Ultimate Barclaysmen: Matthew Taylor was the Portsmouth & Bolton hero with a rocket launcher attached to his foot

‘The Barclays’. While the Premier League was technically sponsored by the aforementioned bank between 2001-16, the period which is so wistfully looked back upon by fans of a certain vintage is the first decade of the 2000s.

After its initial emergence in 1992, the English top-flight enjoyed a secondary boom in popularity following the turn of the millennium, as overseas television deals and a secondary influx of foreign stars gave the league a truly global appeal. It played host to a number of the game’s modern icons, too, with Cristiano Ronaldo, Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba among those who lit up the Premier League on a weekly basis.

When fans refer to ‘The Barclays’, though, it is not those household names they are referring to. Instead, it is the players who were largely in the background when it came to being headline-grabbing, but were seen as key cogs in the Premier League machine by die-hard fans, while still able to produce moments of magic.

These players have come to be known as the ‘Barclaysmen’, but what made them so beloved, and what became of them once their Barclays life was over? Here at GOAL, we will endeavour to find out with our latest series, ‘Ultimate Barclaysmen’.

One of those, without doubt, is Matthew Taylor. After toiling in the fourth and third tiers of English football with Luton, the midfielder soon rose to Premier League stardom with Portsmouth, Bolton and West Ham. A hard-working Englishman with a penchant for scoring stunning goals for mid-table teams, Taylor is a revered cult hero.

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  Where he came from

  Taylor emerged as a young star at Luton when he made his debut in the opening game of the 1999-00 season as a 17-year-old left-back in English football’s third tier. Despite his age, he looked right at home in the first-team and kept his spot in the starting XI all season, impressing so much he won the club’s Young Player of the Season award. The following year was a dire one for Luton as they finished in the relegation zone, but Taylor still ended up the Player of the Season.

  Indeed, he stuck with Luton as they dropped down a division and helped them secure promotion with his 11 league goals. He didn’t join them in the Second Division again, though, as he was receiving offers from elsewhere, including the Premier League. Determined to keep playing every week, Taylor opted to join Portsmouth in their fight for promotion to the top-flight instead.

  Pompey had spent the previous few years in the bottom half of the First Division but the summer of 2002 saw them bring in many new faces, with players signed from Juventus, Auxerre, Aston Villa, West Ham and, later, Tottenham. Taylor, at 20 years old and coming from a lower division, may not have seemed one of Harry Redknapp’s most glamorous signings, but he was immediately starting and finishing every game until his season was cut short in March. He ended the campaign with seven goals as they finished top of the table.

  “Looking back now, it’s probably one of the best decisions I ever made in my career, to go to Portsmouth,” he told Hampshire Live years later. “Within 12 months of finishing second in League Two with Luton, we’d won the Championship and I was a Premier League player. It was a crazy 12 months really and it was a fantastic decision [to move to Pompey].”

  Barclays highlights

  The beginning of Taylor’s Premier League career was an unspectacular one. At 21, he was making a huge step up to the top-flight for the first time with a newly-promoted side, but injury troubles continued into the early part of the 2003-04 season, ruling him out of the first six matches.

  His first Premier League goal came late in his second season as he lashed into the top of the net to equalise against Middlesbrough in a 2-1 win. A fine strike, but he would go on to fire in many more memorable efforts in the following years.

  It was the next season, Taylor truly announced himself in a masterclass performance against Sunderland. The Black Cats were ahead after just four minutes, but Taylor set up Zvonimir Vukic’s equaliser and then scored to put his team ahead. Eight minutes later, Vukic bounced it in front of him in the middle of the Sunderland half and he unleashed a perfect shot that sailed over Kelvin Davis and in. He then set up another goal as Pompey won 4-1 at the Stadium of Light.

  His next goal was a curling free-kick against Blackburn and then he headed in late on in a 3-1 loss to a Manchester United team consisting of Cristiano Ronaldo and Ruud van Nistelrooy. In the last weeks of the season, he scored back-to-back match-winning penalties as Pompey finished four points clear of relegation.

  Then came that long missile over Tim Howard from just outside the centre circle in a 2-0 win against Everton, followed a week later by a shot beyond Jens Lehmann from the edge of the box as they drew 2-2 with Arsenal.

  “It was instinctive,” he said of the Everton goal. “My first touch was that bad; it was Pedro [Mendes], I think, who played the ball to me, and I lost it under my foot. Fortunately, Kanu managed to get a toe in, it sat up beautifully, and I just hit it. It could have flown over; nine times out of 10 it would. The manager would probably have said to me: ‘What the bleedin’ hell were you doing? Pass it simple’. But it was nice to see it fly in.”

  A Matty Taylor wonder strike from waaaaaay out 😲#GoalOfTheDay pic.twitter.com/R16xWbsNqz

  — Premier League (@premierleague) March 8, 2021

  Taylor had an incredible ability to strike the ball and it racked up a highlight reel of beautiful long-range efforts for Portsmouth, Bolton and West Ham. Whether the ball was dead, 10 yards from a wall or bouncing in his path 40 yards from goal, he was brilliant at launching it right at the target. It helped that he had a knack for picking the right moment to hit the ball, too.

  “I tell anyone, you must always practice your technique. I did that vigorously. But those goals, for me, they were pure instinct,” he said.

  His goals weren’t all stunners from halfway, as he netted a fair amount of headers, penalties and close-range efforts against big names like Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester United along the way. Across his 12 seasons in the division, Taylor certainly made a big impact in that glorious Barclays era of the Premier League.

  ‘Think again. You’re having a laugh’

  Unsurprisingly, Taylor stood out to teams higher up the table and was linked to the likes of Fulham and Newcastle initially. Then, in 2007, reports of interest from Liverpool, Aston Villa and Everton emerged, with Pompey chief executive Peter Storrie laughing off the transfer fees being talked about.

  “He’s a midfield player who scored eight Premiership goals last season, and the figure being quoted is £5 million,” he said that summer. “Think again. You’re having a laugh. He’s worth a lot more than that. He’s done well for us, played almost every game last season and scored a lot of goals. We’re not interested in selling him, and even if we were, it certainly wouldn’t be for that price.”

  As well as being tipped to move up the league, he was backed for an England call-up by his Bolton manager ahead of Euro 2012.

  Matt Taylor with 𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫 belting strike ⚡️#GoalOfTheDay pic.twitter.com/rOkIHhAoSp

  — Premier League (@premierleague) August 30, 2020

  • “Matt’s set-piece delivery is second to none, he tucks in, does his bit defensively and gets forward,” Gary Megson said. “You do not like pushing people forward but if England are looking for someone in what is a problem area they could do worse than look at Matt.”

    Despite his glorious goals in the Premier League, Taylor never got to represent his country at senior level, only ever turning out for the Under 21s.

    “The only disappointment I have in my career was not earning an England cap,” he said. “There were times when I was close, but it wasn’t to be. The easy thing is to think that if I deserved it I would have got it. At the time, I was up against some astounding players, and it just wasn’t to be.”

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    Moving on

    A big-money move or a call up for England never came about for Taylor, who was allowed to leave Portsmouth as his playing time dried up, and he went on to have three-and-a-half seasons at Bolton, where he resumed normal service of scoring stunning goals.

    “I think you feel by the fact that probably you’re not playing as much as you were and it’s a natural thing that happens in football, that managers will sign other players when they become available, football is a game of opinions and you have to accept that,” he said about leaving Pompey.

    He then opted to join West Ham in the Championship in 2011 and was back in the top-flight a year later after helping the Hammers to promotion. He enjoyed another two years in the big league before joining Burnley and suffering relegation.

    He stayed with the Clarets for one season in the Championship and then dropped down a division with Northampton, before heading down again, to League Two, with Swindon and then retiring in 2019. Three years later, he came out of retirement at the age of 41 to play with non-league outfit Abingdon United, where he played as a teenager before Luton came in for him.

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      Life after the Barclays

      Taylor’s professional playing career wrapped up at Swindon Town, but even before hanging up his boots he had already tried his hand at management. Midway through his debut season at Swindon, the manager who signed him resigned and Taylor was asked to take over.

      “I turned him down at first, but he insisted. I was enjoying my football then, playing in League Two as my career wound down, and starting to think about how exactly I’d move into coaching,” he said. “I wasn’t really ready, but I was thrown in. The week was complicated further when, after deciding I shouldn’t play on the Saturday, and doing all of our preparation for the game without me in the team, we got an injury. I had to start the game.

      “To be honest, it was a nightmare.”

      They lost his only game in charge 3-0 and Phil Brown came in as the new boss, allowing Taylor to go back to playing.

      “My one game in charge of Swindon hadn’t given me the bug to become a manager – quite the opposite, really!”

      Taylor had the desire to continue his development as a coach and spent a couple of years in charge of the Tottenham Under-18s before taking over at League Two side Walsall in 2021. He was, however, out by February. A year later, he was appointed coach of Shrewsbury in League One and left the following January with his team in danger of relegation. He is now managing Wealdstone in the National League.

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      Lasting legacy

      A resilient midfielder with a simple style, Taylor could be both industrious and spectacular. While he never made the step up to one of the division’s top teams and didn’t represent his country, the Englishman left behind some absolutely glorious moments.

      With an eagle’s eye for goal and that rocket launcher of a left foot, he put forward many stunning Goal of the Month contenders with his 40 strikes in over 320 appearances in the top-flight before he retraced his steps back down to the lower leagues.

      His career was hardly glamorous, but he is clearly one of the iconic figures of the Barclays era of the Premier League.