'Overweight, unfit and not interested' - 30 years on from Brolin

It has been 30 years since Tomas Brolin joined Leeds United to much fanfare as their £4.5m record signing at the time.

The former centre-forward joined the Whites on the back of a highly regarded 1994 World Cup campaign, where he helped Sweden finish third, and with a strong reputation from his success with Italian side Parma.

But the Swede did not live up to expectations, only managing four goals from his two years in Yorkshire and BBC Radio Leeds have been recounting the signing with fans.

"It was a funny time then. We'd been in the doldrums really after 1992. We'd started to lose our way a little bit and the football under Howard Wilkinson had become stale. Other clubs were starting to move forward," United supporter Gareth told the BBC's Adam Pope.

"You look at the way that Manchester United started to play once they got Eric Cantona while Aston Villa became a really progressive team using wingers. Even [Sir Alex] Ferguson at Manchester United had changed to out-and-out wing play with Cantona as a flair number 10 floating around.

"Blackburn had become really strong and attacking but Wilkinson was renowned for being dour and most of the time a 4-4-2. You could predict it. We were very direct and we'd started to lose a couple of players.

"I'm pretty convinced that Brolin was a Bill Fotherby [former managing director] signing and absolutely not the type of player that Wilkinson was interested. Brolin had a brilliant Euros in Sweden in 1992 and was an outstanding player.

"But there was a lot of talk at the time that when he was coming, that Wilkinson didn't want him. He wasn't a Wilkinson signing, but Fotherby had decided that he was having him. He bought him, what was it, four and a half million pounds, which was a lot of money back in those days."

In the end, Brolin made just 25 appearances for the Whites, being loaned back to Parma and then heading to Premier League rivals Crystal Palace. Gareth's verdict on the Sweden forward was fairly blunt.

"What a horrific signing," he said. "The kid was overweight, unfit and not interested. I think he's admitted about his hedonistic lifestyle after the Euros at that time had got to his head a little bit.

"He did virtually nothing for us and couldn't really compete in the Premier League. A nothing of a signing. He never even made it into a really poor starting XI into that 1996 Coca Cola Cup final against Villa.

"It was just a really bad time for us that was becoming the start of the end for Wilko even though it was another couple of years before he went. All we were doing then was ending up losing great players - Gary McAllister, Gordon Strachan and Gary Speed left.

"A real tough time for us as a club. You felt like Brolin was a brilliant signing when he came and then when you just saw this kid stood in the middle of the pitch carrying two stone and couldn't move, you wondered what on earth we had got.

"May as well have played me. I was a bit slimmer in those days!"