Always Managing: My Autobiography (19 page)

These days, sports science techniques address issues like Body Mass Index, which assesses how much players should weigh, taking variables such as height into account. I just had my old black book with the player weights written down. Old school, but effective. When Bishop denied that he had a weight problem, I could prove that he was wrong. I went to the boot of my car, found my book and there it was, documented and undeniable. I was looking forward to working with him again, too. I had bought Bishop from Carlisle United for £20,000, and sold him for £465,000 plus Paul Moulden a year later. He was a superb player, but his weight was symptomatic of a club that had let itself go. They were no longer top-notch players, because they had not behaved in a top-notch way. West Ham had finished bottom of Division One
the previous year, with a total of 38 points in a twenty-two-team league. It would be like getting 34 points in the Premier League today, a stupidly low total. Bishop wasn’t the same player I knew, and West Ham weren’t the same club.

There was a lot of anger about. This was a relegated team, and the fans were not having the players at all. They hated Bishop, they hated Trevor Morley, the main striker. They were on their backs from the start. I went to a pre-season game against Hornchurch, and it was a brutal introduction. A lovely summer evening, the pitch in perfect condition, everyone tanned and happy – and yet the mood in the crowd was absolutely rotten. Hornchurch were a little Isthmian League club with a ground in Upminster that didn’t hold more than 3,000. In this gentle setting, I could not believe the abuse our players were receiving. ‘You tosser, Morley; you wanker, Bishop.’ And that is just the printable stuff. Welcome to the new season, Harry. The punters are usually pleased to see you, simply delighted that football is back. This was spiteful, and the players were scared. There was no confidence about them at all.

It wasn’t just the team that were copping it. There used to be a family with season tickets above the tunnel at Upton Park, and they would give Billy Bonds abuse like I’ve never heard. They had a little blond-haired boy with them but it made no difference. Billy was the manager that had got them relegated so, regardless of his fine standing and fantastic service to the club, he was a fucking wanker and deserved all he got. Every week, no matter the result. And the kid joined in. I was so disgusted, because I knew Bill could hear it – let’s face it, everyone could hear it. The whole family: Dad, Grandad, even the old grandmother at one match. But the boy was the worst. Bill just shrugged his shoulders. ‘It’s
always the same, Harry,’ he said. ‘Every game.’ Unfortunately, I let it get to me. One week as the lad gave Bill some really horrible abuse, I turned and addressed the lot of them. ‘You should wash his mouth out,’ I said, pointing. ‘Who you talking to?’ the dad replied, aggressively. So they left Bill alone and started on me each week instead. By the end, I’d had enough. I complained and the secretary moved them to another part of the ground. Then, a few years ago, the strangest thing happened. I went back to West Ham as manager of Tottenham Hotspur, and when I came out of Upton Park a few people were waiting for autographs. I went over to sign and out of nowhere this big lump appeared – blond hair, about 6 feet 4 inches – and started giving me all kinds of abuse. It was vicious and very personal, and I was quite glad the fence was there. But I looked at him, and I’m sure it was that kid. He would be about the right age for it.

At times like that I think back to the days of going to the Blind Beggar with Bobby Moore and how much the game has changed. Yes, we came across the odd nutter who wanted to show off to his mates by having a pop at a footballer, but mostly there was a great atmosphere between the players and the fans. The locals loved West Ham, and we were the local boys that played for West Ham. We’d go to the Black Lion in Plaistow after the game, and there would still be a lot of fans in there who had been to the match. There was never a problem, even if we’d got beat. You couldn’t do that now. Lose a match and people take it personally. And Billy’s West Ham team had been relegated. So the early part of that season was hard for us.

We won the first game, away at Barnsley, but played Charlton Athletic at home six days later and lost 1–0. We had a meeting
after that match because we could not carry on this way. Some of the players wouldn’t even go on the pitch to warm up because the crowd were still so angry, and it was no surprise that we lost two out of our first three games. We were edgy but, slowly, we got it sorted. We won five and drew one in September and players like Bishop got back to their old selves – and their old weight. Meanwhile, I had unearthed another problem – and helping solve it came to define the future at Upton Park.

One morning I went along to our Chadwell Heath training ground and saw our under-13 team getting slaughtered 5–0 by Charlton. I found out we’d lost our last match by a similar scoreline, too. How are Charlton getting better kids than us? I asked. I was pointed in the direction of Jimmy Hampson, the man in charge of Charlton’s youth set-up. ‘If he’s getting the best talent, then we ought to get hold of him,’ I told our youth coaches. That afternoon I went over to Jimmy and began talking to him about coming to West Ham. ‘Do you fancy it?’ I asked. ‘Do I fancy it?’ he echoed, and pulled up his sleeve. He had the West Ham crossed hammers tattooed on his arm. ‘West Ham’s my team, Harry,’ he said. ‘I come from Canning Town.’ So we took Jimmy. And because we took Jimmy, we also in time took Rio Ferdinand, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Glen Johnson and Jermain Defoe.

We made Jimmy youth development officer and that changed our whole operation. I’m very proud of his appointment, because it altered the path of the club. We ended up with six players in or around the England squad, and most of them came to us due to Jimmy’s guidance. I’ve heard that Billy thought I interfered too much as his assistant, poking my nose in even with the youth operation, but what was I supposed to do, sit back and shrug my
shoulders as the next generation of talent drained away? My attitude was that as a member of West Ham’s staff I was going to do the job to the best of my ability. I didn’t see that as interference then, and I don’t now. If there is anyone who can find me the equivalent of Rio, Joe, Jermain and Frank Lampard for Queens Park Rangers, I would be happy. Good players make a manager’s life easy. Yes, I was grafting, but only because I wanted to see West Ham do well.

And we did do well. In fact, we won promotion at the first attempt – but it wasn’t easy. We looked odds-on to go up alongside Kevin Keegan’s Newcastle United, but then we stuttered and Portsmouth, who were managed by Jim Smith, went on an amazing run. With two matches to go, they were three points ahead of us with a goal difference of plus 77 to our plus 76. We were playing on Sunday, away at Swindon Town, but Portsmouth were at Sunderland the day before. I went to watch a game elsewhere and as the news came through from Roker Park my smile must have got wider and wider. Portsmouth had lost 4–1. Now it was back in our hands. We won 3–1 at Swindon and it went down to the last.

Portsmouth were playing Grimsby Town, who had nothing riding on it, so I telephoned Alan Buckley, their manager, and promised him a nice case of wine if he could win on the final day. Grimsby lost 2–1. Our final match was against Cambridge United, who were managed by John Beck, fighting to stay up, and a right handful. John was one of my former players at Bournemouth. I took him from Fulham, and he was such a lovely player, a really good footballer, but with an incredible level of fitness. In that division, it really stood out. We’d go running up St Catherine’s Hill near Christchurch and he was always the fastest. He decided when he became a manager that this was the way to go. Get
the team fit as fiddles and compete physically. He made visiting Cambridge an ordeal for the opposition. No lights in the dressing room, so you had to go hunting for bulbs, and only cold water in the showers. He caught one of his players talking to Gerry Peyton, my goalkeeper, before a match once and I thought he was going to kill him. He manhandled this guy away, shouting and hollering about never talking to the opposition. I suppose he thought he had to do something to intimidate the visitors because, being frank, who would be scared of going to Cambridge? So he made it a different world up there.

One time when we played with Bournemouth, they had a young lad in midfield with a really nice touch. After about fifteen minutes, he played the ball backwards to his defence, and John came marching out of the dugout to shout at him, ‘Forward! Always forward!’ he yelled. About two minutes later, the kid passed one square. Out came John again. ‘One more,’ he told him, ‘and you’re off.’ Next ball, it was really tight, we had a lot of players crowding in and he had absolutely no options, so he did the sensible thing and laid it off behind – and that was it. Up came his number, gone in 20 minutes. John wasn’t interested in playing any other way. Everything had to go big. Help it forward. No matter where the ball was, it went forward. Turn it in behind you, get up and win the second ball. He had four signs in the corners of the pitch that read QUALITY, and the players were instructed to aim for them. He let the grass grow longer down there, too, so the ball wouldn’t just run out of play. Then they put Dion Dublin upfront and bombarded you. I remember talking to John Vaughan, who used to be a goalkeeper at West Ham, and had joined Cambridge from Fulham. He said that when he went there to sign, Beck took
him out on the pitch and made him kick balls to make sure he could reach those forward areas. He had to dribble it out ten yards and then launch it into the corners. John’s plan was that the defending full-back would head it out for a throw, and Cambridge would work off a long throw. It could be very effective.

This day, however, Cambridge would not have it all their way. The match was at our place. So hot showers, bright dressing rooms and balls for the pre-match warm-up that had not been deliberately overfilled with air, so as it felt like you were kicking a cannonball. It was still tense, but we were winning 1–0 when, with about five minutes to go, their winger, Chris Leadbitter, hit a thirty-yarder that just flew into the top corner. That was it. We were done. But just as Cambridge were running back celebrating, thinking they might avoid relegation, we noticed the linesman on the far side had his flag raised. My old mate Steve Claridge had been standing out by the wing, but in an offside position. What a piece of luck. These days it would have been given, because there was no way he was interfering with play. Fortunately, the rules were different back then, the goal was disallowed and we scored a second to win 2–0. We went up, level on points with Portsmouth but with a goal difference of 79. They went into the play-offs with a goal difference of 78, and fell at the first hurdle to Leicester City, having finished twelve points clear of them. It was tough on Jim.

Our first season in the Premier League was hard. In fact, if we hadn’t sold Julian Dicks to Liverpool, I don’t think we would have survived. My philosophy is this: if you’ve got Lionel Messi, he’s priceless, but a special few aside, I’d always rather have three good players, rather than one top individual, particularly if the team is struggling. If you’ve got one good guy, the opposition
can make plans for him. Even Robin van Persie would not be the same player in an ordinary team, because a good coach would find a way of shutting him out of the game. That won’t work against Manchester United at present, because by concentrating on Van Persie, space is then left for Wayne Rooney, Danny Welbeck, Shinji Kagawa or Javier Hernández. The worth of having several good players rather than one superstar becomes even more apparent if your best man is not a match winner. At West Ham that season our outstanding talent was Julian Dicks, a left-back. Stuart Pearce is remembered as the best full-back of that era, and understandably so, but on his day as a pure footballer Julian was every bit as good. He was also a complete nightmare to manage and his temperament could be a liability.

I don’t think I ever came across a more disruptive dressing-room influence. Julian was a powerful character, and he had a great hold over his easily led little crew. If Julian didn’t want to train, none of them wanted to train. And that was a problem because Julian hated training. He could be dangerous, too. Our big signing that summer was Simon Webster, a central defender, from Charlton for £525,000, and Billy planned to make him captain. He lasted four weeks in pre-season for us before Julian broke his leg in training. Simon had suffered the same injury at Sheffield United, a double fracture, and Julian repeated it. He didn’t even think it was a bad tackle, saying he went for the ball, and without the benefit of replays I wouldn’t like to come down on either side with certainty. What I would say is that Julian tackled in training the way he tackled in a match, and that wasn’t always right or helpful. Simon was never the same after that and barely played another twenty matches before retiring in 1995. That was Julian’s style. He slid in and caught
Simon the way he did a lot of people, except that day the damage could not be run off. He never changed. If you pulled at him as he went past, the elbow would come out and – bam. And it didn’t matter whether we were at Old Trafford or playing a five-a-side at Chadwell Heath. I think Lou Macari might even have copped one of those from Julian when he was West Ham’s manager. And when Julian wasn’t booting our own players up in the air or elbowing the staff, he was arguing with Billy over having to train at all.

He wouldn’t stretch, he wouldn’t run. If we played a game and Billy said the ball had gone out for a corner, he would argue it was a goal-kick. And then he’d get the hump and walk off. And when Julian had the hump you knew about it because if he could be persuaded to stay, he’d start going into tackles even harder. As a coach, you’d almost want to look away as it happened. You couldn’t mess about with Julian, you couldn’t kid to him. Yet he had an aura and he was such a good player that the rest of the lads all respected him. So he carried the first team and then they all caused trouble. ‘We’re wearing suits to the match tomorrow,’ Billy would say. ‘Why can’t we wear tracksuits?’ Julian would shoot back. And then the lot of them would join in – Bishop, Morley, Martin Allen – it was impossible to get anything done some days. We’d start the warm-up jog and Julian would be lagging fifty yards behind and, slowly, three or four would join him. Another day he would start hoofing balls out of the training ground into the adjoining gardens, or skulk around at the back as everyone was doing their exercises, muttering, ‘What a load of bollocks.’ It got so bad that we had to invent drills just to get him to run. We’d line up cones for him to dribble around – real basic kid’s stuff – but it seemed to keep him happy. And because he was top dog, if he was
happy the rest of them stayed happy, too. They followed his lead like little puppies.