I donāt remember him much as a player but I remember him as a manager at Sheffield Wednesday in particular and built a nice team there with Des Walker back from Sampdoria and England international Andy Sinton from QPR.
Like his close playing contemporary Butch Wilkins, Trevor Francis was very articulate and had a very relaxing and pleasing voice when doing analysis, and like Wilkins, as well as the likes of Richard Whiteley, Tony Gubba and Peter Brackley, heās one of those people whose passing feels uncomfortable to a certain cohort of Irish men.
I donāt remember too much in a first hand sense about Trev as a player - I vaguely recall his spell at Rangers - but I liked his analysis work on Channel 4ās Football Italia and on Sky Sportsā coverage of Englandās summer tour of the Americas in 2008 when they failed to qualify for the Euros.
I admired his passion for Birmingham City, which sort of made me mentally associate him with Jasper Carrott. He went out as Birmingham City manager after a blazing on-field row with the referee about which end the penalty competition in the 2001 play-off semi-final against Preston at Deepdale should take place at. It was a row and a penalty competition he and Birmingham lost to David Moyesā Preston and came off the back of another penalty competition loss to Liverpool in the Frank Worthington (RIP) Cup final.
Birmingham were promoted the following year when they beat Norwich in a penalty competition after the play off final but Trev was gone by then.
Trev wasnāt too far away from becoming the last English manager to win the First Division title when he managed Sheffield Wednesday to a barnstormer of a season in 1991/92 and then they lost the two Cup finals to Arsenal the following year. It didnāt really matter that Arsenal scored in the last minute of extra-time in that FA Cup final replay as Arsenal would definitely have won the penalty competition anyway, Trevās teams always lost in penalty competitions.
Iād like to remember him as the man who came up with the idea to make Paul Warhurst a centre forward, and to get Kevin Pressman to take penalties. For that he deserves our thanks.
Three seconds was enough for me to know that @StoneCold confused Trevor Francis with Trevor Steven and then immediately realised heād made a boo boo.