'I admire what you've said to me but I couldn't give a s***'

Recounting his first role in football management, Mark Lawrenson explained how the sale of Dean Saunders brought him head-to-head with "bully" Robert Maxwell. 

After injury brought his playing career to a premature end, Mark Lawrenson was only 31-years-old when he took charge of Oxford United in what was then essentially the EFL Championship.

While a few years had passed since Jim Smith had guided the improbable Oxford to England's top flight, the Irish international Lawrenson had reasons to be optimistic, nevertheless.

'A decent little team' as he remembers it now, he believed that the wonderfully talented Dean Saunders had enough about him to earn the club promotion once again.

"My only problem was Robert Maxwell," recalled Lawrenson to OTB Sports.

"He absolutely did me in cold blood. He owned both Derby County and Oxford United and he wanted to take Deano to Derby."

The Czechoslovakian-born media mogul, M.P., fraudster and alleged spy who died in unusual circumstances provided Oxford United with circumstances unfamiliar to most football clubs.

Although Lawrenson recalled getting on well enough with his son and the ostensible chairman of Oxford at the time Kevin Maxwell, the "top man" tended to include himself in proceedings from time to time.

When the Derby County manager Arthur Cox kept turning up to watch Saunders playing for Oxford, the young manager sensed things were not going to go as he wished.

"I used to say to him, 'Arthur, I don't know why you're here because he's not going'," explained Lawrenson, "[but] Arthur would just say, 'Well, you better tell the top man he's not going.'"

Oxford United's Dean Saunders

Only a few weeks into the 1988/89 season, Lawrenson received a phone-call from Kevin Maxwell less than two hours before his side were due to take on Blackburn Rovers.

"He just said to me, 'I'll need to explain this later as I'm not around today, but Dean Saunders can't play today,'" Lawrenson remembered being told. "I asked him why and he told me he was signing for Derby.

"I just thought, 'you know what, I'm going to play him - sod it, because I'm going anyway now.' I played him and he scored."

A 1-1 draw at the Manor Ground, Lawrenson predictably found himself setting off for London the following day to meet Robert Maxwell at his headquarters in the Mirror building.

One of Maxwell's many publications at the time, the former Liverpool defender doesn't remember Oxford's owner being well pleased to see him.

"He just looked at you like, 'What do you want? I'm a busy man,'" explained Lawrenson. "He gave me that look and just the whole thing came out. 'You pinched my player, you've lied to me.'

"You can stick your job where the sun doesn't shine."

With one foot out the door himself, it was Maxwell who delivered the final word, however.

"He just looked at me," recalled Lawrenson, "'Well, I quite admire what you've said to me, but I couldn't give a s***,' and he walked out of the building."

Download the brand new OffTheBall App in the Play Store & App Store right now! We've got you covered!

Subscribe to OffTheBall's YouTube channel for more videos, like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter for the latest sporting news and content.