Million-pound Steve was Robinho of his day

When Steve Daley signed at Manchester City in 1979, he broke the British transfer record. But things were very different then, as the former midfielder explains to Tim Nash.

When Brazilian superstar Robinho steps into the circus of being Britain's most expensive footballer at Manchester City, Steve Daley knows all about what he's going through.

Back in 1979 for a few short, crazy days, the Codsall-based grandfather-of-five held the same honour when he made the same journey from Wolves.

Twenty-nine years on, the contrasts could barely be bigger.

While Robinho is set to sign a contract for a mind-boggling £98,000 a week from his £32.5m move from Real Madrid, Daley's weekly earnings rose from £300 at Wolves to £500 at City overnight.

He had signed his first Wolves contract in 1971 for £8 a week.

The Brazilian will arrive on a private jet from Madrid with an entourage of agents and advisors, but Daley was left chugged up the M6 to Manchester in his old Ford Cortina.

"The only Lamborghini we had was my son Ryan's toy model," recalls Daley.

"I even had to ask the then Wolves secretary, Phil Shaw, for a tenner so I could fill up my car with petrol on the way!"

"In our day, the contracts were heavily incentivised so when I moved to City, you could bump your earnings up to £1,000 or £1,100 a week because you got appearance bonuses, win bonuses, crowd bonuses and bonuses for being in the top three or four.

"Nowadays it seems players earn a set amount a week, which I think is wrong.

"But I don't begrudge them a penny – if anyone offered you £60-70,000 a week, you'd take it wouldn't you?"

Despite the huge gulf in money in football over the last three decades, there are some similarities with the moves of Daley and Robinho.

While Premier League clubs all battled to complete their transfer market moves by the midnight deadline, Daley was awoken by a phone call at 2am in the morning to say his deal had happened.

"Both Manchester clubs were interested in me, but I got a call from the City general manager Tony Book asking 'is that Steve Daley?' I said, 'if it's not then I'm in bed with his wife!

"He told me to get to Manchester the following day. I signed a 10-year contract."

Football authorities had just abolished the rule where a player who hadn't asked for a transfer could claim five per cent of the £1,437,500 fee.

"They made it negotiable, so I negotiated four per cent, which wasn't bad."

That meant Daley earned a cool £57,500 from the deal.

"I think the papers did a comparison of what that could buy at the time and they reckoned I could buy 50-55 houses in Manchester at the time!" he recalls.

Robinho had been expected to join the galaxy of superstar millionaires at Chelsea, but instead has opted for a surprise move to City, where he will be very much the big star.

Daley arrived in similar circumstances – and it was a move that flopped.

"The day I signed, they sold four players – Gary Owen, Asa Hartford, Peter Barnes and Mick Channon, so it didn't look good," he recalls.

"I had been playing centre midfield for Wolves, but they played me out of position on the left at City.

"I remember a team-mate Dennis Tueart, asked me whether we'd got win bonuses and I said, I don't know, I've only been here four months!"

Two years after he arrived as the most expensive footballer in Britain, Daley left City on a free transfer to join Seattle Sounders in the United States.

It was only then that he employed an agent, John Hocker, who sorted his contract.

"I was anxious about his bill but when I opened it at the airport, it was £400, so I gave him a grand," said Daley.

But while Daley's move ultimately flopped, life has been good to the former Molineux midfielder – and all because of that move to City.

Now he combines his work as a sales rep for J Bishops Janitorial in Ettingshall with a place on the lucrative after-dinner speaking circuit, where he can rake in thousands of pounds for a night's work.

Daley proudly pulls out his own Wikipedia website entry, in which the Observer has him down as "football's worst buy of all time".

"I've got bookings all the way through to next July," smiles Daley.

Anyone interested in booking him can call him on 07709 411051.