KURT NOGAN 

Date and Place of Birth 9th September 1970 - Cardiff   Transfers to and from Burnley from Brighton and Hove Albion - 24th February 1995 (£250,000) to Preston North End - 12th March 1997 (£150,000)   First and Last Burnley Games Tranmere Rovers (a) - 25th February 1995   Blackpool (a) - 25th February 1997 replaced by Liam Robinson   Other Clubs Luton Town, Peterborough United, Brighton & Hove Albion ---------------------------------------- Preston North End, Cardiff City

Burnley Career Stats

Profile by Tony Scholes

When things aren't going too well, and you're struggling for goals and looking to bring in a new striker then why not sign one who's had the knack of scoring goals against you.

Burnley boss Jimmy Mullen did just that in 1995. We'd lost seven successive league games and the season after the dramatic Wembley play off win against Stockport was becoming a nightmare. Jimmy made one last dip into the transfer market to bring in two new players.

One of them was Brighton striker Kurt Nogan who was Jimmy's latest attempt at finding a striker. Since promotion he'd signed Liam Robinson and John Gayle as well as taking the likes of Andy Saville and Paul Stewart on loan.

Nogan had scored four times against us for Brighton in the 1992/93 season and the season after scored their only goal against us, and that would suggest he looked a good bet. But he came during the worst run of his career in terms of goalscoring, not having scored in any of his last seventeen league games for the south coast club.

He started his career with Luton Town and scored his first ever goal on his debut at Anfield against Liverpool in a 2-2 First Division draw in 1990 and things got better for the young Welshman when he was called up for his country's under-21s for whom he also scored on his debut.

A good start it might have been but he never really established himself in the Luton first team and when the suffered relegation from the old First Division in 1992, missing out on a place in the first ever Premier League, he was released.

After a short trial at Peterborough he finally signed for Brighton and that's when things took off. In his two full seasons at the Goldstone Ground he was prolific, that was until the goals just dried up.

He scored seven times in the first nine games of the 1994/95 season, but that was it and in the next seventeen he failed to find the net. The last nine appearances were alongside new signing Ade Akinbiyi who had arrived on loan from Norwich.

Despite that run without a goal he signed for the Clarets and made his debut at Tranmere alongside Steve Thompson who had signed for Leicester on the same day.

He didn't prove to be the player who would keep us up, indeed he struggled to settle in the side and scored just three times as we went down. He was also involved in an altercation with the manager after being substituted at Bristol City.

Nogan though was soon to get into his stride and for the next season and a half became just the goalscorer Burnley wanted. He scored 26 goals in the 1995/96 season, 20 of them in the league, and none more important than the one he got at Wrexham that gave us a 2-0 lead as we finally escaped from the possibility of successive relegations.

During that season Mullen was replaced as manager by Adrian Heath and Nogan was definitely one of the new manager's blue eyes boys. It seemed he could do no wrong and the goalscoring continued into the following season as the Clarets pushed towards the top of the table.

His partnership with new signing Paul Barnes looked a potent one and Burnley fans went into Christmas with a real belief that the club could mount a promotion challenge. But it all started to go wrong, particularly with Heath and Nogan.

For long enough he'd been the first name on the team sheet, but the blue eyed boy was no longer. Contract talks stalled and Nogan even went onto a local radio phone in to lambaste the manager who had now turned against him. There were rumours of evenings spent in Indian restaurants and all that entailed and all of a sudden the crowd hero had become public enemy number one.

It was obvious there was no future for him at Burnley with both manager and fans now gunning for him and it came as no surprise when he was sold in February 1997. His destination was Deepdale.

Once at Preston he did what he'd always done at Brighton, enjoyed scoring against Burnley. I lost count of the number of goals he scored against us at both Deepdale and Turf Moor, but I certainly remember one in particular in 1999 that won the game for Preston at Burnley, it was probably as good a goal as we'd seen all season.

After a successful spell with Preston he returned home to Wales in March 2000 and to his home town club of Cardiff, but it wasn't to be a happy time for him at the club he'd supported as a serious injury ended his career prematurely.

He was only able to start four games for Cardiff along with a number of substitute appearances. It was in one of those sub appearances that he scored his only goal for them in an amazing game.

It came against Hartlepool at Ninian Park in November 2000. He came on five minutes into the second half for Rob Earnshaw with the score 1-1. It remained that way until the last minute of the game when it looked as though Tommy Miller had won it for Hartlepool. But incredibly in stoppage time Cardiff scored twice to win it themselves. Mark Bonner levelled the scores before Kurt scored the winner.

On 17^th March 2001 he made his last appearance for Cardiff and his last appearance in the Football League. He's since played football for some of the clubs in the Welsh League and last season was turning out for ENTO Aberaman Athletic.

I'm not sure what it was that went wrong with Heath and Nogan but it certainly soured his relationship with the Burnley fans and he was always assured of a reception when he came back to play against us. I've always wondered what sort of reception he'd receive if he were to come back to do the half time draw.