The Ex-Files: Ian Marshall Tuesday, 26th Aug 2014 17:28 by Blair Ferguson In the 15th part of our regular series, The Ex-Files, Blair Ferguson catches up with mulleted 90s goal-grabber Ian Marshall. The fixture list threw up one of those coincidences which happens every every once in a while after Ian Marshall joined Town from Oldham for a fee of £750,000 on the eve of the 1993/94 Premier League season. The computer dictated that the then-27-year-old striker would make a swift return to Boundary Park to make his Blues debut on the opening day of the season. While with the Latics Marshall had played under eventual Blues boss Joe Royle, where a disagreement on playing positions had led to a turbulent relationship between the two, as he explains. “That was the initial thing,” he said. “To give him his due Joe said to me ‘if you’d have played centre-half you would have played for England’. “And I always used to say to him ‘you can clear as many shots off the line and make as many tackles as you want but there’s no feeling like scoring a goal!’” In that first game in the blue of Town he was on target against his former team and manager, a goal which was followed by a trip to the dug-out with fresh inspiration drawn from an Adam Sandler movie.
 “I think I’d been watching Happy Gilmore and I did a ‘Shooter McGavin’ in front of Joe with the pistols. I’m not the best at lip reading but even I could make out what he was saying! “We had a falling out when I left and it wasn’t nice, but we’ve made up since then and we are good pals now.” That was the first goal on Marshall’s way to becoming the first player in Premier League history to score in his first five appearances, a record that he still holds today. “I think I’m the only player to have done it, Darren Bent had the opportunity with Aston Villa but missed out. “It’s a record that I hold which I’m quite proud of and long may it continue. I hope some of the big signings this year don’t start off too well!” Many of Marshall’s 38 goals for Ipswich came when he was partnered with Alex Mathie, so what was the secret to the M&M partnership?
Whilst on the topic of goalscoring it was time to find out which was Marshall’s favourite, and of course he opted for his superb volley against Charlton in December 1995. He talks us through it. “I just remember Milts having the ball down the right hand side and I was making a run and he put a deep cross in and it sort of came over my shoulder, a very difficult thing to do. And as it’s dropped over my shoulder I’ve volleyed it with my left foot and it went in off the far post. “It’s funny, a friend of mine sent me a DVD a couple of weeks ago right out the blue and it was Ipswich’s 150 Greatest Goals or something and that one was on it and that was the first time I’ve seen it but when I saw it I thought ‘yeah that’s a decent goal that!’.” Marshall and Mathie both scored 19 goals in the 1995/96 season, the one full campaign in which they played together, however, the Liverpudlian is keen to point out that he got one more than his team-mate in the league. “No! I beat him by one, make sure you put that in! I think he got 18 and I got 19 or something like that.” It could be argued that his goalscoring ability was aided by his talismanic mullet haircut, which when cut led to the goals drying up. “I had a bad injury, I broke my elbow at Newcastle away once and I was out for three or four months and I cut my hair. My missus used to say to me about Samson and Delilah, when I had my haircut I couldn’t score a goal.
Despite preferring to play up front, during the Great Escape at Blackburn on the final day of the 1993/94 season Marshall was switching from front to back on a very frequent basis as scorelines changed. It’s a game he remembers well: “It was quite comical really. I do love a conspiracy theory and it was the season Everton survived but they should have gone down. “Hans Segers was in goal [for Wimbledon] and I think they were 2-0 down at half-time and they came back to win 3-2 and it was quite bizarre really. “The results were changing and someone had a radio on the bench and they were like ‘we need to score, no we don’t, we need to keep it tight at the back’ it was quite funny.” Although there were good times during his three years at Town there were also bad, including dropping out of the Premier League under John Lyall in 1994/95.
“I think quality-wise we were just short in certain departments, especially at the back. I remember watching a few games and there were a lot of mistakes made at the back that shouldn’t have been made, they were just really basic errors and that let us down.” Marshall continued and moved onto one particular signing that was made during Lyall’s reign: “John Lyall was fantastic, I thought he was absolutely brilliant. We didn’t have a lot of money and he didn’t go out and buy loads of players. “I always remember back in the day when he and Charlie Woods went to Uruguay to sign a player and it was on the back of the newspaper that we were getting Gabriel Batistuta and he turned up with Adrian Paz and he wasn’t very successful, definitely not Batistuta!” Another hard time he had to endure, mainly from the bench, was the 9-0 defeat at the hands of Manchester United. At 6-0 down Marshall hadn’t expected to go on but George Burley had other ideas. “I was a substitute that day and I didn’t really see eye to eye with George, he preferred Lee Chapman to myself. So I was on the bench and it was 6-0 and he told me to go and warm up and I thought ‘I don’t believe this!’. “I tried to hide down in the corner and giving him a blank one when he was trying to get me on. When I went up and stood right next to him I said ‘what do you think I’m going to do, change the game?’.
Despite not seeing eye to eye with Burley, who had taken over from Lyall at the end of 1994, Marshall is quick to point out the positive impact the Scot had at Ipswich. “Personally I didn’t get on to well with him but he was successful and I can’t knock what he did. After I left he got into Europe and high in the Premier League which was fantastic but we clashed personality-wise. “He tried to get me out the door as fast as possible when he took over and when I left to go to Leicester I never wanted to go, I had no intention of leaving but I was sort of forced out he door. Although t turned out well for me, I never wanted the move. “I think the club needed some money but it was one of these things where I was told in no uncertain terms that it was the highway, you need to go and you won’t be involved if you don’t go." Although he had a messy departure Marshall still has fond memories of the club, as he explains: “I had great moments at Ipswich when I first joined and scored in the first five games and got off to a great start, that was great for me. “I loved living down there and I never wanted to leave and I was very content, plus the fans were fantastic. “It’s the only club I’ve been to where we didn’t have any success so to speak, we stayed in the Premier League but we didn’t go on any cup runs. “I had decent times at Oldham, Everton and Leicester all with cup finals and promotion and that sort of thing but I had a fantastic time there and made some great friends, but the football side of it wasn’t that great because the team wasn’t that great.”
“It was great, it was lovely and it was bad. My marriage broke up when I was there and my business went pear-shaped. As a lifestyle it was beautiful and fantastic but on a personal note it wasn’t so great. “But they are getting into their football over there, I started up some soccer camps and I still go over there in the summer and do some coaching and stuff. I do football tours, bringing kids over from Canada watching games and playing games.” Now Marshall is back in England and working with another former Leicester and Town player, as well as with the Foxes. “As well as the camps and tours, I work over here with Matt Elliott, we have a soccer school that we run, and I work for Leicester City in the hospitality on a matchday, as well as playing a lot of golf, so I’m doing OK!” Being so closely linked with Leicester Marshall is well qualified to give and opinion on how the Foxes will handle the Premier League. “It will be interesting to see how they go, it’s never an easy thing to get promoted and then try and stay in there.
Before the interview comes to an end there’s just enough time go over two stories from his playing days. The first is the fabled injury that he allegedly sustained in Sainsbury’s. “It was funny really we trained on the Friday morning and I went to the bookies in the afternoon,” recalled Marshall, now 48. “I was just sitting on a stool and I must of banged it in the morning because my knee just swelled up and I could hardly walk. “So I went back to the club and saw the physio and said ‘I’ve just been sitting on a stool and my knees swelled up’. “He’s said ‘you can’t say you’ve been to the bookies and got injured’ so they actually said I was in Sainsbury’s and got hit by a shopping trolley! “I think that was probably worse than sitting in the bookies, but that’s what they came out with. “I still don’t really know what happened, I’d like to say I was just sitting there picking winners, but I probably wasn’t!” The second story takes place whilst Marshall was at Bolton working under Sam Allardyce and needs no more of an introduction than that. “When I joined Bolton I was 35 and I wasn’t going to be starting every game and I only got a 12-month contract so I wasn’t going to move and live up there. “Sam Allardyce was a very good manager and I don’t believe the stick he gets at the minute because he’s fantastic, old school and new school. “He was the one introducing the healthy way to go and he gave me a heart monitor and said ‘look, I just want to keep track of you so go home and do some biking and go to the gym or whatever’. “I went home and I had a dog, so I strapped it up to him and took him out for a walk. “When I went back to Bolton I gave them the monitor and they connected it up to the computer to check my heart rate. “They were sitting there looking at each other thinking ‘what’s going here?’ as the heart rate was going ten to the dozen and I was fit as a butcher’s dog! “They said ‘there’s something seriously wrong here’, so I had to tell them, otherwise they would have had me off to hospital to do all sorts of tests!” You can read all the previous Ex-Files here.
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“I don’t really know,” pondered Marshall. “Alex was a great lad but he wasn’t the greatest of outfield players. However, he didn’t half know where the goal was and if you gave him a sniff at goal he’d stick it away. I used to say that he never made me any goals but I used to make most of his.”
“She was a hairdresser so she was the one who wanted to cut it but I grew it back again and eventually the goals came back.”
When quizzed on why he felt the team failed to survive Marshall points the finger at a lack of defensive quality and basic errors.
