Debut: 3-2 win vs Portsmouth (League Cup tie, scored once), September 20th 1989
League Record: 36 games (+11 as sub), 6 goals
Sold to: Birmingham City (£400,000), October 1993
As a child in the 1980s, Danny Wallace always seemed a really exciting player and thus I was pleased when we signed him. Good enough to make his Southampton début aged only 16, the departure of star players like Kevin Keegan, Alan Ball and Mick Channon ensured that he was one of their main men by the time they had their best-ever league season, finishing second in 1984.
Blessed with rapid pace and an ability to score spectacular goals (his superb overhead effort against Liverpool in 1984 was one of the picks of the decade), he made his England debut against Egypt in 1986, scored and was then strangely never got picked again. A couple of years later, he played a game alongside his younger twin brothers, Rod and Ray, a rare occasion of three brothers playing alongside each other in the same team.
It never really worked out for him at United, sadly. There were moments in his first season where he showed us what he could do - vital goals in cup games against Newcastle and Oldham spring to mind – and he was in the team that won the cup at the end of his first season. Often it seemed he struggled with being restricted to being on the left - Wallace was never really a winger in the traditional sense.
But then the real problems started after that summer, when Lee Sharpe returned to full fitness won the left-wing position. Despite that, his best moment came in the autumn of 1990 in the 6-2 smackdown of Arsenal. Playing the kind of free role he was used to at Southampton, Danny run riot, playing a big part in most of the goals and scoring the sixth himself. There haven't been too many better individual performances in a United shirt that I can remember.
It was a false dawn, though. Niggling injuries kept him out of the team and though he managed to earn a Cup Winners Cup medal as an unused sub, he barely featured at all from 1991 to his departure in 1993. His last contribution was scoring a superb long-range goal down at Brighton in a League Cup tie in the Autumn of 1992. A move to Birmingham saw a debut goal followed by familiar fitness problems and he retired after playing a single game for Wycombe, aged only 31.
Unfortunately for Danny, the reason for his recurring injury woes soon became clear when he diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Since then, he’s faced the condition bravely and took part in fund-raising efforts: several ex-United players took part in a benefit game down at Southampton a few years back, and the man himself did a sponsored walk of the London Marathon course.
Back in 1991 I think there was a national sprint challenge to find the nation's fastest footballer ( eventually won by Swansea's John Williams). In the north western heat our flying machine Andy Milner not untypically tripped over but still managed to beat Danny whose presence suggested United were not particularly interested in the competition.
ReplyDeleteI do remember that, perhaps it was shown on "Saint and Greavise". At the time I was baffled as it was long known that Gary Pallister was the fastest man at United - which in hindsight does back up the view that we didn't take the idea seriously: Danny was long past his first team days at that point.
ReplyDelete