As much as nobody wanted Ferdinand to go, not least himself, he was getting older and the PLC made the decision. This is on the record, it is in KK's book that Dogless said he could keep Ferdinand if he wanted to keep him. I have always wondered why almost the first thing Dalglish did was to sell Ferdinand, so maybe he wanted to ?
Besides, the concept of a London born player wanting to stay at the club having been here for only 2 years, is a totally different one to locally born Geordies and NUFC fans like Beardsley, Gazza and albeit a mackem like Waddle wanting to leave to further their careers. Even you know this really, but you are pretending not to understand.
You also understand the comment about Shearer leaving, or not wanting to leave. Shame Gazza and Beardsley didn't follow in his footsteps, wouldn't you agree ?
Piss taking aside, I really think the signing of Shearer was a gamble, I think Keegan and Sir John thought that Shearer and Ferdinand would bring the title to the club so gambled on a title helping to finance Shearer, when it didn't work we had to sell one of them and Ferdinand was getting on and wasn't a Geordie so he was the one to go to bring some cash in. That's just an opinion but it fits what was happening, £15 million was a lot of money to play for one player, in fact it was still a lot for 2 or 3 players.
I've never had any problem with the reason Beardsley gave for leaving, he went to guaranteed trophies, no team other than Liverpool could give him that and he chose well.
I'm sure Waddle and Gazza went for the cash, didn't Gazza had an option of going to Man U, a team more likely to win something than Spurs. Maybe Gazza just preferred working with Vanables, none of us will know the real reason but I seriously doubt that it was for trophies, no matter what he said at the time.
