Born on this day in Shrewsbury is Billy Jones. He made just shy of 100 appearances for the Lads, scoring three times- including one against the Mags!
You would be forgiven for forgetting Billy Jones and to be honest, I had actually forgotten he scored against the Mags. Despite that great moment, he was ultimately a lacklustre cog in the depressing side that suffered back-to-back relegations and slumped from the Premier League to League One. So, rather than forgetting him, perhaps I have banished him to the back of my mind. A failure that did nothing (other than score against the Mags) to warrant playing for our club routinely at all. We've had so many average players coming through the doors since Billy's departure, he is justly forgettable.
Billy began his career at Crewe and progressed through their well reputed youth system towards the twilight of the Dario Gradi years. Crewe is a club that players such as David Platt, Danny Murphy, Seth Johnson, Robbie Savage and Neil Lennon have begun their careers at. But crucially, the decent players there don’t stay there too long before being sold. In the time around Billy Jones progressing through the youth academy, such middle of the road players like Rob Hulse, Dean Ashton, David Vaughan and Michael O'Connor were being produced and sold, bankrolling Crewe’s average campaigns in which the only honour they win is a PFA Bobby Moore Fair Play trophy to add to their heap.
Remarkably, considering how average he was later on, he had a promising start to his career at Crewe and in his first season he won Crewe's Goal of the Season award for his first goal. Jones also won Crewe's Young Player of the Year award which is not bad going for a 16-year-old. The next year he went one better – winning the Player of Year award for a brilliant campaign in which he made 46 appearances and scored seven goals. Was this the same Billy Jones that played for us? Yes, only at this point he was a midfielder. He finished Crewe’s top scorer, but Crewe were ultimately relegated from the Championship. If Billy Jones is your top scorer, your team probably doesn’t stand a chance of beating the drop.
Manchester City were rumoured to be interested in the young player, by this time used at full back, and were reportedly keen to pay around £1.5 million. This, of course, was before their oil riches and had the move come to pass, Jones would have likely been frozen out extremely quickly. Or maybe, he would have relished the move and become one of England’s best right backs. In an alternate universe, Billy Jones is one of European football's most decorated players. Anyway, the 2006-7 season saw Jones move on from Crewe, joining Preston. He made over 130 appearances for Preston, scoring 13 goals.
After a decent time at Preston, Jones earned his Premier League move, joining West Brom. He made 17 appearances in his debut top-flight season, mainly covering the injured Steven Reid. West Brom actually had a pretty sturdy back line that year and the defender featured in six of Albion's ten Premier League clean sheets in his first season, including a 0–0 draw with Manchester City, who would go on to win the league title. If only, Jones must’ve thought.
Interestingly, Jones’s first and only goal was against Newcastle, so perhaps when we came in for him in 2014, his signing was part of a long term strategy to get him to score against the Mags and secure six wins in a row. If this 4D chess move was actually made, credit to the recruitment at the club because it was the only somewhat memorable moment of his Sunderland career. Jones scored against Newcastle by deflecting Jermain Defoe’s volley in from extremely close range on 65 minutes against a United side reduced to ten men.
I mean, there is not much else to cover about his Sunderland career except for a couple more goals he scored one against Hull in the Prem, and another in the Championship. He seemed Championship quality when in the Premier League and then, after relegation, he was anonymous in the Championship. He had one appalling game when we got beat off Ipswich, one of their goals really highlighting his defensive frailties. He called his last season at Sunderland ‘horrible’ and that is a succinct explanation which is entirely true. But it was horrible in part because we had players of Jones’s calibre or worse at the club and we went down with a whimper.
Naturally after leaving us he never did anything else notable in football, joining Rotherham and then completing a ‘romantic’ return to Crewe, where his career began. Initially at Crewe, he had captained England at every level up to U20’s but of course, he couldn’t revive his career there. For a player that showed such early promise, his move to Sunderland put the nail in the coffin of his career. A back to back relegation can do that.
Whilst Billy Jones can shoulder some of the blame for the back to back relegation, ultimately there were worse and more egregious players in that cursed side. In summary, Jones was basically invisible and just not good enough for Sunderland.
