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Birthdate:
30.04.1949
Birthplace: Bewdley, England
Other clubs: Wolves, Aston Villa, Walsall, South Melbourne (AUS)
Bought from: Wolves
Signed for LFC: £100000 September 1968
International caps: England u-23
Liverpool debut:
21.09.1968
Last appearance: 22.01.1972
Debut goal: 21.09.1968
Last goal: 03.11.1971
Contract expiry: 20.06.1972
LFC league games/goals: 79 / 21
Total LFC games/goals: 111 / 33
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Player Notes:
Shankly had great belief in Evans' ability and paid no less than £100,000 for a 19-year-old, making him Britain's most expensive teenager. He never fulfilled his potiental at Liverpool or indeed at other clubs. His shining moment for the Reds came when he scored a spectacular hat-trick againt Bayern Munich in the Fairs Cup season 1970-71 which was his best season, scoring 15 goals in 34 games.
Evans' start to his Liverpool career could hardly have been more sensational with a goal 10 minutes into his debut at home to Leicester and then 2 more the following week as he returned to Molineux and helped destroy his former club 6-0. He played in every league game from his debut in September until the end of the season, contributing 7 goals to a team which still contained many of the men who had won the League, Cup & League again in successive seasons earlier in the decade. At the time he seemed the ideal candidate to be groomed as Roger Hunt's successor but he failed to make the same impact the following season, scoring only 3 times in 25 games. Most of those appearances came after Hunt had departed for Bolton and the expectation and responsibility seemed to weigh heavily on his young shoulders.
Evans did make a bright start to the 1970-71 season with 7 goals in the first 10 games but after that things started to go wrong. Badly scarred by broken glass in a night-club incident back in Wolverhampton, he was also badly injured during a UEFA cup game in Bucharest and consequently lost his place in the side to the emerging Steve Heighway although he later won it back (at John McLaughlin's expense) and played in 8 of the last 10 league fixtures as well as in the 1971 FA Cup Final against Arsenal.
Alun only played another 6 matches for the club, his last ironically enough against his first club Wolverhampton at Molineux towards the end of January 1972. He was transferred to Wolves' Midlands rivals Aston Villa in the summer. Alun might be described as one of those "could have been" players. He had so much potential as a teenager but never matured the way he had been expected to. |
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