Allison inherited a team that probably needed to be judiciously remoulded, but the players he brought in were far worse than the ones who left. In a period of a little over six months in 1979, we bought Steve Daley, Michael Robinson, Steve MacKenzie, Dragoslav Stepanovic, Bobby Shinton and Stuart Lee. Making way for them were Kidd, Watson, Hartford. Barnes, Owen and Channon. (I've disregarded Barry Silkman here, as he both arrived and left during 1979).
Not only did that represent a serious drop in quality, though. The fees we received for the departing stars came to around £2.2 million for three current international regulars, the England under-21 captain of the era and two former England players. For the acquisitions, we laid out over £3 million. Allison was clearly culpable for the selection of the players both outgoing and incoming, but the real madness lay in the vastly inflated fees we splashed out on the latter, compounded by adding Kevin Reeves, a decent player but for a clearly excessive £1.25 million, before the season was out.
Swales and Allison both blamed one another for the level of the fees we paid. However, there's neutral account that settles the matter. Tony Book, known in the game as a man of integrity, unequivocally states in his autobiography that it was Swales who negotiated the fees. First of all, Book was in a position to know, and, secondly, he has no reason to lie about this. We could have recovered from Allison's weakening of the team alone, but not from that alongside Swales's associated wastefulness. Thus, Swales takes the lion's share of the blame for the damage caused to MCFC.
