Gordon Cowans

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Gordon Cowans
Gordon Cowans (1982) .jpg
Gordon Cowans (1982)
Personnel
Surname Gordon Sidney Cowans
birthday October 27, 1958
place of birth Cornforth ,  England
size 170 cm
position midfield
Juniors
Years station
Aston Villa
Men's
Years station Games (goals) 1
1976-1985 Aston Villa 286 (42)
1985-1988 AS Bari 94 0(3)
1988-1991 Aston Villa 117 0(7)
1991-1993 Blackburn Rovers 50 0(2)
1993-1994 Aston Villa 11 0(0)
1994 Derby County 36 0(0)
1994-1995 Wolverhampton Wanderers 37 0(0)
1995-1996 Sheffield United 20 0(0)
1996-1997 Bradford City 24 0(0)
1997 Stockport County 7 0(0)
1997 Burnley FC 6 0(0)
National team
Years selection Games (goals)
1979-1980 England U-21 5 0(0)
1980-1990 England B 2 0(0)
1983-1990 England 10 0(2)
1 Only league games are given.

Gordon Sidney Cowans (born October 27, 1958 in Cornforth ) is a former English football player . The tech-savvy midfielder is considered one of the best players in Aston Villa's history . There he won the league cup in 1977 , followed by the English championship in 1981 and the European Cup a year later , and did not miss a single competitive game in the 1979/80 to 1982/83 seasons. After a three-year stay in Italy with AS Bari , he returned to Birmingham and won the runner-up there again in 1990 before ending his professional career with eight clubs in six years (including a third time Aston Villa).

Athletic career

Club career

Aston Villa, Part 1 (1976–1985)

At the age of 12, "Sid", as Gordon Cowans was known by friends and teammates, joined the youth division of Aston Villa . Cowans, who was born in Cornforth not far south of Birmingham , signed an apprenticeship contract with the "Villans" after completing his schooling in April 1975. Before he was promoted to professional player in September 1976, he had made his league debut on February 7, 1976 against Manchester City (1: 2) by substitution. His sporting breakthrough followed in February 1977 and he was partly responsible for the fact that the team finished fourth in the first division (after 17th place in the previous year ) and won the league cup . The final against Everton was only decided in a second replay and after Cowans had missed the first game (0-0), he replaced the Scot Alex Cropley in the second encounter (1-1 after extra time) and both were together represented in the third edition at 3-2 at Old Trafford .

With the technical skills of the short midfielder, the qualities in passing play at short and long distance as it were, and the danger of scoring, he was significantly involved in the following high-altitude flight, especially from the 1979/80 season. By the end of the 1982/83 season, he did not miss one of 168 competitive games in a row. He contributed five goals to winning the English championship in 1981 and the following year he crowned this achievement with success in the European Cup and a short time later with the Supercup , in whose 3-0 second leg win he scored a penalty against FC Barcelona scored. The overall greatest hit yield he had in the 1982/83 season with ten league goals. While preparing for the 1983/84 season, Cowans broke his leg in August 1983 and had to sit out a full year. For the new season 1984/85 he returned punctually for the league opener. However, he did a hard time to regain the form from before his injury, and in July 1985 he moved for £ 500,000 and together with his teammate Paul Rideout for Italian club AS Bari , who was in the Serie A had risen.

Bari, Birmingham and Blackburn Rovers (1985-1993)

The three years in the capital of Apulia were only moderately successful and already in the first year Cowans descended with the new club on a direct route to the second division as penultimate . In the following two years, attempts to return to the top class failed and when his former Villa coach Graham Turner signaled his willingness to sign again, he returned to Birmingham in July 1988 after a total of 94 league games and only three goals for Bari . Cowans seemed to be "past his zenith" by this time, but in a team that had just been promoted back to the First Division, the returnees experienced a "second spring". At the side of up-and-coming players like David Platt , who justified his good development not insignificantly with the mentoring abilities of Cowans, one steered over the tight relegation in 1989 to a surprising runner-up in 1990 and this although Turner in the meantime still for him at the beginning of the season 1989/90 had sorted out four league games. In the 1990/91 season he completed a fifth year without having missed a league game before he lost his regular place under the new coach Ron Atkinson in October 1991 and left the club in the direction of the up-and-coming second division Blackburn Rovers .

He helped the Rovers with 26 appearances in the league to move into the play-off games, in which he then secured promotion to the newly created Premier League with wins against Derby County and Leicester City . In the team coached by Kenny Dalglish , he played in the 1992/93 season as a supplementary player in 24 league games and scored his only Premier League goal for Blackburn in the 7-1 victory over Norwich City . It quickly became clear, however, that there was no longer any sporting prospects for him in the ambitious club that would win the English championship two years later, and so in July 1993 he used the opportunity to hire Aston Villa for a third time.

Last stations (1993–1997)

His last playing period at Aston Villa only lasted until February 1994. He was only used in eleven league games and only in the four appearances in the UEFA Cup up to the second round defeat against Deportivo La Coruña was a fixture in the team, which is still managed by Atkions. At the second division side Derby County he was a regular player straight away, played all 19 final league games of the 1992/93 season and then the play-offs against FC Millwall (2-0, 3-1) and in the final Leicester City (1: 1) 2). The next stop was from December 1994, the second division competitor Wolverhampton Wanderers , who spent the transfer fee of 20,000 pounds for the transfer and thus tried to solve his creative problem in the team's play structure. At the end of the 1994/95 season, Cowans reached the playoffs for promotion to the Premier League for the second year in a row, but failed there already in the semifinals to the Bolton Wanderers (2-1, 0-2).

Shortly before the turn of the year 1996/97 he moved to Sheffield United , also playing in the second division, where he played 23 competitive games by the end of the current season and said goodbye to Bradford City after further good performances . There he played the first 17 games before, as part of the fight against relegation from the second division, further squad reinforcements came to the club, which in turn pushed him to the bench. In late March 1997, he then joined Stockport County . At the third division, he helped to bridge an injury misery in the ultimately successful promotion battle with seven league appearances, before regular player Chris Marsden took his place again. As a player without a contract, he then went to Burnley FC and in addition to nine last competitive appearances until the end of 1997 in the third-highest division, he focused more on coaching the reserve team.

In the new coaching role, he later returned to Aston Villa, initially working in the youth department before he was promoted to the first team in the era of Gérard Houllier .

English national team

As a midfielder, whose style of play was characterized by a high degree of accuracy of fit and game intelligence, Cowans was already considered a suitable candidate as a future playmaker for the English national team in the 1980s by the end of the 1970s . The breakthrough with the "Three Lions" failed to materialize, which ostensibly had something to do with Glenn Hoddle , who turned out to be too big a competitor. Nevertheless, it was surprising that the then national coach Ron Greenwood completely left out Cowans, who played very well at Aston Villa - in contrast to Tony Morley and Peter Withe - in the run-up to the 1982 World Cup in Spain and also ignored him during the squad nomination .

It was only when Bobby Robson Greenwood succeeded him that he made his debut for the senior team on February 23, 1983 at Wembley against Wales . The performances in the 2-1 win were enough for Robson to give him a job in midfield for the important qualifying match against Hungary . The game ended in a 2-0 win and in his fourth international match against Scotland on June 1, 1983, he scored his first goal. When he played three games against the hosts within a week during a trip to Australia in the middle of the month , his international career seemed to take off before he broke his leg in the summer of 1983 and not only the club career stalled. He was then no longer part of the English national team. It was not until January 1986 that Cowan's career, who had meanwhile moved to Bari, was continued with his eighth international match. During the 4-0 win against Egypt in Cairo, however , coach Robson had only experimented before the 1986 World Cup in Mexico and although Cowans was again in the starting line-up two months later against the USSR , he remained behind players like Bryan Robson in the midfield hierarchy and Ray Wilkins and once again received no place in the World Cup squad .

It wasn't until almost four and a half years later that Cowans made a brief comeback in the game against Ireland on November 14, 1990 , after winning the runner-up with Aston Villa shortly before. The English media landscape even dealt with the question of whether Robson's successor Graham Taylor seriously intended to weed out the new superstar Paul Gascoigne in favor of Cowans for the upcoming qualifying games, but the tedious 1-1 draw against the neighbors created few arguments for this scenario and remained so this tenth international match for Cowans the last.

Title / Awards

literature

  • Rob Bishop / Frank Holt: Aston Villa - The Complete Record . DB Publishing, Derby, 2010, ISBN 978-1-85983-805-1 , pp. 201 f .
  • Hugman, Barry J .: Premier League: The Players - A Complete Guide to Every Player 1992-93 . Tony Williams Publishing, 1992, ISBN 1-869833-15-5 , pp. 145 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ "England - U-21 International Results 1976–1985 - Details" (RSSSF)
  2. ^ "England - International Results B-Team - Details" (RSSSF)
  3. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1995-96 Official PFA Footballers Factfile . Lennard Queen Anne Press, 1995, ISBN 0-09-180854-5 , pp. 52 .
  4. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1996-97 Official PFA Footballers Factfile . Lennard Queen Anne Press, 1996, ISBN 1-85291-571-4 , pp. 61 f .
  5. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1997-98 Official PFA Footballers Factfile . Lennard Queen Anne Press, 1997, ISBN 1-85291-581-1 , pp. 64 .
  6. ↑ Barry J. Hugman (Ed.): The 1998-99 Official PFA Footballers Factfile . Lennard Queen Anne Press, 1998, ISBN 1-85291-588-9 , pp. 69 f .
  7. ↑ "Gordon Cowans: Biography 1983-90" (Sporting Heroes)
personal data
SURNAME Cowans, Gordon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Cowans, Gordon Sidney
BRIEF DESCRIPTION English soccer player
DATE OF BIRTH October 27, 1958
PLACE OF BIRTH Cornforth