ON THIS DAY

Transfers that see players move between local rivals are often controversial ones - on this page alone Nick Barmby's move from Everton to Liverpool and Sol Campbell's transfer from Spurs to Arsenal have been shown as not being too popular. North of the border it was once almost unheard of for players to have played for both the great Old Firm rivals - Rangers and Celtic. But in Glasgow it went a lot deeper than just footballing rivalry - religion was involved. In simplistic terms Rangers was the Protestant club while Celtic were the Catholic one but inevitably it went deeper than that. Rangers were the native Scots club and Celtic the Irish-Scots club. Anyway, Mo Johnston was a Celtic player from 1984 to 1987 when he joined Nantes. When his contract with the French club ended in 1989 he was widely expected to rejoin Celtic but on 10th July 1989 it was announced that he had joined Rangers. Rangers had signed a former Celtic player who was a Catholic. Ok the reality was that he wasn't the first ex-Celtic player to be signed by Rangers nor was he the first Catholic to play for them but it was a transfer that hit the front pages and united many Celtic and Rangers fans in widespread protests. He had a successful spell at Ibrox before moving to Everton in 1991.

Back on this day in 1978 the footballing talking point was centred on Tottenham Hotspur. In those days a 'foreign' player in the English game was Welsh, Scottish or Irish so when Spurs - who had just won promotion from the Second Division - signed two players from the Argentine squad that had just won the World Cup it became front -page news. Ossie Ardiles was part of the winning Argentine team while Ricky Villa had played in a couple of matches as a sub prior to the final. Both players became firm favourites at White Hart Lane and after they arrived the trickle of foreign players into the English game slowly became a flood and things would never be the same again.