Dean West (Bury, swap for Kevin Hulme)
I cannot stress enough how this is perhaps the worst bit of transfer business Lincoln City ever did. The person at fault was Steve Wicks, a man who came in as head coach, didn’t win a single game and yet still had his name sung vehemently during his final game against Scarborough. His transfer dealings were poor; he sold David Puttnam for a pittance and swapped West for a midfielder called Kevin Hulme.
Dean West had played 120 games for City after coming through the Centre of Excellence, chipping in with 20 goals. He was a massive asset and had scored against future champions Preston on the opening day of the 1995/96 season. To see him swapped for a robust, journeyman midfielder was shocking. “A lot of people have come up to me and expressed surprise that I let Dean West leave the club,” said Wicks afterwards. “I felt we needed a tough backbone to the side and Kevin Hulme fits the bill.” I need a new floor mat in my car, and I have seen one that fits the bill, but I won’t swap the alloy wheels and engine for it.
Anyway, Hulme didn’t fit the bill, he played five games before leaving. As for Dean West, he appeared regularly for Bury, helping them into what is now the Championship. He then moved to Burnely, where in 2002 he won 11 of the 15 Player of the Season awards handed out by Burnley supporters’ clubs across the country. That was the same summer we marched around the city collecting coppers in buckets to help save the club. If only we’d had a homegrown talent we could have sold for a couple of hundred thousand to help prop up the finances, eh?