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Ex Files - Neil Brisco

We've no idea whether the brother-in-law thing was true or not, but here is his profile added to the Ex Files.

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Player Profile: Neil Brisco

Name Neil Brisco
Position Midfielder
Date of Birth 26th January 1978
Born Wigan
Height 6'0
Weight 13'0
Signed for Dale Port Vale - 04.06.04
Fee Free Transfer
Debut Scunthorpe 3 Dale 1 - 07.08.04
Other Clubs Man City
Port Vale
Left Spotland 08.05.06

Dale Stats (to July 2007)
  League Cup Total
Season App Sub Goals App Sub Goals App Sub Goals
2005-2006 14 2 0 1 0 0 15 2 0
2005-2006 6 5 0 0 1 0 6 6 0
Total 20 7 0 1 1 0 21 8 0
The signing of Neil Brisco will go down as one of the worst signings in recent seasons. He came to the club on decent wages, and basically did nothing. It's not so much the fact that he was bad, but he hardly played for the first team and when he did he was practically anonymous. Had it not been for his sending off against Cheltenham, it'd be difficult to remember anything he actually did at the club.

On paper, his signing seemed to be good business. He came to the club with a decent reputation from Port Vale as a tough tackling midfielder, having turned down an offer of a new deal from the Valiants and the prospect of a Jones-Brisco central midfield partnership was encouraging for the 2004-5 season. But pretty much from the word go, it never worked out for him at Spotland.

His first season was very much one to forget for Neil Brisco last year. In fact, it was a season in which many Dale supporters had actually forgotten that Brisco was at the club given his impact on proceedings, and he must be one of the few players who could actually claim to have made less appearances than Chris Beech ever did.

But it seemed to go wrong, very, very quickly. Dale boss Steve Parkin said that he had bulked up over the Summer by over training on weights, and had lost a bit of his game as a result, but all we ever saw was a shadow of the player we thought we had signed.

Brisco made a total of twelve appearances over the season, though you'd be hard pushed to remember those, and he was forced to spend a lengthy amount of time on loan at Northwich Victoria in a bid to play first team football. However, throughout this time, there was negativity coming out of the club with regards to Brisco, either publically or off the record which usually accompanies a player out of favour.

Certainly, Brisco can't claim that he wasn't given a chance to make up for his disappointing first spell as he was practically a regular in the first couple of months of the season, but the aforementioned sending off against Cheltenham did him few favours.

His last Dale appearance came away at Oxford in February 2006, and although much of it was enforced due to injury, he never troubled the team sheet again. His Dale career ended with just twenty league starts in two seasons without ever showing the sort of form that he'd have hoped to and that we expected from him.

His career began at Manchester City, whom he joined straight from school but he couldn't make the breakthrough into the first team with the (then) Maine Road club, and upon being let go by the Citizens, he joined Port Vale in 1998.

His first appearance came as a 20 year old when he was thrown as much into the deep end as you could possibly get when he made his debut in a televised FA Cup game against Liverpool. However, there was to be no fairy tale debut, and the only thing he picked up that day was a booking for all his efforts.

But over the next few years, Brisco went on to establish himself at Vale Park as a first team regular making a total of 135 appearances for the Valiants during that time.

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