Summer of 1978 - Argentina World Cup.
Having come second in 76/77 we had fallen off the pace in 77/78, finally finishing fourth I think, including some well dodgy defeats in the last part of the season - after we had sold Joe Royle, Mike Doyle and Dennis Tueart.
The squad was looking really thin by that time as well and Tony Book really needed to get a bit of quality in to replace those we had sold - and add some numbers given we were having to rely on young lads like Roger Palmer and Ged Keegan who weren't that great (although Roger looked pretty promising at first).
Unfortunately we only brought in Colin Viljoen (bit of a journeyman) and Kaziu Deyna (never able to maintain any consistency) to replace the attacking players and our usual big money signing for the summer turned out to be Paul Futcher, who at over £350,000 was priced at pretty much the top end of the market, especially for a defender. I think he was in the England U21's at the time but whether he was generally thought of as the next big thing I couldn't say. Luton did have a nice Admiral kit at the time and Jackie Bray (our local sports-shop owner) used to exhibit it in the window of his shop along with all his City stuff. Luton also threw in Paul's brother Ron for a song.
We never really hit any form in the season that followed and the defence looks in terrible disarray in any videos of it you can see on YouTube. I think Kenny Clements broke his leg, Dave Watson had some injury problems and Willie Donachie was losing it too (Tony Book talks about some problems with a broken hand affecting his balance!) so the defence was never quite right and PF looked all at sea - he did seem to have a cracking long range shot on him though. Dennis Tueart was never really replaced and although his going made Mike Channon a bit more productive the team just didn't really work, leading to Big Mal coming back and the rest being history. The main image of PF I have is of that Shrewsbury forward making him look poor in scoring the first in a game which really was the beginning of our humiliations at that time. Maybe Mal held him to blame for that but after he never really quite secured his place and Tommy Booth became a first choice again. He had a couple of runs in the side the following season but as soon as we got a spanking he seemed to be dropped. He did bleat a lot about it in the match programmes. So he had a kind of a totemic quality at the time - well, like an albino totem - as you thought if he succeeded maybe we would, but it was not to be. Perhaps he was a confidence player and the general chaos of Mal's tinkering got right to him, especially as he was playing alongside a 16 year old when he got in the side! Seem to recall he grew a moustache at one point which made him look like a young albino Vincent Price.
