Dean Austin picked up the phone. It was a Sunday afternoon at the turn of the millennium, so it could only have been one man.
“Will you come to Sheffield United?” then-Blades manager Neil Warnock asked, making his weekly phone call in pursuit of Austin’s services. “This is what I want to do: I want to make you club captain.”
With the impending end of Mark Goldberg’s brief chairmanship, Crystal Palace were entering 16 months of administration and, in an attempt to keep the club afloat, Goldberg was forced to sell many of his most prized assets: his players.