The Second Half (15 page)

And I was going, ‘Ah, Jesus— Let me look at that next week, a bit closer to the day.’

You’re being introduced to one of the club staff but your head is spinning a bit, because your priority is getting a result on Saturday.

‘My name is Paul.’

I’d think of Paul McGrath, someone I knew, to help me remember the name; I’d think of the staff member as Paul McGrath. I was learning the importance of remembering – and using – people’s names.

There were little things I did in the early months that I knew were appreciated. Sunderland is a cold place in winter – nearly all year. It would be freezing. There was a hut down at the bottom of the training ground, and I’d see the groundsmen going in there. I was chatting to them one day, and they told me they had their lunch in the hut.

I said, ‘But we’ve got a canteen. Come and have your lunch with us.’

That was me just being polite. But it had an impact – another little lift.

They started coming in every day.

I’d go, ‘Grab your food, lads.’

I wasn’t being a hero. It might have had something to do with where I come from; I couldn’t sit and eat my pasta, looking out the window at the lads having their sandwiches and freezing to death. I love pork and onion sandwiches myself, but not in a field
in the middle of winter. And the groundsmen have the hardest job at a football club.

The games were coming thick and fast. In management, you’re supposed to have short-term aims and long-term aims. Our aim, mine and Tony’s, was to get through the bloody day. There was one day, two lads came to give myself and Tony a talk about Prozone, the performance analysis package. The club didn’t have it, so these two lads wanted to sell us the product.

We were in the players’ lounge. There was a big screen in there and comfortable chairs. And both of us fell asleep. The lights were out, to be fair. Afterwards, I asked Tony, ‘Did you fall asleep?’

And he said, ‘Yeah, yeah – did you?’

We were embarrassed about it but not sure if the two lads from Prozone knew we’d had our little power nap. We bought it anyway.

We watched DVDs of the opposition in that room. Leather chairs – the heat. Years later, after I’d left, I was talking to Seamus McDonagh, who had worked with Martin O’Neill at Sunderland, as Martin’s goalkeeping coach.

Seamus said, ‘You know that room where you watch all the matches?’

I went, ‘Yeah.’

And he said, ‘You couldn’t keep your fuckin’ eyes open, could you?’

‘Yeah, we were the same!’

It was a relief hearing Seamus, because myself and Tony thought we were being unprofessional. Mind you, Seamus is well over seventy, so he’s entitled to fall asleep.

Having Prozone at a club can be very useful, although it’s expensive to set up, possibly over a hundred grand a year. Cameras have to be placed throughout the stadium. They monitor distances covered by each player, crosses into the box, fitness
levels, a whole range of statistical information. I was open to all that but I wouldn’t be dictated to by it. It was useful if a player questioned what you were saying about his game, or his stats. If we didn’t think he was running enough, and he disagreed, we could go, ‘Well, we’ve got back-up here.’

Some players almost lived off the stats. They might say, ‘Well, I ran fifteen miles.’

And I’d say, ‘Yeah, that’s because you kept giving the fuckin’ ball away.’

The stats would give you useful feedback, but it was just a tool. Immediately after a game the statistician might come up and say, ‘We didn’t get enough crosses in.’ But I’d have seen that already; I was at the game. Some players love getting the information and watching the DVDs. We found that the defenders, in particular, were keen on looking back over clips of games: ‘Can I see where I was when that cross came in?’ Defenders think more about the game than attacking players. The forwards tend to be more instinctive.

When I was a player I’d be home at one or two o’clock. If it was two, because I’d stayed behind to do some extra stretches, I’d think to myself, ‘I had a long day today.’ The length and rhythm of my working day had changed completely – engaging with so many people. It was all new. Decisions coming at me; it took a while to get used to it.

There was one day, a lad called Bill – a big Sunderland fan, the tattoos and everything, a really nice fella; he was the masseur – he came in to me.

‘Gaffer, we’re travelling next week. What soup do you want for the bus?’

I went to myself, ‘Fuckin’ soup?’

I had so many things to do.

When I was a player, I was almost wrapped in cotton wool.
Now I was in the real world and it was a shock. I was signing players for millions of pounds, releasing young players, letting staff go – people’s livelihoods, knowing they had mortgages.

I was bringing adults into my office and saying, ‘I don’t like the way you’re behaving.’

I was making changes – timetable changes.

‘We always train at half ten.’

‘Well, now we’re training at ten.’

I’d feel conflict, sometimes, from people. A bit of paranoia – ‘Who likes me? Who doesn’t like me?’ The groundsmen liked me because I’d let them into the canteen, but I couldn’t please everybody.

The soup almost put me over the edge.

I think I said, ‘Fuck you and the soup’ – in a nice way.

He took it well. We laughed about it. I think he realised that his timing hadn’t been good. And it took me a while to understand that the soup was important. Important to Bill, and important to the club – and me.

The next game, we lost. Three–one, at Ipswich.

It was an important day for me.

I was always looking to see what the staff contributed on match day. It’s a day out for some; others like to go out and get pissed the night before – it’s a tradition in football. I didn’t want it. I wanted my staff in bed at a decent time. I was keeping an eye on all that.

That day at Ipswich, one staff member took charge of the music in the dressing room. It might seem strange, but you find out about characters when you look to see who’s in charge of the music. A young lad might want to put on the latest sound; an older player might say, ‘I’m the senior player’ and put himself in charge of it. But I noticed none of the players were taking
charge of the music, and this was a concern for me. A member of staff was in charge of it. I was looking at him, thinking, ‘I hope someone nails him here.’

If I’d been a player and one of the staff was taking control of the music, I’d have been going, ‘Hey, it’s the players’ dressing room.’ The staff have to know their place.

The last song that was played before the players went out on to the pitch was ‘Dancing Queen’, by Abba. What really worried me was that none of the players – nobody – said, ‘Get that shit off.’

I stood back, and thought, ‘It’s not my place, either. I’m learning.’

We went 1–0 up but we lost 3–1. I don’t think it was down to ‘Dancing Queen’, but after the match I criticised the players; it was one of the few times that I lost the rag. They had to take responsibility, I told them; it was their music.

‘What motivates you? This is
your
music.’

They were going out to play a match, men versus men; testosterone levels were high. You’ve got to hit people at pace. Fuckin’ ‘Dancing Queen’. I wouldn’t have minded if it had been one of Abba’s faster ones.

It worried me. I didn’t have as many leaders as I’d thought I had.

But even so, I remember saying at the time that I wouldn’t want to be working anywhere else but Sunderland. And I meant it. I had a strong feeling for the players and the club. I already felt it was my club.

The Abba fan moved on not long afterwards.

SEVEN

As we went in, Steve was going, ‘All right, lads? All right?’ Then he put his head on his desk, and went, ‘You fucking lucky bastards. You fucking lucky bastards robbed us.’

Nobody can really prepare you for management. I’d done my UEFA B badge, and was well into my UEFA A. These are stepping stones. In any other industry I’m sure the stones are of help. But in this industry, football, they’re almost no good to you at all. I feel a bit bad saying that, because the courses were good. But when you get into the actual job and you’ve got players in your office and they’re demanding to leave, or one lad’s been drinking and another one’s got gambling problems, or staff are coming to see you because they’ve got marriage difficulties, you’re going, ‘Fuckin’ hell, they didn’t teach me this.’

I hadn’t anticipated that I’d be dealing with personal problems. I thought my management of the players would be quite straightforward. But saying, ‘Just get on with it’ isn’t enough when there’s a man in your office who is getting divorced, or whose wife has just had a miscarriage.

‘Take three days off, don’t worry about it.’

One morning, we were training and the police – two police officers – came out on to the training pitch.

‘We’re here to arrest one of your players.’

It was Carlos Edwards, and they were taking him in because he hadn’t paid a load of driving or parking fines. He was a really good lad.

I went, ‘Can you wait till we’re finished training?’

After training, we persuaded the police not to arrest Carlos, that we’d do whatever was necessary to get the fines paid and everything sorted out.

They said, ‘Okay, we’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.’

As you gain a bit of experience, you end up coping. There were some things – players’ problems – that I think I dealt with quite well. I felt comfortable enough talking about drinking or gambling, although I’d never been a gambler – and I tried to give logical, practical advice. But when it came to personal or family problems I felt a bit out of my depth and I didn’t want to pretend that I had anything to offer, other than the time off, to try and sort themselves out.

People love giving you information when you’re a manager, whether you want it or not – good stuff, bad stuff, players up to no good.

‘Two players were out drinking till four in the morning.’

I’d call them in and I’d try to treat them the way I’d like to have been treated. A lot of it is common sense, but it’s tiring. Playing had been so much easier.

I lost my temper three times over the season, but never on the sideline. The first time was after the Ipswich game. We’d been 1–0 up, our keeper was poor, ‘Dancing Queen’ – that was enough.

Sometimes losing my rag just involved me kicking over the tactics board. It became one of my favourites. The kit man, Cookie, enjoyed that one, too. If I came in angry at half-time, I’d say to him, ‘Cookie, get the tactics board up.’ He’d set it up and I’d kick it over – give it a karate kick. It would let off a bit
of steam and, by kicking the board, I was telling the players that this particular game wasn’t about tactics. Sometimes you need the board, but my point now was ‘This has nothing to do with fuckin’ tactics. This is about how much you want it. And they seem to want it more than you.’ The Championship is a lot less tactical than the Premiership. It’s more about the characters in your dressing room.

Into October, and we lost two more games. Preston beat us 4–1, away. Preston were doing well. Paul Simpson was managing them and they had David Nugent, who I tried to sign the following season. But it was a bad defeat, and our goal – Stan Varga scored it – came when we were already 4–0 down.

Then Stoke beat us 2–1. Rory Delap broke his leg playing for Stoke, only a few weeks after I’d let him go there on loan. I rang him in hospital.

I’d had to let some players go out on loan. Rory went to Stoke, and Jon Stead went to Derby. It was all about trying to balance the books. I’d brought in Dave Connolly, and the club was paying him good money; so I had to let Steadie, another striker, go. If I let a player go I always thought it was for his benefit. Steadie went to Sheffield United later in the season; they were in the Premiership. If the player wasn’t getting a game, I wouldn’t hold on to him. There was a financial benefit for the club, too, getting him off the wage bill, and there might be a loan fee. That was the business side of it – and I discovered a lot more about that later, when I tried to get some players in on loan.

The defeats – three in four games – worried me a bit. When a new manager comes in there’s often a feel-good factor, a honeymoon period. New ideas, and a few new players. That phase seemed to be over. But I’ll always remember the Sunderland fans at Stoke, after the game. The away fans’ enclosure is near the tunnel, and they gave me a great send-off, even though we’d
just been beaten. The Sunderland fans travelled in big numbers, and they were noisy. They were as passionate as the United and Celtic fans. I applauded them – sometimes the applause is an apology – and I mentioned them regularly at the press conferences throughout the season.

We got two good results in a row, at home to Barnsley, then at Hull. Ross Wallace scored in the last minute of the Hull game, then got sent off – a second yellow for taking off his jersey. Removing your jersey is an automatic yellow but a lot of footballers shouldn’t do it anyway, and Ross would have been one of them. He was always going to struggle keeping his body fat down below 10 per cent.

‘Here, listen,’ I joked. ‘We don’t mind some lads taking their tops off. But not you – you little fat fucker. You’ll get my fitness coach sacked.’

I didn’t crucify Ross for the offence. He’d scored the winner; it was an emotional moment. At the press conference after the game, journalists kept asking what disciplinary measures I’d be taking against him. I said that I’d have a look at it during the week. But I didn’t fine him at all.

We were winning a few matches. We were growing in confidence. And I was growing in confidence. I was thinking, ‘Yeah, this is for me, management.’

When you’re winning, you don’t see yourself losing. We’d moved up the table, to thirteenth, but we were struggling to be consistent. Everyone remembers Sunderland going from the bottom to the top in a couple of months, but it didn’t happen that way. It was hard work.

We were beaten at home by Cardiff, 2–1. Cardiff were a good team but, just when I thought we were making progress, we came up short – again. You lose a match, you start doubting your players.

Then we were beaten at Norwich. That was followed by a draw with Southampton. We were 1–0 up, but Gareth Bale scored for them in injury time. Bale played at left-back; he was outstanding, the best player on the pitch. Everything he did had a bit of quality about it. He was seventeen. Even though they’d scored in injury time, I couldn’t begrudge Southampton the result. I was grateful for the draw.

We won at home to Colchester. Our results so far – it was proper hit and miss.

In the meantime, my wife was coming up from Manchester with the kids, and we were trying to find a school. A Catholic school was important to us because the kids were already at one; the schools were good and we liked their message. We were looking at houses but we couldn’t find a school. Weeks went by, then months, and my family hadn’t moved. But I was happy enough with the arrangement. It suited me, the balance between my personal and professional lives. So, I said, ‘It’s working.’

In the end, the family stayed in Manchester. The travel wasn’t killing me; I like driving – I like driving late at night or early in the morning. It was a two and a half hour drive, a nice drive, past Leeds. I’d have two or three days at home. I’d work hard at Sunderland, and then I’d go home to people who didn’t really care too much about my professional life.

Funnily enough, they were more interested in my job as a manager. I think they understood that I had more responsibility, and they appreciated the pressure I was under. They were rooting for me more. Before games, they’d go, ‘Good luck, Dad’, whereas, when I was a player, I’d go, ‘I’m off, Daddy’s going to Old Trafford to work’, and they’d hardly notice.

I rented a flat in Durham, in a student area. I could go into the cafés because, generally speaking, students aren’t that interested in football, so they hadn’t a clue who I was. I’d be in bed at eight
or nine, anyway. I should have decorated the flat a bit more, made it more of a home. I wish I’d made more of an effort. I could have got a good telly, a nice sofa. But I ended up living like a student myself – Pot Noodles and tins of beans.

After a month or two I was worried about the body-fat levels of some of the players, particularly some of the lads who hadn’t been playing regularly. I don’t mean that they were half a stone overweight. I put an announcement up on the notice board: unless players could get their body fat down to under 10 per cent they wouldn’t be selected to play. I excluded the goalkeepers, because they need to carry an extra bit of fat, to cushion their landings. They were pleased with that.

Every now and again you have to change the routine. The notice board was down near the players’ dressing room. I kept my distance, as a manager. I didn’t go into the dressing room too often. It was the players’ area. But I knew that when a notice went up on the board – squads, or trips – it became a hub of activity. The body-fat announcement was just a small idea, something to get them talking. It was fun and games, really; a little threat. I was putting pressure on the players. And it worked. I’d been pals with everybody; I’d played in teams with a lot of them. I just wavered on the niceness a bit. But if a player stayed just over the limit, and he was important to us, I wasn’t going to drop him for it.

Mick McCarthy was managing Wolves and he rang me about a player; I think it was Neill Collins, who he wanted to take on loan.

He rang me direct, straight through to my office.

‘All right, Roy?’

We chatted about the player, and about this and that. It wasn’t an awkward conversation, and I was glad he’d rung me. It had crossed my mind that we’d be meeting during the course of the season. Our teams would be playing against each other, and I
was a member of the LMA now, too – the League Managers’ Association; there’d be functions I’d have to go to. We were bound to meet.

I think it was Mick who suggested that we meet up for a chat; we both thought it was a good idea.

We met at the Four Seasons Hotel, near Manchester Airport, and it was a bit like the meeting with Niall, a nice anticlimax. I said I was sorry about what had happened in Saipan. I’m not sure I had anything to apologise for. But you try to move on.

But that was that. It was important, and I’m glad it happened.

We were playing Wolves, away, in November, on a Friday night. The media were all over it, and the game was live on Sky. The build-up to the game was all ‘Are they going to shake hands?’ But we’d already met and we’d kept that to ourselves. So it was no big drama for us. We shook hands before the game, but it wasn’t prearranged. We just shook hands. Managers do it before every game. It’s standard practice. The only difference this time was that there were fifty cameramen around us.

But that was another night I lost my rag. We were 1–0 down at half-time; we were shocking. I told Cookie to get the tactics board out, and I did a bit of a Bruce Lee on it. I think the players were distracted by the whole Keane–McCarthy stuff. And I have to ask myself the question, was I extra angry because I didn’t want to lose to Mick McCarthy’s team? I’d hope not. But we were on TV and we were shit. Poor Cookie had to spend ages looking for all the little players off the tactics board.

We drew 1–1 but we were lucky. Our keeper, Darren Ward, kept us in the game, and our goal, a shot by Stevie Elliott, was deflected.

We beat QPR, 2–1, away, then Norwich, the return fixture, at home. We beat them 1–0. Daryl Murphy scored in both games.

Our next game, the following Saturday, was at home to Luton.
I was called to a meeting at the club on Friday night. Niall and the club secretary were there. Three of the players, Chris Brown, Liam Lawrence and Ben Alnwick, had allegedly been caught on video making out with a girl. The club hierarchy was panicking about it because the story was going to appear in the
Sun
. The two lads who were important to me were Brown and Lawrence, because we’d a game the next day and they were both in my team. They hadn’t done anything illegal, so I said I was going to play them. But Niall said that the club was insisting that they wouldn’t play.

I didn’t play them.

It was the first time, I suppose, that I was challenged as a manager. I wasn’t kicking and screaming, but I was upset about it. But I could see the club’s point of view. We were trying to build a new Sunderland, a new image, new standards. And the club wasn’t telling me that the players could never play for Sunderland again.

I told Lawrence and Brown they were out for Saturday’s match, but I let them know that they’d be back in the team at some stage. I made it clear to them that it wasn’t my decision. I thought it was important that they could think, ‘Well, the manager’s still all right with us.’

We won without them. We beat Luton, 2–1; Murph and Dave Connolly scored.

The whole thing had annoyed me but I think I’d have been more annoyed if they’d been late for training. I’d been a player myself, and I’d been in trouble; I’d caused the club and the manager grief. So I always tried to be fair with the players. When I called them into the office, say, for drinking, I’d let them know that it wasn’t on. But I’d like to think that I was understanding. I wasn’t condoning their behaviour, but I was their manager, not their father, or judge and jury – and I’d have a football match coming up that I had to try and win. That, ultimately, was my
job. I needed the players. Lawrence and Brown weren’t Messi and Ronaldo but they were important to me.

Later in the season I had a falling-out with Liam Lawrence on the training pitch. I had the lads playing eleven v. eleven, and we’d too many there – more than twenty-two. Some players weren’t getting the full game, and Liam was one of them. He wasn’t happy about it, and stormed into the dressing room. He said he wasn’t going to stand on the sideline.