How the Blues' legendary former skipper became a short-term hero at the City Ground
John Terry wasn't really wanted at Chelsea. World Cup-winning French fancies Frank Leboeuf and Marcel Desailly were Gianluca Vialli's centre-backs, veteran Jes Hogh was reminding people he still existed and, rightly or wrongly, Emerson Thome was getting a lot of game time as well.
It seemed there was no need for this English teenager to hang around for the end of the 1999/2000 campaign.
Meanwhile, Nottingham Forest supporters couldn't wait for the season to end.
Having finished bottom of the Premier League, the Reds' bid to go straight back up under player-manager David Platt was falling apart like a wet flan
Six games by the Trent
Having finished bottom of the Premier League, the Reds' bid to go straight back up under player-manager David Platt was falling apart like a wet flan. When Johnny Forest Fan heard a young loanee was to be their 11th centre-back that season, he probably didn’t rush to take his head out of the oven.
But like a sun-kissed holiday fling, Terry and Forest came together for a beautiful six-game relationship. “Right from the off, he was clearly better than any other centre-half we’d used that season,” raves supporter Andy Kerr. “He was brave, aerially dominant, read the game well and had no problems bossing his older, more senior partners at centre-back. He appeared quicker than all of them, too, which only goes to illustrate how slow they were. Actually, we didn’t lose with Terry in a Forest shirt.”
The future England captain’s famed commitment passion-bordering-on-psychotic, was evident even then. “We had some snow,” recalls team-mate Christian Edwards, “and the lads would go to training all wrapped up – but John would train in a pair of shorts, happily sliding and diving around in the snow.
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“Everyone else was thinking, ‘What's he doing?’ You could see he was a natural born leader as well: he was outgoing and vocal, and really liked to banter and play around.”
The next season, Forest finished mid-table again (and are yet to return to the Premier League’s warm embrace), while a 20-year-old Terry started half of Chelsea’s league games despite the challenge of Desailly, Leboeuf and, erm, Winston Bogarde.
JT AT FOREST
Forest 1-1 Charlton (on as sub, 30')
Birmingham 0-1 Forest (90')
Forest 0-0 Sheff United (90')
Fulham 1-1 Forest (90')
Forest 2-0 Port Vale (90')
Stockport 2-3 Forest (90')
But things could have turned out very, very differently. With Vialli willing to sell Terry, clubs were on red alert – including Steve Bruce’s Huddersfield. “I bid £750,000 for him, a lot of money then, and Chelsea accepted it,” Bruce later revealed. “But the boy didn’t want to leave Stamford Bridge.”
Terry stayed at Chelsea to fight for a place, and the rest is history. At times controversial, but successful history.
Huw was on the FourFourTwo staff from 2009 to 2015, ultimately as the magazine's Managing Editor, before becoming a freelancer and moving to Wales. As a writer, editor and tragic statto, he still contributes regularly to FFT in print and online, though as a match-going #WalesAway fan, he left a small chunk of his brain on one of many bus journeys across France in 2016.
