Always Managing: My Autobiography (43 page)

I noticed in the first game that Inter didn’t really operate with a wide right midfield player offering extra protection, but I felt certain this would change at White Hart Lane. I told Gareth that they would double up on him – instead Maicon was hung out to dry. I think people make presumptions about foreign coaches sometimes. They regard them as so advanced tactically and forget they can make mistakes like the rest of us. Maybe Rafa thought the first game was a fluke. Maybe he thought Gareth just had one great half of football, nice and relaxed because the game was already lost, and he would be different under pressure at home. That aside, I can’t understand his thinking. Anyone in their right mind could see what a threat Bale was in that first game – and how important he was to Tottenham.

I was so pleased for Gareth that he was finally getting the acclaim he deserved because he is, basically, just a really nice kid. I know he gets a lot of stick about diving, but the boy I knew was always very honest – from arriving on time and training well to the way he played the game. I simply think that he’s going at such pace and he changes direction so quickly that, as he’s trying to avoid outstretched legs, with that amount of speed and body movement, his momentum sometimes takes him over. I wouldn’t say he has never dived – I don’t think these days that any footballer has never dived – but I don’t think he looks for it. He might think someone is about to kick him, and anticipates it, but running like that I defy anyone not to at least flinch at the prospect of impact. To me, he’s a model professional. No problem, low maintenance. I was lucky with that Tottenham team because most of them were the same.
Modrić, Pavlyuchenko, Defoe, Crouch – they were all good lads and did not give me any hassle.

We had taken Rafael van der Vaart that summer, and he made a huge difference to us in Europe. He was one of Daniel’s signings. The chairman asked me if I wanted to take him on loan, and I said, ‘Of course.’ Then he came back and said we couldn’t arrange a loan but he could do an unbelievably cheap permanent transfer. Would I still be happy? It sounded a fantastic opportunity and I jumped at it. Rafael was another one who said I wasn’t much for the tactics board, but what did he think would happen? That I would get him in the team and tell him how to play? I put Van der Vaart in a position I thought would suit him best, and let him dictate the game. The better the player, the more advice should be kept to a minimum. Of course we had moves and tactical plans, but you have to walk players through at Bournemouth a lot more than you do at Tottenham.

People think Daniel and I were always clashing over players, but it wasn’t like that. Yes, he had his own views, but we never made a signing that wasn’t run by me first – and even though I knew he didn’t fancy some of my choices, I got most of them. Daniel was unsure about Younès Kaboul and Scott Parker for reasons of injury and age but ended up trusting me, so we went for them.

The difference now, of course, is that Tottenham have a director of football, Franco Baldini, in place. But that is not my way, though. I’m old school, like Arsène Wenger and Sir Alex Ferguson. I pick the team, I choose the players. If I carry the can, then why should I have to work with another man’s choices? I’ve never heard the fans chanting for a director of football to be sacked – well, not until Joe Kinnear went to Newcastle United, anyway. It just shows the
way football is changing. The foreign coaches seem to insist on having someone in that role, certainly André Villas-Boas welcomed Baldini’s arrival at Tottenham. Looking back, maybe on occasions I’ve paid the price for not bending with the times. I must confess though that I hear about this brave new world, sometimes, and it makes me laugh. Liverpool’s owners are supposed to have this new way of assessing player value, based on
Moneyball
philosophies taken from baseball – yet Brendan Rodgers has spent a huge amount of time trying to offload signings that were bought at vastly inflated prices. I think any of the new philosophies will be hit and miss, just like the old way of allowing the manager to make his mind up.

Sometimes it’s good to move with the times, but sometimes old school is still the best way. My relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson was always a little different to that of other managers. I can remember one match when I was manager of Tottenham when the club officials had to come and knock at his office door, to remind us that the match was due to start, because we had got lost in conversation. He had to give his team talk, I had to give mine, and we were keeping the players waiting. It was always different when you went to Old Trafford. Before the game is the worst time, I find. You put in your team, see the other starting XI and begin refreshing your plans if there are any little surprises. Maybe Nemanja Vidić isn’t playing, so you have to reconfigure the set pieces, working out who will mark who, and who is United’s danger man at free-kicks now. Once that is done, however, and the team leaves to warm up, the manager is left hanging, twiddling his thumbs, waiting for play to start. It is dead time, and then the nerves begin to set in – that is why I always looked forward to the welcome I would receive from Alex. ‘Coming in for a cup of tea,
Harry?’ he would ask, and he would close the door to his office behind me and we’d talk.

The racing was always on the TV in the corner, or maybe the pre-match build-up on Sky and over a cup of tea and biscuits we’d set the world to rights. Players we had seen, teams we had played, who was on form, who was struggling, a bit of football gossip, how his son Darren was doing at Peterborough, and then it would be time for the 2.40 at Sandown Park. Alex is like me, he knows what is going on across all four divisions, not just the Premier League. If there was a good kid at Rochdale, he’d be on his radar and despite the quality of the opposition, I often felt more relaxed before matches at Old Trafford than at any other ground. The time just flew.

I’ve heard people say that the foreign coaches aren’t the same, but it isn’t black and white like that. They are not rude, they just come from a different culture. I’ve never had a cross word with Arsène Wenger at Arsenal, for instance, but I can count on the fingers of one hand the times I’ve seen him after a game. Even if you pop into his office, in all likelihood he won’t be there. And I’ve never seen him just watching a match, either, even when we’ve played Arsenal’s youth team. He’s either got the best disguise in the world, or he trusts a network of scouts and analysts to give him the information. I think some foreign coaches just have a different way of working – I didn’t see Rafa Benítez at too many matches either, whereas David Moyes is everywhere.

I do miss the get-togethers after matches, though. When Jim Smith was at Derby County, there were always a few old faces about, like Dave Mackay, and it was great to catch up. Jim would open a bottle of red, or two, and soon enough you would find yourself laughing, even if you had just lost and had come in with a
sore head, at war with the world. Howard Kendall at Everton was a personal favourite. He’d always pop in for a glass of wine after the game, and sometimes before, too. Of the modern foreign coaches, I find José Mourinho as welcoming as anybody. Even when he was under pressure in his final season at Real Madrid, he always found time to send me a text wishing me well at Queens Park Rangers. One contained an extremely strong hope that I would beat a particular Premier League manager who is clearly in José’s bad books – I’ll leave you to guess who.

The fissures of my final season seemed a long way off on Tuesday 15 February 2011, when I returned to the San Siro for the second time that season, this time to play AC Milan in the Champions League knockout stage. This battle-plan certainly wasn’t going to be gung-ho – in fact, it couldn’t have been more different to our previous visit. We had no Bale, but I filled out the midfield with Wilson Palacios and Sandro, and left Modrić half-fit on the bench, with Peter Crouch on his own up front. We played really well, worked so hard, and then hit them on the break with ten minutes to go and Crouch scored. It was a classic counter-attacking goal – a real Italian job – but it didn’t win us too many friends locally. After the game I said the Premier League was better than Serie A, and the top Italian team might not even make the Champions League places in our league, and they hated that – but I stand by it. In fact, they were lucky. We should have had a penalty early on, and Mathieu Flamini should have been sent off for a quite scandalous tackle on Vedran Ćorluka that could have broken his leg. Gennaro Gattuso, a legendary hard man at Milan, was going mad, on the pitch and off it, and even made the mistake of squaring up to Joe Jordan. Joe was 60 next birthday, but I know who my money was on – Joe
every time. I’ll admit, I couldn’t understand a word of their row, but it sounded as if Joe gave as good as he got. Joe was a player in Italy, and his daughter teaches English over there, so he speaks the language very well. I think Gattuso’s married to a Scottish girl, so they probably understood each other. Joe was giving Gattuso plenty of it. He’s a quiet man, Joe, but anyone who knows him will tell you he’s not the sort to mess about. He’s as fit as a fiddle and strong, and I think he was about to introduce Gattuso to a good old Glasgow kiss – and not the sort he’d get from his missus – when they were pulled apart. All in all, a great night to get a result.

It was a tough game at home, too. Milan dominated large parts of the match but we kept a clean sheet. It was strange, but there was a lot of praise for my tactics that night – far more so than when we were averaging three goals a game in Europe. Why do goalless draws impress people so much? We can all set a team up to bore the opposition to death – I even managed it a few times with Queens Park Rangers. We drew with Manchester City and Tottenham, kept a clean sheet against Chelsea – it is not that hard, but it always seems to count for more than winning with style. I don’t understand it, really. It’s as if you’ve got to draw 0–0 to be acclaimed as a tactical genius. Yet I’ve been watching and playing football since I was five – if I don’t understand it now, I never will. I don’t think there are a huge amount of tactical geniuses, not even Sir Alex Ferguson. We were very patient against Milan, they had some great players, but we kept it tight. It was a great result, but not my favourite game.

We drew Real Madrid in the quarter-finals, but that match was over almost before it had begun. We lost an early goal, to Emmanuel Adebayor, and then Crouch got sent off after fifteen
minutes. He made a silly foul and picked up a booking, did the same thing a minute later, and was gone. Madrid won 4–0 and this time there was no way back. They came to White Hart Lane, did a job on us, and Cristiano Ronaldo scored the only goal of the game. It was over.

The Champions League run was fantastic, but it took its toll. We came fifth and failed to qualify for the competition the following season. We had the odd flirtation with fourth place and even rose to third, once, but for the majority of the season we were trapped outside that top band, and ended up six points shy of Arsenal. I felt sure we would be back, though, and better for the experience. If we could get a few top quality players in, I was certain we could do even better next time. I had no idea that 2011–12 was to be my final season at Tottenham.

You always remember the little bits of bad luck that go against you. When we went to Old Trafford in October we played well, but left with nothing to show for it. We were losing 1–0 but were right in the game until six minutes from time, when Nani scored an absolute scandalous second for Manchester United. It is one of those that will keep turning up in the ‘What Happened Next?’ round on
A Question of Sport
for years. Nani went through and thought he was fouled by Younès Kaboul. He went to ground and even put a hand on the ball to stop play, but Mark Clattenburg, the referee, gave nothing. Thinking the free-kick had gone our way for Nani’s handball, Gomes picked the ball up, threw it on the ground in the penalty area and prepared to take a long kick to restart. Yet Nani had spotted what none of us had – that Clattenburg had not given a free-kick to either side and the ball was still live. He stepped up and kicked it into our net and Clattenburg gave the
goal – despite the linesman holding his flag to indicate where the free-kick should be taken. He thought it had been given too! I was raging. At 2–0 down with six minutes to play, now there was no way back. I was incensed. Nani had deliberately handled the ball. Now he gets to be the hero? It made no sense. I know Alex blamed our goalkeeper, but I thought the referee made a real hash of it for us that day, and Nani showed poor sportsmanship.

So what went wrong in that last season? I wish I knew for sure. We were right up there in the league and with the addition of one or two top quality players I do believe we were capable of winning the title. Instead, injuries caught up with us. On just about the final day of the window we bought Louis Saha on a free transfer from Everton – to be serious about winning the title I thought we had to act more decisively and boldly than that.

I know the conventional wisdom is that I was distracted by talk of the England job, and that is a sexier story than having too many injuries, but sometimes the simple explanation is the genuine one. We lost Lennon, who was key to us, and age was finally catching up with Ledley King. I was partly to blame for that. We were short of central defenders and I probably gave Ledley a few games too many. He was struggling and, as much as he was saying to me he wanted to play, he really wasn’t fit. Towards the end there were a couple of games where we really struggled and so did Ledley, and I am sorry I put him in that position. He was such a great boy and, when he was fit, a fantastic player. What I didn’t know at the time was that Ledley’s contract was based around him playing a certain amount of games – quite a big number, actually – so he was motivated to play even when he shouldn’t. He would say he was fit and I wanted him to be fit because I didn’t have too many choices; it wasn’t a healthy
situation. When I found out that not playing cost him money, it just made it worse. I think he retired five games short of what he needed that season. ‘I don’t want you to think that I’m not playing you because I’m trying to find the club the money, Ledley,’ I said. ‘I’d rather you got the money. Whatever you are earning, you deserve it.’ But he knew by then that he couldn’t play on. His knee would blow up after every match and take six days to go down again. He couldn’t train, he was losing his mobility. In the end, his knees just went. In the last four games of the season, when we had Kaboul and William Gallas fit again, we won three and drew one.