I would agree with you about Barrie Thomas and Johnny Evans, hence my name tag on this board. When you think that we were plummeting into oblivion and the two of them revitalised and turned round our fortunes, helping us to get into mid table in the first year and then promoted in the second, albeit after Thomas had had to retire with the knee injury I guess we knew he had when he came in the first place. It was inspirational and positive thinking by Buckle and Dennis to invest at a time of crisis and boy did it work and it is worth remembering that we already had a half-decent team with Winstanley, Bettany, Earnshaw, Hamstead etc, but just couldn't finish.. I can recall a crowd of over 10,000 for the Southport cup tie; 15,000 for Port Vale and over 20,000 for Cardiff City and, hey presto, BT and JE had paid for their transfer fees. I can't think of over 'double' signings and would have to check the records, but when Allan Clarke signed David Currie for £150k, he was also chasing a player called Martin McGaughey, who had a prolific scoring record in the Irish league. He would have cost us £85k, but chose to stay at Linfield (?) part time and continue to work as a bank clerk. I would have loved to have seen how that double signing would have worked out, but it wasn't to be.
Paul Futcher and Calvin Plummer from Derby in 1983? Ok, Plummer were rubbish but Futch was one of our all-time best players I'd say.