Dennis Wise’s 2002 transfer to Millwall was one of the biggest deals in the club’s history, as the Lions snapped up the 21-time England international and three-time FA Cup winner.
The Lions had convinced Wise to drop down a division to join the club, but remarkably, Millwall’s then-boss Mark McGhee had no idea it was happening.
That’s because a chance conversation between Lions owner Theo Paphitis and another former England and Chelsea star in Ray Wilkins brought about a deal that was made at breakneck speed.
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Paphitis on how he signed Dennis Wise
“I had a heart to heart with Mark McGhee the previous week,” he Paphitis recalls to FourFourTwo. “He said that we needed a Dennis Wise style character in midfield.
“We had Tim Cahill, then a promising kid, learning his job, box to box. Dennis at the time had just left Leicester after an incident.”
And as fate would have it, Paphitis was soon handed the opportunity to act on McGhee’s request. “It just so happened that I went for a drink with Ray Wilkins, who was a neighbour. Over that drink... “Ray asked if I’d thought about Dennis. I didn’t like Dennis’ agent at the time, that raving monster Eric Hall character. He was really rude when I tried to sign Dennis when he left Chelsea. So, Ray made a discreet enquiry directly to Dennis on my behalf.
“I ended up speaking to Dennis and said, ‘I guarantee they’ll love you at The Den’, even though he thought I was having a laugh by trying to get him to Millwall. I told him, though, that I wouldn’t deal with his agent – I said, ‘You have to deal with that’. We didn’t have an agent present doing the deal. I broke loads of taboos, as it all happened really quickly.
“While we made him our highest-paid player, it didn’t lock us into some long-term commitment. It wasn’t going to hurt the club financially, and once Dennis was mentally committed, he made it very easy, for which all Millwall supporters have always been grateful.”
The speed of the deal meant that Paphitis had no chance to involve McGhee.
“We did the deal, then I rang Mark and told him there was a press conference organised for tomorrow,” he continues. “I said ‘I’ve got you a new player’. He was a bit surprised.
“I reminded him that he’d asked for a Dennis Wise style character for midfield and said ‘Well, I’ve got you one’. He asked ‘Any chance you’re going to tell me who?’ I said ‘Yes, Dennis Wise’.
“There was silence on the other end of the line.”
