John McClelland, who famously turned down Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen to join Watford in November 1984, also rejected a move to Old Trafford shortly after the Hornets had been relegated from the top flight in the spring of 1988.

The centre-half, who was part of two Northern Ireland World Cup squads in 1982 and 1986, joined Graham Taylor’s Watford from Glasgow Rangers and went on to be recognised by many supporters as one of the finest defenders ever to play for the club. In fact, he was the third person to be inducted into the Hornets Hall of Fame, after Luther Blissett and Tony Coton.

In Tales from the Vicarage volume four McClelland explains how he turned down Ferguson and Scottish champions Aberdeen shortly after playing for Glasgow Rangers as an emergency centre forward in a UEFA Cup tie against Inter Milan.

He was due to meet both Ferguson and Taylor to discuss a move away from Rangers, where he had had a public falling out. As it turned out, both managers were in separate rooms on the same floor of a hotel near Glasgow airport.

“I met Graham and I said, ‘I don’t want to mess you about. You make me an offer and I’ll say yes or no'. They made me an offer I was happy with. I said yes, but that I wanted to go down the corridor and give Alex the courtesy of saying no. Graham was anxious I’d change my mind but I wanted to show Graham I was a man of my word.”

McClelland wanted out of Scotland after wrangles over his contract at Rangers had been made public in the press. He went to meet Ferguson. “We were having a cup of tea and a biscuit and Fergie said ‘We’ve won the league, we’re in Europe, we’ve got the oil and the money'. He wrote down a number on a piece of paper and slid it across to me saying 'I don’t know what Watford have offered you but they’ll not get close to that.”

He didn’t even look at the piece of paper. “I said, ‘It’s never been about money. I’ve agreed to go to Watford. If I look at that and sign for you, you’ll think I’m a mercenary. If I don’t look at it at least you can’t say I’m a greedy footballer.”

After starring at the heart of the Watford defence and winning the Player of the Season award, McClelland was left marshalling a weaker team after Taylor’s departure in 1987. No fan of the short-lived Dave Bassett’s tactics, McClelland may have been open to a move away but once the team were relegated in 1988, he decided to stay even though Ferguson came calling.

“I would have been a back-up for them, I’m sure, but I didn’t go because the way I saw it was that I’d been part of the team that got relegated and it was my duty to try to get us back up,” said McClelland. Watford fell just short in 1988/89, eliminated in the play-offs to Blackburn Rovers on away goals.

  • The four books in the Tales from the Vicarage series feature 44 original essays by 18 different writers, including several former Watford Observer journalists. All four volumes are available online at talesfrom.com/watford and The Hornets Shop online and in store at Vicarage Road. There are discounted prices on all the books for a limited period and all four together can be bought for £35.