JIM FURNELL 

Date and Place of Birth 23rd November 1937 - Manchester   Transfers to and from Burnley junior then pro - November 1954 to Liverpool - February 1962 (£15,000)   First and Last Burnley Games Blackpool (a) - 23rd April 1960   Chelsea (h) - 11th March 1961   Other Clubs ---------------------------------------- Liverpool, Arsenal, Rotherham United, Plymouth Argyle

Burnley Career Stats

Profile by Tony Scholes

If you can't establish yourself in the team then sometimes you have to move on, and that invariably means moving to a lesser club often in a lower division.

That's exactly what happened to Burnley goalkeeper Jim Furnell in 1962 almost eight years after he'd joined the club. And where did he go to play his football? Firstly it was off to Anfield to play for Liverpool and then Highbury where he continued his career with Arsenal.

Furnell had joined the ground staff in 1954 straight from school and when he celebrated his seventeenth birthday was offered his first professional contract. After serving his two year National Service he was ready to challenge for a place in the first team.

It didn't happen. He was kept out of the side firstly by Colin McDonald and then by Adam Blacklaw and he didn't make his debut until April 1960 in a crucial game as we got closer to the Championship.

We got a point from a 1-1 draw but Blacklaw was back next game and Furnell had to wait almost eleven months for his second, and ultimately his last first team game. That second one came in a 4-4 home draw against Chelsea when manager Harry Potts played ten reserve team players.

Early in 1962 we accepted an offer for him from Everton, but the Clitheroe born Furnell opted to turn it down. He almost immediately lost his place in the reserves to Harry Thomson and when Liverpool boss Bill Shankly came in just a few weeks later he agreed a £15,000 transfer to Anfield.

They were on their way to promotion and he went straight into the first team in place of Bert Slater. He remained in the side until the end of the season and started the following season as number one.

Then he broke a finger in training and was ruled out for months. Tommy Lawrence stepped up and Furnell admitted to being snubbed by manager Shankly who would have nothing to do with injured players. They'd gone from strength to strength by the time he was fit again and he was unable to dislodge Lawrence and played just two more games.

After just under two years he was on the move again, this time to Arsenal for £18,000. The manager at the time was Billy Wright the former England and Wolves centre half.

He replaced long time goalkeeper Jack Kelsey and for the next five years he was the first choice goalkeeper, a period which culminated in a Wembley appearance in the League Cup Final of 1968 when they were beaten by Leeds.

During that season they'd beaten Burnley in a replayed quarter final at Highbury. In the first game at Turf Moor a Burnley fan aimed something at him from the cricket field end terracing only to see his watch fly off. The expensive gold watch hit Furnell and the embarrassed fan never tried to reclaim it, although the incident led to areas behind both goals at Burnley being cordoned off.

With Bob Wilson replacing him in the Arsenal first team for the 1968/69 season he moved on to Rotherham for two years and then to Plymouth where he spent five years in the first team before ending his playing career at the age of 39 in 1976.

He didn't leave Home Park though, he continued as a coach, working for another former Burnley goalkeeper Tony Waiters who was manager. He worked under five managers at Plymouth, including Lennie Lawrence and Malcolm Allison, but it was his association with the fifth, Bobby Saxton, that led to his next move.

When Saxton went to Blackburn in 1981 he appointed Furnell as reserve team coach at Ewood Park, and he later held the position of youth development officer. Although Saxton came and went, Furnell remained for no less than seventeen years at Blackburn before retiring from the game at the beginning of 1998 just past his sixtieth birthday.

Looking back he was at Burnley at just the wrong time. Furnell was a very good goalkeeper but with McDonald, Blacklaw and then Thomson he was never going to establish himself in the first team of one of England's top sides.

His move to Liverpool led to a career that saw him play over 430 league games for his various clubs before enjoying over twenty years as a coach with Plymouth and then back home in Lancashire with Blackburn Rovers.