Very much an emergency buy, Kerry Dixon arrived from Millwall for a small fee after Glenn Roeder's attempts to bring Paul Wilkinson back to Vicarage Road had failed. In many ways, it wasn't a bad buy - Dixon was a former England international and had a proven goalscoring record with all of his clubs during a long, successful career. He was getting on a bit and had lost most of his pace but he could still win the ball in the air, which was what we'd been missing for so long. He played pretty well in most of our games for us, showing good awareness of other players and occasional moments of class, and was unlucky not to score (Ramage was credited with the equaliser against West Brom, but it was Dixon's header that created the chance and it was going in anyway).

None of that particularly mattered, though, because Kerry Dixon happened to be one of the most hated players to wear a Luton shirt in recent times. This animosity mainly dates back to a foul in a local derby a few seasons back that put Darren Bazeley out of action for several months - we were still giving him stick at Millwall a handful of weeks before he signed for us. He was never going to be accepted at Vicarage Road and, even though most people managed to forget local prejudices and applaud his efforts, he was eventually swept aside by Devon White's dramatic return to form.