 1 and MLS Cup Winner. PFA Young Player of the Year, BBC Sports Personality of the year and runner up in the 1999 Ballon d’Or.
Not a bad career for a bloke who endured such a rude welcoming to professional football courtesy of the 16,649 who packed into the Goldstone on Wednesday 23rd September 1992 to see the famous Red Devils.
Whilst the evening went onto gain notoriety in later years for the irony surrounding the chant directed at Beckham, there is another reason why Brighton versus Manchester United should be remembered – it helped to keep the Seagulls in business.
The Albion were up to their eyeballs in debt. PAYE, VAT, an Australian club who we had signed the forgettable Dave Clarkson from, police bills, debts to banks and building societies – you name it and Brighton owed money to it.
The club’s debts were reckoned to be around £2 million. That seems a trivial amount when Brighton now sign players for the Development Squad for twice that, but in 1992 it resulted in several winding up orders and plenty of court appearances.
Barry Lloyd was spinning many plates, juggling his role as managing director off-the-pitch with being manager on it. Throughout the season, the Albion needed to keep finding ways to bring in money to stave off the very real threat of going out of business.
There was the famous sale of goalkeeper Mark Beeney to The Leeds United in April 1993, often referred to as being “the greatest save in Brighton history.”
The £350,000 the Albion received for their number one paid off a massive VAT bill. Lloyd himself ran the bank draft straight to the Worthing Tax Office to avert the club being wound up in the High Court the following day.
Playing Beckham and his star studded Manchester United teammates six months before Beeney’s sale had given Brighton another cash injection.
In the days when League Cup ties were played over two games, the Albion picked up a vital £92,000 for their Goldstone meeting with Alex Ferguson’s side and their trip to Old Trafford two weeks later for the second leg.
It was one of the most important results off the pitch of the season with the money being used to pay off a looming VAT demand. What happened on the pitch was not too shabby either as Brighton drew the first leg 1-1 with the League Cup holders.
Ferguson made a number of changes from his normal line up, but these were born out of necessity rather than the sort of deliberate weakening of sides we see in the League Cup these days.
Back in the early 1990s, teams had to play a certain number of players from their own country in European competition.
For a cosmopolitan team like Manchester United with a range of different nationalities, that made things difficult. United famously had to drop Peter Schmeichel whenever they played in Europe and use Gary Walsh in goal instead.
United were set to travel to Torpedo Moscow in the the UEFA Cup the following week and so Ferguson saw the trip to the south coast as a chance to give his homegrown fringe players some much needed game time ahead of their tie in the Russian capital.
Walsh took over from Schmeichel in goal and other names you might have forgotten or never heard of were included in the United starting line up; the likes of Neil Webb, Lee Martin and Danny Wallace. And of course, that 17-year-old kid called Beckham on the bench. Who the fucking hell was he?
It was Wallace who gave United the lead in the 37th minute. Paul Ince’s shot from distance hit Robert Codner with the loose ball falling to Wallace.
He collected it, cut inside from the wing and fired an effort past Beeney to reward United for their first half dominance. Beeney would go onto make an extraordinary double save from Brian McClair and Webb.
The second half was a different story however. United sat back and that allowed a Brighton side who grew in confidence to come back into the tie.
Nine years on from Gordon Smith’s “And Smith must score” moment against United and Andy Kennedy suffered similar when presented with a gilt-edged chance just past the hour mark.
Webb had played a blind pass across his own back line that would have had Ferguson reaching for a hairdryer afterwards had the Goldstone been equipped with such luxuries.
Rather than finding one of Gary Pallister or Steve Bruce, the ball went straight to Kennedy who was now in one-on-one with only Walsh to beat.
Whilst Smith’s famous miss under the twin towers in the FA Cup Final was all the more shocking because he was normally such a reliable marksman, Kennedy was something of a donkey.
When you combined his lack of ability with the fact that this was his first appearance of the season, it perhaps should not have come as a surprise that all he could do when presented with such a golden opportunity was hit it straight at Walsh.
The unknown Beckham entered proceedings seven minutes after Kennedy’s miss. The “Who the fucking hell are you” chants didn’t last long as within 90 seconds of Beckham’s introduction, the Goldstone faithful had gone from serenading the future England captain to celebrating an equaliser.
For a man who would go onto achieve so much in the game, there is something rather nice that Beckham’s first ever action as a professional footballer was to watch Matthew Edwards score a goal.
It was a well worked one too. Robert Codner switched the ball from right to left to Ian Chapman. Chapman was able to bomb forward from left back – which begs questions about where United’s new right winger had disappeared to – and he hung up a cross to the back post where Edwards ghosted away from Martin to head past Walsh.
Come the full time whistle and Ferguson was livid, saying afterwards: “We played it like a practice match and got the kind of result you would expect from that.”
United were eliminated from Europe by Torpedo Moscow the week following the Goldstone stalemate and as a result, Ferguson went full strength for the second leg at Old Trafford.
Brighton would not face Beckham again and into the Manchester United side came Schmeichel, Paul Parker, Bryan Robson and Ryan Giggs.
Over 2,000 Albion fans made the journey to the Theatre of Dreams where Mark Hughes scored the only goal in the 14th minute to give United a 1-0 win on the night and a 2-1 victory on aggregate.
That was not the last time Brighton faced United in the 1992-93 season either. After pocketing £115,577 from a crowd of 17,581 cramming into the Goldstone to watch the Albion shock Portsmouth in the third round of the FA Cup, Brighton were handed another trip to Old Trafford for a lucrative fourth round tie.
The Red Devils won the day again, 1-0 with Giggs scoring the only goal of the game. It was a fixture worth another £100,000 to the Albion, meaning that Brighton’s luck in being paired with Manchester United three times that year contributed nearly £200,000 to keeping the club alive.
United would go onto lift the Premier League title come the end of the season, their first under Ferguson and the start of their dominance of English football.
Whilst United were celebrating their coronation as champions, Brighton were back in court faced with another winding up order in July 1993.
The Albion continued to be dogged by financial woes until October 1993, when a High Court appearance led to a club restructuring and the arrival of David Bellotti as chief executive.
To say that Brighton and Manchester United went on slightly different paths following that League Cup game at the Goldstone would be like saying Adolf Hitler was slightly nasty.
That we are now both competing in the Premier League is testament to the journey that the Albion have been on over the past 30 years. As for that Beckham kid, he hasn’t done too badly either.
