Notts County Hopes They’d Make Free Agent Steal

Notts County were just emerging from one of the most trying periods in their history when they signed a player on a free transfer who’d just helped to take a club into the Premier League, but things didn’t work out as they’d hoped.

Notts County had been the subject of international media attention at rhe start of the 2009-10 season, when they were taken over by a group purporting to be from the Middle East. Sven Goran Eriksson arrived as manager. Sol Campbell was added to bolster their defence. Lee Hughes arrived on a free transfer.

But something wasn’t right, and investigations found that Munto Finance, the company who’d purchased the club, were part of a broader fraud involving mining rights in North Korea. At the start of November, the club was subject to a £400,000 winding-up petition. A second one arrived a few weeks later. Eriksson and Campbell left the club, though Hughes stayed.

Notts County were saved. They were first sold to Peter Trembling, a former director, and then to businessman Ray Trew at the start of February, both times for £1. But somehow, through all this chaos, the team kept winning and ended the 2009/10 season as champions of League Two.

Notts beat a number of clubs to secure Ben Burgess’s signature

When forward Ben Burgess arrived at Meadow Lane that summer, he seemed like an absolute steal for a club just promoted into League One. Burgess had been with Blackpool since 2006 and had been in their team which won promotion from League One the following year. And at the end of the 2009-10 season, he was on the bench as the Tangerines secured a return to the top-flight for the first time since 1971.

But while Burgess made 31 appearances for Blackpool and scored six goals that season, manager Ian Holloway deemed him surplus to requirements for the Premier League and the club released him after not taking up the option of a contract extension. It was reported at the time: “A number of clubs have been chasing the former Hull City hit-man, but League One new boys Notts County are expected to win the race for his signature.”

Burgess was not the hit that Notts County had expected him to be

The following season didn’t go as Notts County had intended. They finished the 2010-11 League One season in 19th place, just three points above the relegation places.

And it didn’t go very well for Ben Burgess, either. He made just 17 appearances for Notts that season, of which only eight were starts, and scored only one goal, as he struggled with his fitness. By the end of the season he was on the transfer list, and manager Martin Allen did acknowledge that “he has taken an awful lot of criticism”.

The following season went better for Notts. They finished seventh in the table, only separated from a play-off place, although Martin Allen had been sacked and replaced by Keith Curle in February.

But by this time, injuries had ravaged Burgess. He’d managed 28 appearances for Notts that season, but only scored four league goals, and was sent on loan to Cheltenham Town in March 2012. Speaking to the Hull Daily Mail in 2019, he said: “I had four years with Blackpool, two years with Notts County and signed for Tranmere. By that point, I was really struggling. I would play on a Saturday, but not really be able to walk again until Tuesday or Wednesday.”

At the end of the 2011-12 season, Burgess was released. A signing that had looked as though it showed so much promise just a couple of years earlier had ended in failure. Burgess’s career didn’t last much longer. He signed a contract with Tranmere Rovers that summer, but didn’t play a single game for them and left two months later, retiring from playing and going into teaching instead.

Notts County were relegated from League One in 2015, and then out of the EFL altogether in 2019. It took them four years to get back. The problems that they had both before and his arrival were not the fault of Ben Burgess, but he has become emblematic as one of the club’s worst signings of all-time.