In late June 1994, West Ham United announced the signing of Joey Beauchamp, a 23 year-old
winger from Oxford United, for a fee of a just over £1m.
The Premier League was just two years old and its financial ascent had really yet to
begin, meaning that the fee was a significant outlay for a club of
West Ham’s size. Alongside midfielder Don Hutchinson, signed for
£1.5m from Liverpool, Beauchamp was intended to be one of the club’s headline signings
of that summer. Not without reason, either, because Beauchamp,
an aggressive, wide-dwelling player with a cultured left-foot
and the ability to glide past opponents and score goals, was one of the First Division’s
outstanding young players.
Talented as he was, though, Oxford United were sliding towards financial peril.
The club reached their modern day peak in the mid-1980s, achieving successive promotions
under Jim Smith in 1984 and 1985 respectively, taking them
back into the old First Division. Smith departed in 1985, moving
to Queens Park Rangers at season’s end, but in 1986 United won the league cup, beating
Smith’s QPR at Wembley, with a team which included Ray Houghton
and John Aldridge. Unfortunately, their progress was being supported
by a financial illusion . In 1982, Oxford had been taken
over by Robert Maxwell, the media magnate and former proprietor of the Mirror Group.
When Maxwell died in 1991, his business interests unravelled,
with an investigation revealing vast levels of fraud. His empire, by
then under the control of his two sons, melted into insolvency.
The effect on Oxford was cataclysmic, beginning a hand-to-mouth existence which would last
right the way through the next decade.
By the 1993-94 Joey Beauchamp had begun to emerge as a credible top-division talent and,
tentatively, perhaps even a future England player. Nevertheless,
the financial drain on Oxford was fatal, dragging them
back to the third-tier with relegation at season’s end. Despite his admirers, Beauchamp
expressed little interest in playing football elsewhere; he
had been born in Oxford and had graduated through the club’s
youth system. But relegation mandated his sale. Years later,
in a 2010 interview with the Oxford Mail, he would reveal that
he was presented with a simple choice when West Ham’s bid was made: either he agree
to the move, or the club would go out of business.
Reluctantly he agreed, becoming United’s record sale in the process, but, crucially,
declined to move to East London. Instead, he used the signing-on fee
he made from the transfer to purchase a house in Oxford,
choosing instead to commute to East London for training.
According to Harry Redknapp, then West Ham’s assistant manager under Billy Bonds, the problems
began straight away. In his autobiography, Redknapp
recalled Beauchamp “breaking down in tears on the way to
training on his first day because he was homesick” and, a few weeks later, Beauchamp turning
up late for a pre-season game with Portsmouth and making
little effort. As always, Redknapp’s version of events
warrants an asterisk. Bonds himself was much more forthright in
his recollection, though, referring to the transfer as a “disaster”, Beauchamp as
a “wimp”, and reasoning that the club was too big for the player. He was
damning. Beauchamp would make his escape. Prior to
the West Ham transfer being completed, Swindon Town had
carried an interest in the player and, offering defender Adrian Whitbread in part-exchange,
were able to convince West Ham to cut their losses on Beauchamp
after 58 days and before he had played a competitive game for the club.
That in itself was controversial. Swindon Town and Oxford United are fierce local rivals
and a local news interview conducted after his signing showed
a slightly dazed Beauchamp, clearly happy to have escaped
West Ham, but also uncertain as to what his future held.
“I didn’t want to go there either”, he told the Oxford Mail in 2010, “but I
had to get out of West Ham and Swindon were the only team at that
moment who were interested.” It was another unhappy spell. Beauchamp was
signed on the urging of John Gorman, then Swindon
manager and future England assistant to Glenn Hoddle, but Gorman was sacked before the end
of the year and, to Beauchamp’s further detriment,
he was replaced by Steve McMahon, who was far
less indulgent of the winger’s precocious flair.
By October 1995, fourteen months after arriving at the County Ground, Beauchamp had been
transfer-listed and was heading back to where he started: Oxford’s bid of just £75,000
was accepted and he returned to the Manor Ground. In spite
of their continuing financial difficulties, he would
remain a United player for the rest of his career.
The saga’s legacy profoundly damaged Beauchamp’s reputation. He remains one of the greatest
players in Oxford’s history and his thirty-five yard half-volley against Blackpool, which
crashed in off the London Road End crossbar, is widely
acknowledged as the finest goal the Manor Ground
ever saw. Still, outside of Oxford, Beauchamp’s career
has been unfairly defined by those 58 days at West
Ham. Billy Bonds would resign as manager in August 1994 and to many, that was a direct
consequence of the Beauchamp debacle. As a player, Bonds was a West Ham icon who still
holds the club’s appearance record, and the perception
was of a young outsider with an inferior attitude contributing to a legend’s demise.
A rational conclusion, but a reductive one in hindsight. In 2002, injury forced Beauchamp
into retirement at the age of just 31. The years
after were not kind to him and, despite continuing to play
in the local Oxfordshire non-leagues, by 2008 he had begun the descent into depression and
alcoholism, culminating in a drink-driving conviction in August 2009 which, thankfully,
would alter his life’s trajectory for the better.
In the mid-1990s, English football’s understanding of mental health issues was extremely primitive.
While Bonds comments suggest a lack of compassion, they were really typical of the time. The
likely also betrayed a certain level of personal bitterness, but they still conformed entirely
to contemporary attitudes within the game. Weakness
was a taboo. Beauchamp’s aversion to London and reluctance
to leave his home community suggest only the mildest form of anxiety, the issues which
manifested later in his life suggested a far deeper fragility
- the kind, ultimately, which would be treated with sympathy today, rather than derision.
His was a substantial talent. He was a wonderful player,
but a fragile one, and had the proper support been in
place and had Oxford not been incapacitated by Maxwell’s fraud, he would have been much
more than just a footnote within West Ham’s transfer
history.