| Terry Venables had room to experiment with less established Englishmen in the summer of 1995 thanks to the lack of a qualifying campaign to trouble him and therefore was justified both in theory and practice to call up Nottingham Forest's maverick striker Stan Collymore, a player whose obvious gift on the pitch was tempered with controversy off it. The articulate Collymore played uneventfully against Japan at Wembley (the photo above is during the game), came on as a sub eight days later for Teddy Sheringham in a 3-1 defeat to Brazil, and then began to adopt his more wayward attitude to the game at club level which rendered him unselectable for a Venables outfit based on togetherness and trust, especially as a partnership between Alan Shearer and Teddy Sheringham had begun to settle down. Collymore, who had left Forest for Liverpool in a British record £8.5 million transfer a month after his England outings against Japan and Brazil, got nowhere near squad or team as the 1996 European Championships came and went, but returned ephemerally to the fold in September 1997 when Glenn Hoddle decided to take a closer look at this gifted but troubled player - by now at Aston Villa after Liverpool's patience evaporated entirely - in a World Cup qualifier against Moldova. Collymore came on as a sub for Les Ferdinand, endeared himself to nobody, and was never asked back. (Matthew Rudd) |