Coventry City's £2m transfer with Man Utd will struggle to be matched | OneFootball

Dion Dublin fired the Sky Blues to top flight survival, and became one of the leading strikers in the country in his time at Highfield Road

It might be hard to believe now, but before he was showing us the stairs that lead to the bedrooms, Dion Dublin was one of the most-feared strikers in English football.

The Dude dabbler shot to fame as part of John Beck’s Cambridge United side of the early 1990s, as he spearheaded an attack which saw the U’s earn back-to-back promotions and sit on the cusp of promotion into the inaugural Premier League season.

A move to Manchester United followed, and if it wasn’t for a broken leg sustained early on in his career at Old Trafford he could have gone on to regularly feature for the Red Devils as they went on to dominate English football for much of the decade.

Instead, they signed Eric Cantona to fulfil that role, but as one door shuts another one opens, and Dublin left for Coventry City, where he tormented top flight defences for the next four years.

Dion Dublin early career: Cambridge United, Manchester United, Coventry City

The Homes Under The Hammer presenter started his professional footballing journey at Norwich City before making the move to Cambridge as a 19-year-old, where his physical presence proved fundamental in the U’s rise up the divisions.

Beck was a manager known for utilising whatever advantage he could find against the opposition, with the grass in the corner flag kept long, so the ball held up enough for the wide men to put crosses into the box, and Dublin could work his magic in the air.

73 goals in 202 matches for United helped them to earn promotion from the fourth tier into the second, with his winner in the Fourth Division play-off final the catalyst for such success, before losing out to Leicester City in the Second Division play-offs in what proved to be his last act as a Cambridge player.

WIth their star player put up for sale, Manchester United swooped for one of the most prolific goalscorers in the Football League in recent years, although an injury-ravaged time at Old Trafford meant they never saw much of a return for their £1 million investment.

The same couldn’t be said of his time at Coventry City after his £2 million move two years after though, as he dominated defenders week in, week out as the Sky Blues held their own against the cream of the crop.

After 13 goals in his first season with City, Dublin started the next with 11 goals in his first 14 appearances of the campaign, with his name never far from the leading goalscorer charts for his club and the whole division.

In fact, the striker was City’s leading marksman in each of his four seasons with the club, and finished level with Michael Owen and Chris Sutton for the Premiership’s top scorer in the 97/98 season with 18 goals to his name.

Dion Dublin fires Coventry City to Premier League survival

It was the 96/97 season that will resonate the most with Cov fans though, as Dublin’s goals almost single-handedly kept them in the top flight, as he struck four times in the final six matches of the season to preserve their status as a Premiership club.

With the writing seemingly on the wall, the striker started to turn his club’s fortunes around with a late winner against Liverpool at Anfield, before finding the opener the week after in a 3-1 victory against Chelsea.

With Noel Whelan and Peter Ndlovu providing the support up front, the Sky Blues turned into a different force in the final few weeks of the season, with battling draws against Southampton and Arsenal helping their cause, with Dublin netting in the latter.

The Highfield Road outfit still weren’t out of the woods with 90 minutes left to play in the season, with Sunderland and Middlesbrough also battling it out to avoid the drop to the second tier.

After starting the day second bottom, City needed a victory over Tottenham Hotspur and results elsewhere to go their way to cling on to top flight status; and that’s exactly what they got as Dublin opened the scoring once again, before Paul Williams made it two in a nerve-jangling 2-1 win to claw themselves out of the drop zone on the final day of the season.

The scenes were jubilant at the final whistle, and no greater praise can be placed on anyone but Dublin, who claimed some crucial strikes in the run-in to personify the character shown to stave off the looming relegation.

It would have been easy to crumble when your backs are to the wall like that, but it seemed to make the striker play even more ferociously, and both he and his club benefited as a result.

Regardless of what happened from there, Dublin was already a local hero at Cov, and despite falling short in the next campaign, he was on the move to Aston Villa soon after for a reported £5.75 million fee.

Over 70 goals, countless memories, and over double the initial investment recouped by the sale, Coventry City certainly got a great deal from bringing Dion Dublin to the club, and played a big part in him being called up by England in the latter part of the decade.

His four international caps maybe don’t do justice for how much of a powerhouse he was in those early Premier League seasons, but with the likes of Shearer, Sheringham, Cole and Owen vying over the striking spots in the national team, earning a spot on the international stage was as tough as it got at the end of the century.

Six strong years at Villa Park followed, with 48 league goals and one particularly memorable headbutt on Robbie Savage [pictured], before stints at Leicester City, Celtic and Norwich City in the tail end of his career.

But Coventry was where he got his big break on the big stage, and he clasped it with both hands and never let go.

His impact at the Sky Blues was magnificent, and despite the likes of Viktor Gyokeres and Gustavo Hamer putting on a Sky Blue shirt in recent years, Dublin’s legacy is second to none, with memories made to last a lifetime.