Bombs and bungs: The story of how Andrei Kanchelskis joined Everton

As it turned out, the only real dissenter was a feller three or four rows back who kept repeating "Scass scamm... scass scamm... fackin scass scamm."

In the end I took a chance, turned around and said "Mate, no matter how many times you say that, we’ll still be winning 2-1."

We got out with our scathes intact. Great day.

Sounds like some GTA stuff to me.

Where there is big money involved, criminals aren’t far away. I bet we wouldn’t believe the background story to some of these big transfers over the years.

Yeah kids, p302!

I remember him signing and posing at Goodison in a Blue shirt with these dodgy umbrellas and me thinking it was amazing we could attract arguably Man Utd's best player. (wouldn't happen today, that's for sure)

Then,a few days later, I picked up my Sunday paper and the deal was reported to have collapsed when everyone thought he'd already signed, then it all got messy for a while.

He was devastating for the majority of the 95-96 season after coming back from injury after Lee Sharpe did him at Goodison, tearing apart team after team.

I don't agree he was poor for all of his second season. While he certainly wasn't as good as in his first, I thought he was reasonable up until that 7-1 win over Southampton when he scored a couple, but after that, his form really dipped, rumours grew around him and looked like he wanted to move on, culminating in his abysmal performance against Bradford.

I have fond memories of Andrei. Shame he wasn't around for longer.

"Aleksandr Bragin the Shakhtar president and five bodyguards were blown up at Shakhtar’s ground four minutes into a match against Crimean team Tavria."

I wonder how much injury time the ref added to the first half.

He was a top, top player. That season he had some wonderful games against Liverpool - Kan Cans Kop! Wednesday, etc etc. The rumour at the time was he had big gambling debts to clear with the wrong people.

Wow what a story, and my favourite player of the 90s.

Imagine taking your seat 5 mins late and asking 'anything happened?'

Ste (15) - 'Kancheslskis was probably the last, genuine world-class player to play for us.'

All opinion of course, no right or wrong, but if you think Kanchelskis was a better player than Rooney, or that Rooney wasn't/isn't world class, my opinion is that you are Wrongy McWrong from Wrongton (just down the road from Wrongsville).

Rooney was 16, 17 and 18 when he played for us. There’s no way he was world-class at the time, hence my reasoning Kanchelskis was the last genuine world-class player at the club.

Whether he’s become world-class since his departure is a debate which has raged on for years and will probably continue long after he’s retired.

...and the answer would have been, "Nyet, but there’s some seats open in the owner’s box... let’s move down after they’ve cleaned up."

And the Shaktar fans would have been singing "Bombs Away" by The Police on the terraces.

Was gutted though...my hero, Big Dunc, was in prison at the time and didn't get to meet him.

Messi is truly world class and maybe a handful of others but that’s about it. Bobby Charlton was very good but not world class. Pele was world Class, as was Maradona and Zidane.

His departure, and his Bradford display couldn’t really erase his impact although I was disgusted at that game at the time.

He is in my all time Everton team, going back to the early 50s.

Kanchelskis was good that season but the 2nd season struggle was equally down to the injury to Andy Hinchcliffe who’d played his way into the England reckoning and was the best left-back in the league.

I have Neville Southall's diary from that season and our injury record was so woeful; by the end of the season we were playing the kids we were so thin. We were also hovering around 8th well into December and our form tailed off shortly afterwards.