&#8216;Be careful what you wish for&#8217; &#8211; The curious case of the Millwall Russians, first to last in six months and ad

By John Kelly “IT was so well-intentioned, but it is an example of how if you overreach yourself it comes with dangers. All the fans would have wanted us to do it. ‘Go on, yeah, have a go. Russian internationals? Yeah, why not? Great idea, we’ll all come and watch.’” Former Millwall board member Jeff Burnige is talking to NewsAtDen about the Lions’ sensational (or bonkers, madcap, bizarre – take your pick) double-signing of Russian internationals Sergei Yuran and Vasili Kulkov from Spartak Moscow in January 1996. Striker Yuran, 26, and the versatile 29-year-old defender/midfielder Kulkov had just helped Spartak top Champions League Group B, securing them a two-legged tie against French side Nantes in the quarter-finals. Yuran scored the winner when Spartak beat Premier League champions Blackburn Rovers 1-0 at Ewood Park and would finish as the joint-11th top-scorer in the competition that season. But instead of playing for the chance to face Real Madrid or Juventus in a European Cup semi-final, Yuran and Kulkov opted for a move to South Bermondsey to play First Division football. “He [Mead] wasn’t chairman for a very long time but he was very ambitious for the club,” Burnige says. “He felt that he wanted to transform the club quickly and he saw the recruitment of these two very prominent international footballers as a worthwhile idea. “There were boardroom discussions about it, but it would be wrong to say there was opposition. All our meetings were all unanimous. A bit like government cabinet, you had discussions, you said your piece and then we got on with what we decided. “I know that it was Peter’s view that they would be two very important signings that would arouse great interest. There was a delay to the kick-off, I don’t recall how long, but it was a huge crowd on the day. It was a big increase on what we’d had before.” Yuran had played in the 1992 European Championships and the 1994 World Cup and won 40 international caps. Kulkov won 42 international caps. Both had played for Portuguese giants Benfica and Porto from 1991 to 1994 and in 1994-95, respectively, before moving back to Spartak. “Obviously we have played for some of the great clubs in Europe but this is the pinnacle of our careers,” Yuran said, apparently with a straight face. “We have always wanted to play in England and didn’t want to miss the opportunity.” “Their presence in the squad is bound to give supporters, players and everyone a lift,” manager Mick McCarthy said. McCarthy was right about the signings lifting supporters ahead of the game against Port Vale. Despite being on a nine-game winless league run – after being top of thealbeit very tight second-tier table in December – the biggest crowd of the season turned up for their debuts. The kick-off on January 13 was pushed back to ensure the attendance of 14,220 would be there for kick-off at The Den. That would be Millwall’s biggest attendance of that entire season. Both players were in the starting XI: Carter, Newman, Thatcher, Bowry, Witter, Webber, Kulkov, Rae, Malkin, Yuran, Van Blerk. Journalist Stan Hey was at the game for the Independent, with the specific brief of monitoring Millwall’s two new players. “It would be unfair to write off Millwall's Russian experiment after just one game,” Hey wrote, “but for long periods yesterday it looked like an organ transplant on a body that was beyond repair.” Millwall lost 2-1. Alex Rae equalised in the 32 nd minute after Martin Foyle’s sixth-minute opener, before Tony Naylor got the winner in the 62 nd minute. Yuran, though, had at least made some kind of impact. Hey wrote: “Of the two loan signings, made in great secrecy from Spartak Moscow, Yuran had the greater effect – Kulkov being substituted immediately after Vale's second goal – playing a key part in the equaliser, and making himself busy as his confidence grew. “Against that however, the ‘boy neurotic’ style he shares with, among others, Gabriel Batistuta, of Fiorentina, and David Ginola, of Newcastle, with his socks sagging from the start and the shirt collar up, Yuran went through a whole range of operatic gestures as shots were blocked, colleagues failed to see his run, or the referee decided against his frequent appeals. “His more relevant contributions – good work rate, quick passing and unquenchable enthusiasm – will serve him better once he can form an understanding with his fellow strikers.” Not quite. Yuran played 12 more times and scored once, but Kulkov made just six appearances before injury ended his spell at The Den. Millwall won just four more games and were relegated on the final day after a 0-0 draw at Ipswich. When the final whistle went it was the first time that season they had been in the bottom three. The Lions finished on 52 points with Portsmouth, but Pompey had a better goal difference of plus-12. McCarthy had left in early February and was replaced with Raith Rovers boss Jimmy Nicholl later that month. Nicholl had led unfashionable Raith to Scottish League Cup victory the previous season when they beat Celtic on penalties in the final. Earlier in the 1995-96 season he had guided the Scottish club through two rounds of the Uefa Cup before they lost to eventual winners Bayern Munich. A 39-year-old seemingly up-and-coming manager tempted from overachieving at unfashionable Raith to unfashionable Millwall – you could see the logic in it. But logic and reality parted company soon after Nicholl’s arrival. And it certainly wasn’t all the new manager’s fault. “Mick had the opportunity to go to the Ireland job and Jimmy Nicholl came in,” Burnige says. “In those days, there wasn’t the kind of data search that you would find today. The chairman of the day must be able to work with the manager. It would normally be the chairman who led the search for the new manager if not dictated who the new manager should be. “That was the case. Jimmy Nicholl had just done amazing things with Raith Rovers. “The club’s downward slide in terms of results had already started and it carried on and unfortunately we ended up getting relegated.” Nicholls’ job wasn’t made any easier by Millwall’s two glamour signings, one of whom preferred the glamour of London’s nightlight a lot more than he did putting in shifts at the training ground. “I knew Jimmy was having more problems across a range of things,” Burnige says. “And there were stories about Yuran being out late, being late into training and so on. But I chose not to enquire too deeply into it. “Perhaps I could have been criticised for that but you have to understand there was little we could have done. He had a contract and it was up to Jimmy to manage him. There were whispers [about Yuran’s socialising] which reached me but I chose to treat them as whispers rather than anything else.” In an article in the Evening Standard in 2012, Nicholl said Yuran had "the worst level of commitment and enthusiasm I have ever seen in the game. “Sergei was a disgrace. He was an embarrassment to himself and to the club and caused a lot of ill-feeling.” Yuran – caught for drink-driving at one points – didn’t disagree, and explained that after he got married he treated his spell in London as a “honeymoon”. “In England, I gave in to my weaknesses and was soon punished for it. Seven or eight months were just crossed out of my career,” he said. “Jimmy Nicholl even said that I was the most unprofessional player he'd ever met. And that was true. “My honeymoon lasted for six months. I forgot about football. I'd turn up for training after yet another wild night at a disco with my beloved new wife. “Also I managed to convince her that everything was okay. “Joining Millwall was one of the gravest mistakes of my footballing life. Not only did I learn nothing new but I lost what I did know.” Mead made no attempt to hide his anger at the way things worked with one of his star signings. “Nothing captured the imagination of the fans more than the arrival of the Russians but nothing disillusioned them more than Yuran,” Mead said. “We treated him better than he could have expected. His attitude to life was much like the way he played the game. If the ball wasn't hit to his feet, he stood with his arms outstretched with a look of irritation on his face. “For him to say these things now, after the way we looked after him, makes me very angry. We paid him well, we found him accommodation, he had an interpreter. We tried to make allowances for cultural differences and that's how he repays us. “His attitude left a lot to be desired and he was often, what I would call, 'strategically ill'. It was so obvious when he didn't turn up for training the players made a joke of it. They used to say, ‘it must be another Russian bank holiday’.” Meanwhile, Kulkov never really got the chance to show if he could have made a difference. “I heard nothing adverse about him other than he was injured and may have been suffering for injury when he signed for us,” Burnige said. “He didn’t play an awful lot and I’m not sure if any of them were 90 minutes. “He was a very good player and Sergei was an amazing front player. If he’d wanted to and if it had been different circumstances he would have been amazing for us in that division. It just didn’t work out.” Millwall still had their fate in their own hands on that final day. If they won, they didn’t need to worry about what Portsmouth did at Huddersfield Town. Yuran was unavailable and the day ended with two crestfallen sides as the Lions went down when Pompey won and the Tractors Boys missed on the top six by two points. “I remember looking at Peter, he was broken-hearted over that relegation,” Burnige says. Millwall made a decent fist of Division Two and were second in December and still third in March. But by now the club was in turmoil. There were a multitude of reasons behind Millwall going into administration in January 2007. The Den, completed in 1993, cost almost £20million. The plan had been to stage other events there to generate revenue streams outside of what football brought in, but it didn’t happen. The club had a high wage bill and losses of over £3million. “We went into administration for the first and only time, which was a real blow. It was a real blow to Peter and for all of us, all the staff,” Burnige says. “Most of the staff were let go by the administrators. Administration is a really rough business. The people running the club are liquidation lawyers and accountants and they’re not very empathetic, that’s not their job. So it was a very rough time. “The players had contracts, they couldn’t do anything about that, but I think three-quarters of our staff lost their jobs immediately. We didn’t have a big staff but they cut the outgoings to the absolute bone, as they were supposed to do.” How serious was the situation? “The club was in mortal danger. But there were actually two big saving graces. We did own the stadium or at least have a very long lease on the stadium. And we had the public quotation (after floating on the London Stock Exchange in 1989). Owning the stadium, the freeholder was and remains the London borough of Lewisham, they did not want Millwall going bust either because what would happen to the stadium? “There was grave danger but I always felt there was hope, a strong hope that it would be saved by a share issue. “It brought in Theo Paphitis who took a large shareholding of the new shares. Existing shareholders were given the chance to subscribe by right for the new shares. There was a public issue of shares as well, it was a complicated one. A placing with Theo, a public issue and a rights issue. It was a big thing, it took a lot of doing, there were a lot of legal details to go over.” Reflecting on that period now, more than 25 years on from that administration and 26 from the signings of the Russian internationals," Burnige says: “Peter was unlucky. Number one, Mick McCarthy left. Number two, Jimmy Nicholl didn’t work. Number three, the players [Russians] turned out not to really want to be there. And number four, we got relegated on the last day of the season very unluckily. Everything that could go wrong did go wrong.” Millwall had gambled on trying to get to the Premier League, which the new stadium was geared towards. The signings of Yuran andn Kulkov was one gamble that didn’t pay off. They weren’t the cause of Millwall’s slide but part of the bigger story. “It was an adventure which went badly wrong and probably contributed to our relegation,” Mead said. And Burnige’s moral? “I would say, be careful what you wish for because if your luck changes you’re in big trouble.”

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