With his English League club struggling with defeats and debts, John Harkes expects a transfer soon.
The best of intentions, the highest of hopes lay in tatters at Derby County, where a failed promotion campaign last spring and a muddling season in the First Division has triggered a clear-out of players.
U.S. midfielder John Harkes feels it’s only a matter of time before he moves on, leaving this club mired in the middle of the standings amid rumors of an ownership upheaval. Derby, which has already unloaded three first-team players, is peddling Harkes, who has been sidelined since Jan. 2 with an ankle injury.
A collision with West Bromwich goalkeeper Stuart Naylor tore ligaments in Harkes’ ankle, forcing him out of the lineup for the third time this season due to injury. He was scheduled to return to the first team against Port Vale Feb. 21.
“It really swelled up, and they thought I might have had a hairline fracture,” said Harkes. “The ankle looked like something on `The Elephant Man’, but now I’m just about back.”
To Harkes, the reason for Derby’s malaise is clear: manager Roy McFarland. “Over here, the most important thing for the manager to do is pick your players up, to get the best out of them, and he hasn’t been able to do that,” said Harkes, who joined Derby in September, 1993, to play for manager Arthur Cox, but Cox had to resign shortly thereafter because of health problems.
Derby reached the playoff finals last spring, but fell in the final to Leicester. With one of the highest payrolls in the First Division, Derby has sold Paul Kitson to Newcastle, and in January dealt Gary Charles and Tommy Johnson, a good friend of Harkes, to Aston Villa. Kitson went for $3.6 million and the Johnson-Charles package was worth nearly $4.5 million.
Johnson and Charles were sold just before Derby’s FA Cup loss to Everton Jan. 7, which set off sparks between McFarland and team owner Lionel Pickering. “I was not consulted and I didn’t feel it was right to sell two players just before a match,” said McFarland in Shoot magazine. “I’m not questioning the deal but I was very annoyed by the timing of it.”
Kitson has found a regular place in Newcastle’s team, and Johnson, after a slow start, recently bagged a hat trick in Villa’s 7-1 demolition of Norwich. “You can see how well the players do once they get out of here,” says Harkes. “It’s been a bit disappointing.
“Maybe if we had a chance for promotion, the club would have kept those players. But we’re in 13th, 14th place, and we’re not going anywhere.”
Harkes may be going places soon, since the transfer deadline is this month. Queen’s Park Rangers manager Ray Wilkins has inquired about Harkes, and so has Ron Atkinson, the new manager at Coventry City. Atkinson coached Harkes at Sheffield Wednesday when it won the League Cup in 1991. He said he wouldn’t mind a move to Germany or France on his current contract, which runs until the end of next season.
“I can tell you one thing, I’m not going to wait around for MLS,” said Harkes. “I’ve heard so many different things; it is going to happen, it isn’t going to happen. Who knows?”
He’s one person who wasn’t surprised at the crowd trouble that erupted in Dublin Feb. 15 that forced the Ireland-England match to be terminated in the 27th minute.
“Everyone was saying how the problems have died down,” said Harkes. “Well, when England played in Rotterdam [October, 1993], there was trouble, and the game in Dublin was England’s first [away] game since then! That was the first trip they could take, and look what happened. It was unbelievable.”
by Soccer America Senior Editor Ridge Mahoney