Len: £75,000 would have saved us from relegation

Mar 29 2009 by James Hunter, Sunday Sun

IMAGINE falling off the Premier League’s £75million-a-year gravy train for the sake of a paltry £75,000 these days.

It is unthinkable.

But ex-Sunderland boss Len Ashurst believes that was how thin the dividing line was between keeping the Rokermen in the top flight and relegation in the mid-1980s.

That was the sum needed to bring goal machine John Aldridge to Wearside 25 years ago this month — and if the cheque had been written, Ashurst is convinced it would have changed the course of Sunderland’s history.

Instead an offer to pay in instalments was rejected by Aldridge’s club Newport County and the striker joined Robert Maxwell’s Oxford United, before moving on to Liverpool to make his name as a Kop idol.

And as for Sunderland, Ashurst took them to the Milk Cup final the following season but lost at Wembley and two months later they were relegated — and he was given the boot.

“I had the chance to sign John and if it had happened, things might have turned out differently,” said Ashurst, whose autobiography Left Back in Time was published this month.

“I knew him well because I had given him his break in football at Newport and I got a phone call from John’s dad telling me that Oxford had offered £75,000 to sign him but that John would much rather come to Sunderland under me.

“I spoke to Tom Cowie (then Sunderland chairman), told him what the situation was and he agreed to pay the money — but only if it could be done in instalments.

“He also said I’d have to sell a player before the transfer deadline, which used to be at the end of March, to offset the cost but I knew that wouldn’t be a problem.

“But the problem was that Oxford had agreed to pay the £75,000 as a lump sum and we couldn’t do the same — it was an emphatic ‘no’.