Taking le Tiss
Taking le Tiss
Matt Le Tissier
The fascinating, insightful and at times hilarious memoirs of one of the most gifted and enigmatic British footballers of the last 25 years.Nicknamed "Le God" by the Southampton faithful, Matt Le Tissier was not cast from the same mould as 99% of other professional footballers. A real "one-off" if ever there was one, he was a one-club man in a 16-year career that brought little in the way of trophies but countless plaudits from footballs fans and commentators alike.To the old school brigade he was a "luxury player", someone with a less than ideal work rate and waistline who simply wouldn't conform to the blueprint of a typically hard-working, unsophisticated British player. Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle found it all too easy to leave him out of their England squads.But to the vast majority Le Tissier was a maverick to be treasured, a flair player who lit up every match he played in and delighted fans with his sumptuous technique and élan for the beautiful game. In fact, the kind of skilful, inventive player and scorer of wonderful goals this country produces all too rarely.Did he simply enjoy the comfort zone of being a big fish in a small pond? Or did he display commendable loyalty in staying with Southampton for his entire career? Did he shun opportunities to move on? Were England managers right not to pick him so many times? Would Fabio Capello pick him for England now? Does the British game discourage his style of play? And how much would he be worth in today's transfer market?Taking Le Tiss is the great man's first chance to answer all these questions and many more. It is also a delightfully self-deprecating and witty story from a player who was more of a Big-Mac-and-fries than a chicken-and-beans man.
Taking Le Tiss
My Autobiography
Matt Le Tissier
Copyright (#ulink_d9fcd0c1-699e-585c-ba69-a994c7bcb70c)
First published in 2009 by
HarperSport
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
© Matt Le Tissier 2009
Matt Le Tissier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
Source ISBN: 9780007310913
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 9780007341085
Version: 2018-06-18
All photographs provided courtesy of the author or the Southern Daily Echo with the exception of: Guernsey Press 2t, 2br; Brian J. Green 3t; Press Association 5t, 7b, 8m; Solent News 11t
To my wife,
my children and my parents
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u553ab63a-e685-5351-b0fb-baaac47be468)
Title Page (#ua105d917-bff1-5efd-96cf-3a0cefa03959)
Copyright (#u8a5555f3-0376-5acf-b0d0-63755708e3ca)
Dedication (#u036c7274-e2a5-5cd8-ae72-79e9ef541046)
Foreword (#u93c6958a-3d4d-56ec-967d-2ff4c85bad5c)
Introduction (#u0207b760-8472-5974-8dc5-1cb05aef85bf)
Preface (#ubbfdd4f0-59a5-5b4b-946f-99c384e89410)
1 - HOD’S LAW (#u770853ec-7ba9-5e22-b4b6-53be7350a028)
2 - SOUTHAMPTON HERE I COME (#u108bc88a-29c1-5835-8030-189dd91d6660)
3 - KNOCKED INTO SHAPE BY THE HAIRDRIER (#ubb700227-f3c1-5083-b459-9607a41c7998)
4 - IT’S STUART PEARCE—‘OH…MY…GOD!’ (#ua859280c-7330-5bcc-8bf2-5a0b0a7658e8)
5 - I GET RON ATKINSON FIRED AND FERGIE HIRED (#u9e35343c-a766-5c92-8dca-dae0aec5fe4a)
6 - PUNCH UPS, HANGOVERS AND LADY BOYS (#u1db1092d-eaa4-54ec-8b35-4f1c438d004a)
7 - DODGY REFS AND HAT TRICKS (#u4b047035-eb7b-5859-b01d-48d606986f81)
8 - WHY I TOLD SOUNESS, HODDLE AND VENABLES TO GET LOST (#u0f572445-c523-5ab8-86df-64a6952217ad)
9 - IAN WHO? (#litres_trial_promo)
10 - HOW TO GET A MANAGER SACKED (#litres_trial_promo)
11 - GET THE BALL TO TISS (#litres_trial_promo)
12 - ONE DRUNK GAFFER AND A MATCHFIXING SCANDAL (#litres_trial_promo)
13 - FINAL DAY COCK-UP (#litres_trial_promo)
14 - SUBBED BY A FISH UP A TREE or PEOPLE CALLED RUPERT SHOULD NOT RUN FOOTBALL CLUBS (#litres_trial_promo)
15 - LAWRIE OUT, DAVE JONES IN (#litres_trial_promo)
16 - LAST-DAY ESCAPE (#litres_trial_promo)
17 - SAINT AND SINNER (#litres_trial_promo)
18 - GLENN, CHIPS AND FRY-UPS (#litres_trial_promo)
19 - MATT OUT OF DELL (#litres_trial_promo)
20 - END OF THE ROAD (#litres_trial_promo)
21 - FROM FINAL TO FARCE (#litres_trial_promo)
22 - LOWE DOWN (#litres_trial_promo)
23 - THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER (#litres_trial_promo)
24 - FAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
25 - REACH FOR THE SKY (#litres_trial_promo)
26 - LIFE BEGINS AT 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
27 - WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT MATT (#litres_trial_promo)
Alan Ball (#litres_trial_promo)
Matt Stats (#litres_trial_promo)
What the Fans Say (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Foreword (#ulink_5baff73d-5946-5f5f-9814-370983cba9f9)
By Alan Shearer
I wasn’t surprised when Matt asked me to write the foreword to his autobiography. After all, I did all his work for him when we were teammates so it is only fitting I should help him now. The big surprise is that he hasn’t asked me to write the whole thing—with him adding the one brilliant punchline which people will remember and talk about for ever.
Matt might not have been noted for his work-rate, but he is one of the most naturally gifted players it has been my privilege to play with. He could do things with a ball which left you, literally, speechless. His skill and technique were sublime and the really annoying thing is that it all came so naturally to him. The rest of us would be working our backsides off, chasing, closing down, taking knocks and tackling, while he would amble around like he didn’t have a care in the world. Then, suddenly, he’d explode into life and win the game with a piece of pure genius. And he got almost as much pleasure creating goals for others. If you made a run, you knew he had the ability to find you with an exquisite pass or cross.
I had to do all the running for him. Well, we all did. We were told to get the ball and give it to Matt because he had the ability to create something special. People thought he was lazy but what they don’t appreciate is that he concentrated on doing his running in all the right areas. We, his teammates, knew that if we lost possession he was never going to chase back and help. You accepted that because when the ball was played forward and there was just a sniff of goal, he’d be on it in a flash.
Once you got to know him, you realized he cared passionately about winning and scoring—and about Southampton Football Club. That’s why he stayed there his whole career when he could have had his pick of teams. He had several opportunities to leave but he didn’t see why he should, and he was single-minded enough to dig his heels in when others were saying he should go. You have to applaud him because that sort of loyalty is very rare.
I can identify with that because that’s just how I felt about Newcastle—it was always my dream to play for them. But I have a lot of affection for the Saints. They were my first club and I am very sad to see what has happened to them in recent years. I know it has hurt Matt, who gave so much to keep them in the Premier League against the odds for so many years. And he provided the fans with wonderful entertainment along the way.
He was capable of scoring from virtually anywhere. Some of his goals were absolutely breathtaking. Even when I was playing against him, there were times I almost found myself applauding his goals. But Matt was not just a great goal-scorer—he was a scorer of great goals. Some of them left you puzzling, ‘How the heck did he do that?’
I’ll never forget the one he put past his big mate Tim Flowers for Southampton, at Blackburn. He beat a couple of men as though they weren’t there and then fired into the top left corner from 35 yards. There was no luck about it, he knew exactly where he wanted to put the ball. It was a really special goal, and the fact he beat Tim all ends up gave him even more satisfaction. Tim has never lived it down even though we won the game. It always seemed to be Newcastle or Blackburn he scored against. He really seemed to enjoy scoring against my teams.
Being a similar age, we always had a bit of friendly rivalry going right from our days together in the Southampton youth team. And we are still good friends now—even though we are the exact opposite in terms of lifestyle and looks.
He has never been your stereotypical footballer, either on the field or off. The club’s nutritionists must have wondered how he was still alive, let alone playing at the top level. His idea of a diet was picking the lettuce out of his burger. And he hasn’t changed now that he has retired. Even as a TV pundit he looks like a sack of spuds—or as though he has eaten one. He’s never bothered what people think of him. He openly admits, ‘This is the way I am, take me or leave me.’ And everyone respects that. They are quick to poke fun at his failings—but always in a good-natured way. He takes it well—with his body size and dress sense he hasn’t got any choice—and he can certainly dish it back. In spades.
I have to say he is perfect for Sky’s Soccer Saturday show because he is so laid back, but his wit is as sharp as his shooting. He can laugh at himself and has the perfect sense of humour for that show, coupled with the fact he knows the game inside out and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
This autobiography has been written very much in that vein—self-deprecating with a great sense of his own worth and a lot of jokes. And obviously it has been written by someone else because it is far too much like hard work for Tiss. But I bet he takes all the credit.
Introduction (#ulink_ecddc0d3-73d8-50ff-b30b-72b7f81e8fbc)
If you are hoping for smut and scandal from this book then look away now. A lot of ‘celebrities’ rely on revelations about their personal lives in order to sell books, but I have always been a very private person so there’s no sleaze here. It’s Tiss and Dell not Kiss and Tell.
So if I guard my privacy so carefully, why write an autobiography? Mainly because my Sky colleagues Jeff Stelling and Phil Thompson have recently published books, and I thought if they could get in the bestseller list with such a pile of tosh, I might as well have a go. Thommo said he found it so therapeutic that the idea suddenly became very tempting.
Southampton supporters have been asking me to tell my story ever since I finished playing, but I wanted to wait until I had achieved something else. Now, with the popularity of Sky’s Soccer Saturday and the controversial double relegation of the Saints, it seems the perfect time to talk about my career at The Dell and why I stayed with one supposedly unfashionable club for my whole career when I could have got far more money, and maybe medals, by moving.
There have been a lot of misconceptions about me over the years and a lot of wildly inaccurate stories in the press, so this is the perfect chance to put a few things straight. A lot of people think they know what went on—but they don’t. Now I can say exactly what happened.
I am acutely aware of my own failings, so I’m not going to gloss over the fact I didn’t have the best diet and was never the greatest runner. I was once carried off in training after a fainting fit caused by eating too many sausage and egg McMuffins before we even started. Tim Flowers was asked to write a few lines for this book to describe me and he sent in: ‘Matt Le Tissier signed for Southampton, ate a lot, scored some bloody good goals, should have left.’ That pretty much sums it up so there’s no point reading the book now—apart from the football, the fun and my forthright views about the likes of Alan Ball, Graeme Souness, Ian Branfoot, Rupert Lowe—and a certain Glenn Hoddle.
Unfortunately I never won the Footballer of the Year award; in fact the only vote I got each year came from the reporter on the Southampton Echo, so that hardly counted. But for a decade I did have my acceptance speech ready, just in case, and here it is…
‘I really want to thank all the people who have been so important to me, starting with my mum and dad. I couldn’t have wished for better parents. They were the most supportive people possible—but without interfering. They got the balance brilliantly right and I have them to thank for everything I have achieved in life. They had three kids by the time they were 20 but have remained married for 48 years, which is a fantastic achievement—although I think the reason they stayed together is because neither of them wanted custody of me. My grandparents have been superb and my brothers have been fantastic. All three of them could have been professional players but they have never shown any jealousy or resentment towards me, only pride and support.
My own children, Mitchell and Keeleigh, are growing up to be fantastic kids and have given me a lot of pleasure. I now have a new baby girl, Ava, with my wife Angela. We were together many years ago and there was a lot of love left over so she recently made the decision to come back to this country to see if we could make a go of it. It is wonderful to be married to her finally. We didn’t think she could have children so she needed to have fertility treatment. There was only a 20 per cent chance of success but we were lucky it worked first time, and we are now blessed with Ava who is an absolute joy.
Family and friends are important to me and there are some people who really do need a special mention. Pete and Pat Ford, and their children Martin and Stuart, and the Phillips family all really helped me to settle when I first came to Southampton and homesickness might have been a problem. My “mum” in England, Celia Mills, has looked after me for the last 12 years and seen me through a lot. She is one of the loveliest people you could wish to meet.’
I also need to thank Jerome Anderson who was my agent during my playing days and never put me under any pressure to move, even though he would have made more money from a transfer. (If any young players ever want a good agent then go straight to him at the S.E.M. group.) And I must thank Richard Thompson who representedme during this book deal with HarperCollins, for whom Jonathan Taylor has been a big help. Thanks too to Jordan Sibley at Southampton Football Club for sourcing some of the photos, to the club photographer Paul Watts for taking them and to the Southern Daily Echo for supplying some of the older pictures. They say the camera never lies but do some of them seem to make me look overweight?
I also need to single out my golf buddies Laurie Parsonage, Ben Johnson and Paul Mico, one of the best DJs in Southampton. I’m absolutely obsessed with golf and I will always be grateful to pro Richard Bland who allowed me to caddy for him on the European Tour, giving me the best time of my life outside football. He and his brother Heath are really good friends, along with taxi driver Mark Harris who has ferried Saints players around the city for years and knows all their secrets. If he ever wrote a book he’d make millions. In contrast, I must thank Mike Osman for costing me a fortune by persuading me to invest in a nightclub. Despite the huge loss, we have remained friends throughout, which must say something. I must also thank Big Dave and his wife Teresa who have been a big help in recent years.
Francis Benali and Claus Lundekvam are close mates but I have to thank all my former teammates, too numerous to mention individually, for doing my running and allowing me the licence to play the way I did. I couldn’t have done it without them, and it was nice to know they were prepared to graft on my behalf.
I want to thank all my former managers but especially Alan Ball—and it is so sad he isn’t here to read this. My time playing under him really defined me as a player and I must thank both him and Lawrie McMenemy for their joint efforts in finding the perfect position in the team for me. Thanks, too, to all the Saints staff I have worked with over the years, from the backroom team to the stadium personnel and, of course, I will always be grateful to all the Saints fans for their constant support and belief in me.
More recently I need to thank everyone at Sky for giving me the chance on Soccer Saturday and making me so welcome. They have ensured I can stay involved in football in a casual way, with no pressure or fear of getting the sack if results don’t go well. And finally I must thank the man who has put all these words to paper, Graham Hiley, who was lucky enough to follow my entire career as the Saints correspondent with the Southern Daily Echo. Obviously when I was playing I needed people around me to do all the hard work, so I thought I’d carry on in the same vein and get Graham to do the writing while I just sat and talked. It is a tactic which has worked well for me over the years and you wouldn’t want to change a winning formula—unless you are Ian Branfoot.
Preface (#ulink_1ee3952f-3fd4-50f0-bb2e-64091b4ad396)
Even now people still ask me why I stayed with Southampton throughout my playing career when I probably could have earned a lot more money elsewhere. The fact is, I loved the club—and still do. That’s why it breaks my heart to see where they are now. And that’s why I almost gave up my job with Sky Sports to become the club chairman.
When I was playing we had four last-day escapes from relegation, some against almost overwhelming odds. And yet I always had a feeling that we would do it. Many fans say that it was all down to my goals but the fact is I couldn’t have scored them without ten players alongside me. We had such a fantastic team spirit that we somehow survived every crisis—and I loved being part of it.
We punched above our weight for years while we were at the homely but inadequate Dell. With a capacity of just 15,200, the club desperately needed to move to a new stadium in order to continue competing at the highest level. I was so proud that my goals helped keep us in the Premier League long enough for St Mary’s to be built—and when I retired at the end of the club’s first season in their new home, I felt the future was secure.
But somehow the spirit of Southampton seemed to seep away and, through a catalogue of errors, this great club has slipped into the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years. Worse than that, it almost went out of existence altogether. The financial problems which had dogged the Saints for more than a year suddenly came to a head in April 2009 when the holding company went into administration. It meant an automatic 10-point deduction and certain relegation, and there was a very real chance that, after 125 years, the club might fold.
I have always said I would do anything I can to help the Saints, so when I was asked to front a consortium to save the club, I readily agreed. It would have meant giving up my cushy number talking about games in the warmth of the Sky Soccer Saturday studio. It would have meant getting a proper job for the first time in my life, working in an office, starting at 9am…and having to wear a tie! Perhaps it is for the best that our consortium couldn’t quite put the finishing touches to the deal. Thankfully, another group did manage to step in and save the club—and I genuinely wish them well. Meanwhile I can get back to working four days a month—pretty much the same as when I was playing…
1 HOD’S LAW (#ulink_8049e10b-ef16-5c9d-aa1b-dab9cbc233a0)
‘YOU’LL NEVER PLAY
FOR ENGLAND, YOU’LL NEVER PLAY FOR ENGLAND!’ THAT WASN’T THE FANS CHANTING,
IT WAS TERRY VENABLES AND GLENN HODDLE.
So how does a scrawny, incredibly talented kid from Guernsey get to play for England? I’ll tell you.
I grew up playing against three older, highly talented brothers—that sharpened me up. And then I flew to the mainland and joined the nearest top-flight club. Southampton. I played for the England Under-20s and B side and then, finally, when I was 25, I got the call. Terry Venables was the new England manager and I was in his in his first squad for a home friendly against Denmark. I couldn’t believe it. I came off the bench to replace Paul Gascoigne. It was a fairly low-key game but I felt 10ft tall when I went on. I didn’t get much chance to shine but we won 1-0 and I reckoned I was now on my way to becoming a regular. That was in 1994.
It had been my dream to play for England for as long as I can remember. I used to watch these superstars on a flickering black and white television and imagine that it was me pulling on the white jersey in the World Cup Finals. And yet, when the first call came, I didn’t go. I’d had a few training camps at schoolboy level but my first real international recognition came in 1987 when I was selected for the England Under-20 tour to Brazil. Saints were on a close-season trip to Singapore at the time and I was meant to fly direct from there to South America but I twisted an ankle. Chris Nicholl gave me a fitness test and effectively wrote me a note excusing me from games. It was nothing to do with the fact that I had a holiday booked in Tenerife.
I told Gordon Hobson, an older journeyman pro in the best sense of the word. He couldn’t grasp that I had turned down the chance to play for the Under-20 squad. He thought I was mad. Even at that young age I was a cocky git and I knew I was young enough to get in again the following year. And I did. Graham Taylor picked me along-side the likes of Neil Ruddock, David Howells, Kevin Pressman and Carl Leaburn, a tall skinny lad from Charlton who was a bit like John Fashanu and a real handful.
We played three games in Brazil. I scored in the first two with Neil Ruddock setting me up for one, and then Carl Leaburn was picked to play in the final match. It would have been his first appearance for England but he made the mistake of going shopping when he had been told to rest—and he bumped into Graham Taylor who promptly dropped him. It didn’t matter because it rained heavily and the match was called off. The humidity out there was unbelievable. I know I wasn’t the fittest but I was struggling to breathe after 10 minutes.
I never actually played for the England Under-21 side, probably because I was picked for the England B-team instead. I made my debut for them against the Republic of Ireland on what appeared to be a potato field in Cork. It was an awful day. It hammered down with rain, again—to the disgust of the VIPs including Southampton manager Chris Nicholl because they all had to sit out in the open. And all the subs had to sit on a gym bench and got drenched. The only ones with any shelter were the press who were put in the Perspex team dug-outs. It could only happen in Ireland. I had a shocker, but then so did everyone else, and we lost 4-1.
Now, under my Southampton manager Alan Ball I was playing the best football of my career, scoring and creating goals for fun and there was a growing campaign to get me in Terry Venables’ full England team. There was even a CD ‘Bring Him On For England’ by a Southampton band called the Valley Slags. When they mimed to it on the pitch at half-time during a home game against Leeds, the lead singer almost caused a riot by standing in front of the Leeds fans trying to get them to join in.
Terry didn’t speak to me much but I enjoyed his coaching. The sessions were short and sharp with the emphasis on skill; on being comfortable on the ball. That’s what counted. I came on as a sub against Greece and Norway before I got my first start in a home friendly against Romania in October 1994. I played the full 90 minutes but had only a couple of half chances in a 1-1 draw. It was tight and scrappy and I had to fit into the formation, and that was never my strength. At times I really did think that some of the more established players (and NO, I won’t name names) saw me as a threat given their occasional reluctance to give me the ball.
And what did the media say? Having campaigned to get me in the team they now had a go at me. I was a sub against Nigeria and then the Pro Tissier movement started up again. Terry was under a fair bit of pressure to play me, with many feeling he hadn’t given me a fair chance (it couldn’t possibly be because I’d turned him down at Spurs when he tried to buy me, could it?). So far I had figured mainly as a bit-part player. Then I was picked for that extraordinary infamous match against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin. Some reckoned he was actually setting me up to fail by picking me for a match against a team then noted for its physical approach and long-ball game. The pitch certainly wasn’t conducive to good football.
HE ORDERED METO SEE ADIETICIAN. ANDA FAT LOT OFGOOD THAT DID.
But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was just thrilled to get my second start and then it all went horribly wrong because the England fans went beserk and rioted. The flashpoint came when Ireland took the lead after 25 minutes, but the tension had been increasing for hours. We thought it was just routine crowd trouble, but then came the seats and missiles. People ask were you frightened and the answer is ‘WHAT D’YOU THINK?’ The game was cut short but Terry never picked me again. In fact, I was the only one dropped from his next squad but he did at least have the decency to phone and tell me, though he didn’t give a reason. And I was too stunned to ask. Instead he put his faith in Paul Gascoigne and probably felt he couldn’t play two ‘luxury’ players. To be fair Gazza was outstanding in Euro 96, but I don’t think I got a chance to prove I could be equally influential.
When Terry was replaced by Glenn Hoddle, my schoolboy idol and another manager who had tried to buy me (when he was at Chelsea), I reckoned things were looking up. We were similar players and I hoped he’d give me a fair chance, especially when the media got going, but this time with a succession of scare stories that I might play for another country. Because I came from the Channel Islands I was eligible to play for any of the Home Countries. And because all my previous caps had been in friendlies, I could still opt to play for Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Well, in theory. But it was never on. My dream had always been to play for England, though that didn’t stop the Wales manager Bobby Gould saying he’d love to pick me. There was even a story linking me with France, which was bonkers. In fact, when I was in my early twenties my dad did get phone calls from the French FA asking about my availability. Michel Platini was the manager and his assistant, Gerard Houllier, kept ringing dad badgering him to talk to me. But it was never going to happen. The only good thing was that it increased the pressure on Glenn to play me in a competitive match so that I couldn’t play for another country, and that’s exactly what he did in his first match in charge, bringing me off the bench for NINE whole minutes in a World Cup qualifier away to Moldova when England were already 3-0 up and the game was stone dead. And then he had a go at my brother Carl.
Glenn picked me for the vital World Cup qualifier against Italy at Wembley in February 1997 but it was overshadowed by a massive row because the team was leaked to the press. Glenn was furious and actually blamed my brother when another player had leaked the news because he had been dropped and he got the hump. Big time. Glenn hauled me in front of him that lunchtime and had a right go at me. That was the only one-to-one I ever had with him as England manager, and come to think of it I only had one when he was the manager at Southampton when he ordered me to see a dietician. And a fat lot of good that did, if you’ll pardon the pun.
It wasn’t a great night against Italy. We lost 1-0 although I did go close to scoring with a header, but the press were out for me. What they didn’t know was that I was struggling with injuries. I needed a hernia operation and I’d also torn the tendon from my heel to my toe. It was horrible, and I was having to run on the outside of my foot but I had to keep playing because Saints were near the bottom of the table. I told Glenn I was OK to play for Southampton but I didn’t think I could do myself justice playing for England. He asked if I would mind going to see his faith healer Eileen Drewery because she might be able to help. I wasn’t rude but just said I’d prefer not to because that wasn’t my sort of thing. And that was the last full England squad I was in. Any connection? Ask Glenn.
Glenn did pick me for an England B game against Russia at Loftus Road in April 1998, which was like a final trial match for the fringe players before the World Cup Finals in France 98. I was on a hot streak, pretty close to my best, and had scored seven goals in the last nine games of the season for Saints. A lot of people were pushing my claims, so Glenn put me in the B game. It was Last Chance Saloon. Peter Taylor took charge of the team and I was very impressed by his training and ideas. I knew I must be in with a shout of making the preliminary 30-man squad because Glenn was getting blood tests done for all the candidates, and I was one of only three (with Les Ferdinand and Darren Anderton) in the B team to be tested.
The game couldn’t have gone any better. I know I’ve got a reputation for playing in fits and starts but this was one of my best ever 90 minutes. Everything went right. I scored a hat trick, hit the woodwork twice and ended up with the captain’s armband for the last 10 minutes of a 4-1 win. I was besieged by the media afterwards. They were taking it for granted that I’d get selected. I tried to play it down, at least in public; I didn’t want to appear arrogant or over-confident but inside I was BUBBLING. I walked away from the ground with my parents and Angela (now my wife) on a real high and I was pestering my mum to let me get a bag of chips but she told me I had to eat properly if I was going to the World Cup. And did Glenn pick me? No way. I only heard when my brother saw the news on Teletext and told me. It was like being punched in the stomach; I felt sick, bewildered and absolutely devastated. It was the most disappointing moment of my career.
There was a widely held theory that Glenn had been hoping I’d fail in the Russia match, which would let him off the hook with the fans and the media. Then he tried making out that Russia weren’t very good—in which case why did he organize a match against them?—and while that’s true I did get a hat trick. You can only beat what’s in front of you. And if Russia were so weak, how come Darren Anderton and Les Ferdinand got in the squad? To make matters worse, Glenn rang a few people on the fringes of the squad to let them know they weren’t in it, but he must have lost my number. I still have no idea why he made that decision. I shouldn’t think he regrets it though—people that arrogant are never wrong. To make matters worse, he didn’t take Paul Gascoigne either. I could just about have accepted it if he had thought that Gazza was better than me but he didn’t take a playmaker at all, which I found very strange.
Or maybe we got on so badly because I didn’t sign for him at Chelsea. In fact, I didn’t even agree to speak to him. He must have rated me, though I think it was actually the director, the late Matthew Harding (who died in a helicopter crash), who wanted me. If I’d kicked up a stink and said I wanted to go then I think Saints would have sold me, but I said I was happy. I didn’t want to leave. I loved the club and the city and felt at home there, and that was always very important. A lot of people told me I was mad because Chelsea was a bigger club and it would have been a chance to play for Hoddle.
My agent rang me and said Glenn still wanted to talk to me, even though I insisted I was staying put, but again I said ‘No’. I knew that if I did speak to him—and he was my idol—he might change my mind. All that happened three years before he said ‘No’ to me, dropping me from the 30-man squad. When I was growing up my uncle always said you should never meet your heroes because they always let you down. Bloody hell, he was right!
After that I hastily booked a holiday to get away and watched the World Cup Finals on TV. I was never churlish enough to want England to fail just because I had been left out and I was gutted when England went out to Argentina. I was furious at the injustice when Sol Campbell had a perfectly good goal disallowed and was bitterly disappointed when we went out on penalties. I’d have given anything to be out there taking one.
MY UNCLEALWAYS SAIDYOU SHOULDNEVER MEETYOUR HEROESBECAUSE THEYALWAYS LET YOUDOWN. BLOODYHELL, HE WASRIGHT!
Looking back, being snubbed was a crushing blow and I wonder if it had a bigger impact on my career than I then realized, because I never reached the same heights again. It was as though the ultimate goal had been snatched away from me and my greatest incentive had gone. It had always been my ambition to play for England and now knew that was it.
Glenn and I have since made up, although we will never be close friends. We were both staying in the same hotel on a golfing trip in Dubai in 2006 and I decided to clear the air. I walked in to breakfast one day and there he was, sitting on his own, so I went and sat with him. He looked surprised—and a bit wary. I think he wondered what was coming but I just said that life is too short for any bad feelings, and I wanted to sort things out. I admitted that I’d made mistakes while playing under him and I apologized, even though I actually felt he was far more in the wrong than me. I felt it was right to apologize and get the ball rolling. It was actually quite a hard thing to do and I got quite emotional because I really had idolized him. I told him that he’d been my hero. He was a fantastic footballer and someone I’ll admire for his skills. Always.
It was equally tough because the rift and the not speaking to each other had gone on for so long, and here I was making the first move when I didn’t really think I had anything to be sorry for. But we cleared the air, shook hands and moved on. I bear no grudges and wish him all the best with his academy in Spain. It’s a terrific idea, taking on lads who have been released by clubs, working on their weaknesses and trying to get them back into professional football. Glenn will be good at that because he won’t have to manage players with massive opinions and the lads will be desperate to get back into football. They’ll take on board everything he says, no argument, so he’ll probably get on well with them. But I still find it sad he isn’t managing a top club and, if he does get the chance, I hope he’ll have learned from his mistakes. If he could get a semblance of man-management he’d be a huge asset to any club.
2 SOUTHAMPTON HERE I COME (#ulink_c0977758-e08a-55f0-85f6-dc3007cec617)
THE ENTIRE TOTTENHAM TEAM WATCHED OUR MATCH.
I’D LIKE TO SAY I TURNED ON THE STYLE, BUT I MADE
A COMPLETE IDIOT OF MYSELF…
The stereotypical British pro footballer is said to be a gutsy, bust-a-gut, working-class northener. And me? I come from Guernsey, best known for its cows, in the Channel Islands, closer to France than England. And you can’t get more south than that.
At school I was a good all-round sportsman, i.e. good at anything which involved a ball—tennis, squash, snooker, table tennis, hockey and particularly cricket. If I hadn’t made it as a footballer I’d have tried to become a professional cricketer because I was a pretty decent wicketkeeper, mainly because that was the only position which did not involve much running. I remember scoring 164 not out in a 20-over game, which is still a Guernsey record. And I was amazed, while researching this book, to find that I broke several school athletics records including the 75m, 55m hurdles and the 6 x 10m shuttle runs (when you sprint to the first marker, touch the ground, sprint back to the start and then run to the second marker, touch the ground, and so on). It is mind-boggling because I was always the first one to drop out when we had to do them at Southampton.
To be fair, there was precious little else to do on Guernsey apart from going to the beach. So it was sport, Sport, SPORT. The island was obsessed with it, and I came from a very sporting family. I was born on October 14, 1968, the youngest of four boys, after Mark, Kevin and Carl. I turned up as an afterthought, or because my parents wanted a girl.
My mum and dad (Ruth and Marcus) got married at 16 and had had three children by the time they were 19—and they are still happily together—despite the strain of looking after the four of us. They’ve been behind everything I have ever achieved, but the only principle I didn’t follow involved hard work. They grafted like mad when we were young, often holding down two jobs each to ensure we didn’t go without. We grew up on an estate and didn’t have a lot. It was a bit rough and ready but not a bad place, and when you are a kid you don’t really think about your surroundings, you just accept that’s how life is. And Guernsey was a fantastic place to grow up, with wonderful beaches close by. It was so safe. It really was the kind of place where people didn’t lock their front doors or their cars, and I must admit I’m quite pleased two of my kids are growing up there. The only thing people weren’t relaxed about was sport, particularly when it came to competing against Jersey.
Both me and my brothers inherited our skill from our dad, who was good at softball, cricket and football and had trials with Arsenal. He was a lightning quick right-winger and I think the Gunners would have signed him but for a bad ankle injury. Mark was a solid defender and the only one of us ever to win Man of the Match in the annual Muratti game between Guernsey and Jersey. He was a decent player but not quite on a par with Kevin and Carl who could have both made it as pro footballers. In fact Kevin was a better finisher than me. He was an out and out centre-forward in the Alan Shearer mould and lethal in front of goal. He broke the Guernsey scoring record and averaged a goal a game over 20 years. Carl was a bit more like me and played deeper. He was skilful and creative and Guernsey’s leading midfield scorer.
THE FACT THATTWO OF MYBROTHERS HADBEEN OFFEREDTERMS SHOWEDIT COULD BEDONE. IN FACT ITMADE ME MOREDETERMINEDTHAN EVER.
Both had the chance to make it as pros but suffered from homesickness. Kevin had trials with Middlesbrough, who were keen to take him but they were close to going bust at the time. He went to Oxford United and did so well that they offered him a professional contract but he turned it down. I was gobsmacked. Even at 13 I knew all I wanted to be was a professional footballer. Carl had trials with Southampton who offered him an apprenticeship but, again, he didn’t want to leave Guernsey. That may seem bizarre but unless you have grown up there, you can’t understand what a close-knit, insular place it is. But it did make me realize that being a professional footballer wasn’t a pipedream. The fact that two of my brothers had been offered terms showed it could be done. In fact it made me more determined than ever, and my parents started to take steps to ensure that I didn’t suffer from homesickness if and when I got the chance to go. They encouraged me to go on school trips and residential soccer schools to get me used to being away from home. I have no idea where they got the money from but, somehow, they managed to scrimp and save in order to get me off the island. So when the time came for me to go, I was up for it.
For my thirteenth birthday I went away to a soccer skills week at Calshot Activity Centre near Southampton. I wouldn’t say it was done on the cheap but my prize for being Player of the Week was two photographs, one of Kevin Keegan and one of Lawrie McMenemy—both unsigned. The sad thing is I still have them, and they are still not autographed. By now I was starting to realize I was pretty good at football and was playing regularly against much older opposition without looking out of place. That was partly because I had three talented older brothers and because I had the ability to cope with it.
The first sign of that came when I played in the final of the island’s Under-11 school tournament. I was just eight (and physically there’s a big difference between an eight-year old and a lad not quite 11) but I scored both goals to give my school, Mare de Carteret, a 2-0 win over Vale. It was my first ever medal and I remember thinking, ‘I’m bloody good at this!’ Even then I knew how to swear, although my vocabulary soon expanded as I learned to shout at referees.
By 1983 I was playing regularly for Guernsey’s Under-15 side and I still remember the Muratti Cup Final against Jersey that year. We were the warm-up act before a friendly between the full Guernsey side and Tottenham Hotspur, the team I supported as a boy. I was a huge fan, mainly because I idolized Glenn Hoddle who was everything I ever wanted to be as a player. His skill, touch, vision and finishing were sublime. It was 1-1 when the Tottenham team arrived and they actually watched our match. We could see them all in the stand with the likes of Ray Clemence, Ossie Ardiles, Steve Archibald and Glenn watching us. I’d like to say I turned on the style but I made a complete idiot of myself.
With seven minutes remaining I was pushed in the box and we got a penalty—and I made a hash of it. I put the kick wide, a cardinal sin. A free shot from just 12 yards. It is the first penalty I remember missing and it had to be in front of the Spurs players. They weren’t best pleased because it meant our match went to extra-time so they had to wait to play their game. We won in the end but I was still mortified at missing in front of so many big names.
My dad was a big Spurs fan so I supported them too, and I’ll never forget when they reached the FA Cup Final in 1981. Every year my dad and a group of mates went to the final. I have no idea how he got tickets, but it always coincided with his birthday so it was his big annual treat to himself. He was more excited than ever when Spurs got to that final, and I nipped home from school at lunchtime to say goodbye but he told me not to bother going back for the afternoon, and handed me a ticket for the match. I was absolutely stunned. Instead of going back for lessons I was suddenly packing my bag and flying to the mainland to see Spurs v Manchester City at Wembley. Obviously, having me there cramped his style a bit because it meant he had to look after a 12-year-old boy instead of going out for a few drinks, so I’ll always be grateful. We didn’t get to see Spurs lift the Cup as it finished 1-1 and, in those days, there’d be a replay, but it was still an amazing experience and I was more determined than ever to make it as a pro.
I remember the thrill of walking up Wembley Way, jostling with thousands of other fans, seeing the Twin Towers (before they became an arch) and dreaming that one day Michael Gilkes would be cup-tied and that I’d get to take his place. I was absolutely buzzing as I handed in my ticket at the turnstiles and walked inside the stadium for the first time. Excitement? I nearly exploded. I can still recall walking out into that giant concrete bowl and seeing that famous pitch down there in front of me. I loved every second of the build-up, the flags, the scarves, even the smell of the place. It was then the most magical day of my life and I vowed I’d would be back as a player.
I was already on the right path. Manchester Utd didn’t exactly come knocking, but when I was 14 Oxford offered me a trial, ironically in a game against Southampton. I stayed with Keith and Gill Rogers, friends of my dad and the people who had got Kevin his trial. Ray Graydon was the youth team coach at the time and he’d pick me up each day and take me to training. Oxford wanted me back and said it would be easier if I lived there so I left Guernsey to start school in Oxford, and I absolutely hated it. I didn’t know anyone and wanted to leave after the first lesson. I think I managed two full days—so at least I gave it a good go.
Keith put me on a flight back to Guernsey and I think he was a bit annoyed, not least because the same thing had happened with Kevin. I just wasn’t ready. I hope he didn’t take it personally but it was too soon for me to leave home. Oxford were doing well then under Jim Smith, and had got to the League Cup Final, but I knew Southampton were interested. I had another chance. They’d spotted me playing for Guernsey Schools when we came over on tour and were keen for a closer look. They said they were happy for me to finish my schooling in Guernsey, and would wait to make a decision about an apprenticeship until I was 16. That was better. I still have the letter, addressed to ‘Matthew Le Tissieur’. Maybe they were already thinking ahead to shirt printing, charging £1 a letter.
When I went to Southampton I stayed with Andy Cook and Leroy Whale who were also on schoolboy terms. Their families made me very welcome and I had no hesitation accepting the apprenticeship. My parents had received a letter from the manager Lawrie McMenemy but again my name was spelled wrongly, and the letter stressed the importance of finishing my exams. Bizarrely it said, ‘I will quite understand if you do not want to tell Matthew of this offer until after he has completed his exams, but please let me know his decision within a week.’
Of course they told me, and I was always going to accept. My parents had ensured I was used to the surroundings at Southampton and that I was ready to move away. It also took all the pressure off my exams because I knew they didn’t matter. I was never too fussed about schoolwork though I was pretty good at mental maths, which came in handy for working out goal difference, and I once won the Guernsey Eisteddfod Society Certificate of Merit for an essay about a dream in which I scored the winning goal in the World Cup Final. In short, I always just did enough because I always knew I’d be a footballer.
MANCHESTERUTD. DIDN’TEXACTLY COMEKNOCKING BUTWHEN I WAS 14OXFORDOFFERED ME ATRIAL.
By that stage I knew I was head and shoulders above everyone I was playing against, often scoring five or six goals a game in the Under-16s and Under-18s leagues and also turning out at adult level for Vale Rec Reserves. And then I got a call for the England Under-17 training camp, which was a huge honour. It was also an opportunity to fiddle the expenses and make a few quid. We were able to claim train fare, food and taxi fares when of course I actually got a lift. Julian Dicks and Andy Hinchcliffe were also in the group, along with around 50 others I’d never heard of before or since. It’s quite astonishing how many of that group never made it at any level, so there must have been something seriously wrong with either the scouting or the development. Who’s to blame— the talent scouts or the players with no desire? Me—I’d had a burning ambition from the age of eight. I never thought about anything but football. I knew I was good on Guernsey, but what about on the mainland? What was the competition like? Did I have any? It didn’t take me long to realize that the answer was ‘No’.
When news spread that I was moving away to join Southampton, I received a special presentation at the Guernsey FA annual awards evening. Former QPR goalkeeper Phil Parkes handed me a framed cartoon which had appeared on the back of the local paper. It said, ‘Best wishes Matt for a long and successful career in England—from all the Channel Island goalies.’
Was I confident? It was weird. I was on a high because I’d just enjoyed a great season and I had faith in my own ability, but I was stepping into the unknown.
3 KNOCKED INTO SHAPE BY THE HAIRDRIER (#ulink_9783609e-66ae-5c10-a361-26dd30752ced)
WE WERE ALL LISTENING OUTSIDE THE DRESSING
ROOM AS IT ALL KICKED OFF AND CHRIS NICHOLL
THUMPED MARK DENNIS.
There was just one great big obstacle: I’d been suspended for the first two youth matches. All the bookings were for dissent and I had to appear before the Guernsey Island FA where we argued that a ban could harm my prospects at Southampton. Thankfully they voted by six votes to five to overturn the ban and give me a severe warning about my future conduct. So that obviously worked well!
I had always been quick to voice my opinion. I still remember one schools match which we struggled to win away. The ref was one of the teachers at their school and he did all he possibly could to get them a win. I was only 13 or 14 but I let him have it. As we came off the pitch the ref went up to our coach and said he needed to ‘Keep an eye on that Le Tissier, and tell him to calm down and stop arguing.’ I overheard and said to my mate, ‘He’s talking out of his arse.’ Too loudly. The next thing I’m being frogmarched to the coach’s car and he’s driving me straight home to tell my parents, but what he didn’t know was that my mum had been at the game and she’d seen that the ref was a disgrace. A cheat. She stuck up for me but made it quite clear I had to be more careful in future.
And I remembered that at Southampton. What was it like there? Now Saints have a well-run lodge where all the trainees stay, but in those days you had digs, and it was pot luck what sort of family you ended up with. You were driven to someone’s front door and told, here’s your new home. I was very lucky and stayed with Pete and Pat Ford. Pete is a massive Saints fan who has one of the biggest collections of autographs I have ever seen, and he had two football-mad sons, Martin and Stuart, who were then 11 and nine. I went from being the youngest of four to the oldest of three, so instead of getting beaten up the whole time I was suddenly the one dishing it out!
I was getting £26 a week with a £4 win bonus and £2 for a draw, which was quite good as a percentage of the wage. We also got £16 every four weeks to buy a monthly bus pass. The clever ones soon realized that the date was on the back and that drivers never checked it, so we didn’t bother renewing it and pocketed the £16. Most of my money went on fruit machines. They didn’t exist on Guernsey and the bright lights were one hell of an attraction. I ended up losing big time in the amusement arcades. I’d just signed as a professional on £100 a week but I was already £1,500 overdrawn. It sounds like it was out of control but I knew I had a £5,000 loyalty bonus coming at the end of the season and that I could easily pay it off. As addictions go this was nothing, but I can see why some players get hooked. You get such a big buzz on match days that you desperately feel the need to recreate that during the week, and gambling is a quick-fix thrill. And don’t forget footballers have plenty of time to kill. I played snooker. Straight after training I’d go to the Cueball Snooker Club where I became good friends with Warren King, the resident pro who got as high as Number 35 in the world. I thought I was pretty good until I played him. I’ll never forget him rattling off a 145 break against me. He used to give me a head start of 60 and it’d go up by 10 each frame until I won. I had a couple of century breaks in practice but the most I ever managed in a match was 89. I’d stay there until it was time for the last bus home.
On the playing side there were nine of us apprentices, of which five of us made a decent living out of the game. Andy Cook went on to play for Pompey and Exeter, Steve Davis had a long career at Burnley before moving into coaching, Allen Tankard played for Port Vale for a long time and Franny Benali became a Southampton legend. He set up my first goal as an apprentice in a 4-2 win over Reading. I missed a penalty in that match but got an easy tap-in when Franny crossed from the left. Bizarrely, for a man who only ever scored one senior goal, he started out as a striker. At 15 he was a big strapping centre-forward but then he stopped growing and, as the others caught up, he moved further and further back, first to midfield and then fullback. If he had been two or three inches taller he’d have made a top-class centre-back. He was an excellent man-marker and very disciplined, except when the red mist descended. Like many of the game’s hard men he’s quiet off the field, one of the nicest guys you could meet—articulate, kind and gentle—but hard as nails on the pitch.
The youth team coach was Dave Merrington, who was a terrific bloke and a huge influence on me, but he was terrifying. He was a teak-tough, no-nonsense Geordie. There are very few things in life which faze me but Dave in full flow was awesome. The original hairdrier-blaster, long before Fergie. He was actually very religious, which you’d never guess from his language, but he was wonderful, warm and infectious. We had some great fun but were terrified of him. When Dave blew his top we knew he’d have us running, running and RUNNING, and I hated that. He didn’t take any backchat or slacking but was absolutely brilliant, and even the likes of Alan Shearer still hail him as the biggest influence on their careers. He was brilliant for me, and never tried to stifle my talent. All the apprentices still keep in touch with him but, bloody hell, he was tough.
In those days they really made apprentices work for a living. It isn’t like that today, where many have agents and boot deals and cars. Our system was better, even though I hated it. Besides training we had to pick up the dirty laundry, sweep the floors, clean the dressing rooms and showers, and Heaven help anyone who slacked.
One day a PFA rep called in to talk to the players, including the apprentices. We were all summoned so we couldn’t finish cleaning the dressing room. While we were in the meeting, Dave walked past and saw some kit on the floor and went ballistic. He stormed into the players’ lounge with a face like thunder and ordered us all downstairs immediately. He pointed to the dirty kit and asked why it was there. We said we’d been told to go to the meeting but he just barked that we should have finished the cleaning first. He gave us 10 minutes to complete the job, and to get changed and ready on the running track. He ordered us to do 40 laps while he sat in the corner of the stand and counted them. We jogged round as a group while he ticked them off until he got to 36. When we completed the next lap, he called 36 again. No one dared correct him, so next time he called 37 and then 37 again, and so on, until eventually he reached 40, making us do four EXTRA laps. He made his point all right. I’ll never forget that, or the time one of the lads thought it would be funny to press the fuel cut-off button in the youth team mini-bus. No matter what he tried, Dave couldn’t start it. We all thought it was hilarious until he told us to run back. And in those days, before Saints bought their own training ground, we trained a good six miles from The Dell. We weren’t best pleased but it was one time we actually got the better of Dave. We’d gone no more than 400 yards when a truck drove past. We got a lift and jumped on the back. He dropped us off near The Dell so we waited a while then sprinted the remaining half mile to make it look like we were knackered, and I was.
DAVE WENTMENTAL, ANDORDERED US ALLIN FOR TRAININGAT 6AM THE NEXTDAY. UP TO THATPOINT I THOUGHTTHERE WAS ONLYONE SIX O’CLOCKIN THE DAY.
We had a good squad and won the South East Counties title both seasons I was an apprentice. In fact that was the last winner’s medal I got. With the ability we had, and the likes of Alan Shearer and Rod Wallace in the year below, we should have won the FA Youth Cup. I remember we got drawn against West Ham who tanked us 5-0 at The Dell and Dave went mental, and ordered us all in for training at 6am the next day. Up to that point I thought there was only one six o’clock in the day so it came as a real shock. We all made it apart from Andy Cook, who turned up at 8.45 because he lived in Romsey and there were no early buses. He was taken round the track for some severe running which took the heat off the rest of us.
For all his bluster you could have a laugh with Dave, at the right time, although it took me about a year to learn when to do it. I took a bit of a chance after a game at Spurs. I had an absolute shocker in the first half and Dave laid into me at half-time telling me I had 10 minutes to improve or I was off. After about five minutes I scored and I had a decent second half. Dave used to phone through the match details for the Pink, the local sports paper. He was writing his notes after the game and asked me what time I scored. I said, ‘Five minutes after you told me I had 10 minutes or I was off.’ The rest of the lads held their breath but I got away with it. It was certainly a better retort than Alan Shearer managed when he was having a ‘mare in one game. It was a blustery day and he couldn’t trap a bag of cement. The wind was howling and the rain was swirling and Dave was absolutely caning Alan from the touchline. Finally, in desperation, Alan turned round and yelled, ‘I can’t see because of the wind.’ That was right up there on a par with his answer at the pre-match meal before his first-team debut. He was asked what he wanted in his omelette and he replied, ‘Egg.’
Dave’s approach wouldn’t work now, partly because it’s not politically correct and partly because many of the apprentices now have too much money, fast cars, inflated opinions of themselves, too much bargaining power and agents who’ll approach another club the moment there’s a problem. Some of them have even got agents and boot deals before they sign YTS forms. (I was 20 before I got my first car. I failed my first driving test because I nearly crashed. I was waiting at a roundabout and thought I saw enough of a gap to get through—and there wasn’t. But I passed second time, bought myself a second-hand Ford Fiesta for £1,100 and thought I was pretty cool.) Clubs are scared of losing their talent so they give apprentices the kid-glove treatment, not the iron fist.
We all mucked in as cleaners and scrapers and that really made us appreciate the good times when we actually made it. We were basically part-time paid slaves. Each apprentice had to look after a pro, which basically meant cleaning his boots and making sure his training kit was ready on time. I looked after Joe Jordan and David Armstrong. At Christmas they were supposed to give a tip as a thank you. Trust me to get a Scotsman. I got the lowest tips, but that might be because Joe got the dirtiest boots. I was more interested in playing head tennis.
ALAN SHEARERWAS ASKEDWHAT HEWANTED IN HISOMELETTE ANDHE REPLIED,‘EGG.’
I vowed that when I got to be a pro I’d look after my apprentice well. The one who did best out of me was Matthew Oakley. I gave him a bonus of £5 for every goal I scored from 1993-95, some of my best years, which cost me a fortune. I remember Alan Shearer had his boots cleaned by a young lad called Kevin Phillips. For some reason we played him at right-back but decided he wasn’t good enough, which was hardly surprising because he was a striker. Saints didn’t offer him professional terms and he drifted into non-league football with Baldock Town before being snapped up by Watford and then Sunderland, where he became one of the most prolific goalscorers in Premier League history. Every club has players who slip through the net and go on to prove them wrong, but that was a pretty big mistake and, in fairness, a rare one for Southampton. But it’s a good lesson for any youngster with self-belief and talent. You can still make it.
As apprentices we also had to work in various departments of the club to understand what everyone did, and how hard the staff worked. We also did one day a week at college, and the club placed great importance on that. With such a high percentage of youngsters failing to make the grade as players, they wanted to ensure that we all had qualifications to fall back on if necessary. I did a BTech in ‘Sports and Leisure Something Or Other’. I’ve no idea what it was because I didn’t finish the course. I signed as a pro in my second year as soon as I reached my eighteenth birthday.
My first professional contract was worth £100 a week, rising to £120 in the second year. My negotiations with the manager Chris Nicholl consisted of him telling me what I would get and me saying, ‘Thanks very much.’ He was quite scary, as Mark Dennis found out. There were a lot of big names in the first-team squad including the likes of Peter Shilton, Jimmy Case and Mark Wright, and it was tough for Chris to impose his authority in his first major job in management. He hit the roof when he learned that Mark Dennis’s preparation for the home leg of the League Cup semi-final against Liverpool consisted of him playing snooker until 2am, so he decided to have it out with him in front of the rest of the lads.
We were all listening outside the dressing room when it kicked off. Chris was absolutely boiling and hit out and cut Mark’s eye with a right-hander. He thought Mark was going to hit him, so he got his retaliation in first. Mark had pushed him to the limit and Chris snapped. He was a big man and I don’t think many people would have fancied their chances in a fist fight with this big, bruising ex-centre-half. Mark Wright took Mark Dennis to hospital for stitches, and typically Denno just wanted to come straight back and finish it off once he’d been patched up. He stormed back into the changing room to find Chris having a shower, naked in all his glory. Thankfully Mark Wright stepped in and calmed it down, which was unusual for him. As soon as he was dressed, Chris went up to see a senior club official and told him he had just punched Mark Dennis. ‘It’s about time somebody did,’ came the reply.
4 IT’S STUART PEARCE—‘OH…MY…GOD!’ (#ulink_775df543-f44d-5ad9-be2f-742505597e60)
IT WAS LIKE ONE OF THOSE KIDS’ CARTOONS WHERE
A FEARSOME BULL IS SNORTING STEAM AND PAWING
THE GROUND BEFORE CHARGING.
I got my proper first-team start—and I don’t mean as a sub—when I was 17, playing in a Division One (now the Premier League) game against Spurs. That was a big one. The team I’d supported as a boy. The team with Glenn Hoddle, my idol. He was everything I wanted to be. I was fascinated by what he could do with a ball and by his range of passing with both feet. He was a great vollier and scored some fantastic goals from outside the box. Everything he did I tried to emulate. I can’t put into words just how important he was to me.
Things had been building up nicely because I’d already made my debut at St James’ Park—no, not Newcastle, Exeter—after I’d been included in the pre-season tour. I was still in my second year as an apprentice, and came on for the last 20 minutes of a 1-1 draw and was chuffed to read the write-up in the Southampton Echo which said I’d had a confident baptism and stole the show with some dazzling ball work. That gave me a real confidence boost because in those days I thought the press knew what they were talking about. I’d always read the papers if I had done OK but not if I’d had a stinker. I didn’t need some reporter rubbing it in, and if someone is slagging you off that’s not good for the confidence. I’d pick and choose when to read the papers, and I’d tell any young players to do the same.
My first senior appearance at The Dell came a few weeks later as a sub in a 4-1 win against Benfica in a testimonial match for Nick Holmes, although I didn’t play very well. Then I was called in to the senior squad for a league game at Norwich on August 30, 1986. These days, with five or even seven subs, it’s easier for a youngster to get on the bench, but back then there was only one sub allowed so it was a big ask to give the number 12 shirt to a kid. We were 3-2 down when I was sent on for the last 15 minutes with instructions to change the game, and I did. We lost 4-3.
First thing on the Monday morning I was summoned to Chris Nicholl’s office and I remember thinking I had only been on for 15 minutes so I couldn’t have had time to do that badly, but he wanted to let me know I’d be starting the following night. Giving me 24 hours’ notice was a brilliant decision. Normally he didn’t announce the team until the day of the match, but he knew it wouldn’t be easy for my family to get over from Guernsey. And he knew how important they were to me, so he gave me the nod which was a lovely touch. In the end 24 friends and family came over, although I have no idea how I managed to get them all tickets.
It was fantastic just to be told I was starting, but even more special because it was against Spurs. The fact I had 24 hours’ notice meant I had plenty of time to get nervous, but I spent most of the build-up wondering whether my parents were going to get there. There was only one seat left on the plane so Mum told Dad to take it and promised she would get there somehow. She ended up getting a boat and a lift so it really was a case of trains, planes and automobiles. The butterflies grew as the match drew nearer and I was a bit worried about the physical side as I was just a skinny lad and didn’t know how to look after myself at that time—but that’s what Jimmy Case was there for! I got a lot of support from all of the lads who were really helpful.
Bizarrely, I don’t remember too much about the game, which zipped by in a blur. I know I started on the right wing and that we won 2-0 with goals by Colin Clarke and Danny Wallace, and I played the full 90 minutes, which was a bit of a surprise. My big moment was when Mark Blake hit a ball out from the back. It was going over my shoulder but I produced a bit of great control, brought the ball down and cut inside Mitchell Thomas and slipped a reverse pass to Danny Wallace, putting him one-on-one. He rounded the keeper but slotted it into the side-netting just as I was ready to celebrate my first assist. I also remember Chris Waddle—CHRIS WADDLE of all people—got booked for a foul on me. Five minutes from time I got cramp in both hamstrings but no one noticed and I didn’t care because I was on such a high.
My debut gave me a massive boost because I now knew I could play at that level and not look out of place. And of course the £35 win bonus came in very handy. That doesn’t sound much now, especially compared to the players’ huge salaries, but I have never been motivated by money. The biggest basic wage I ever earned was £3,950 per week. That was from the four-year contract I signed in July 1997. The first year I received £3,450 per week, the second I got £3,700 per week and in the third £3,950 per week. And the fourth year? £3,450, but that’s a chairman for you (thank you, Rupert Lowe).
People always ask if I wish I was playing now with all that money in the game and my answer is always the same…
Of course I bloody well do.
Though I was never money-motivated, when I see very ordinary players getting 10 or even 20 times what I did, it does rankle. On the other hand I played in a fabulous era, the money was decent and you didn’t get the intrusive media. And I don’t think I’d have got away with eating the way I did, or playing with such freedom. I couldn’t have put up with that, not even for £60,000 a week. I certainly think I was good enough for the modern game but the big question is, would I have been given the chance? If I was coming through the ranks as a young lad now clubs would probably take one look at my work-rate and get rid of me.
So what’s wrong with the modern game? Where shall I start?
It’s taken much too seriously in every way, as a business, sports science, you name it.
The players don’t look as though they enjoy it, like we did.
There is too much pressure. It’s so serious.
I’d love to see more home-grown players being brought through the system without all these big buys from abroad. Certain clubs develop their own talent but not enough.
And the money is now quite staggering; clubs need to ask if they are getting value for the vast salaries they are paying out.
Rant over. I was very grateful for that win bonus against Spurs. We were given the day off after the game and I spent most of it reading match reports. The Echo described me as a ‘mere slip of a lad’ for the first and only time in my career. We trained on the Thursday and the Friday and I kept my place for the Saturday home game against Nottingham Forest. I felt really confident as I lined up on the right wing and then I saw Forest’s left-back Stuart Pearce and just thought, ‘Oh…My…God!’ It was like one of those kids’ cartoons where a fearsome bull is snorting steam and pawing at the ground before charging.
STUART WAS THESCARIEST MAN IHAVE EVERPLAYED AGAINST,BY A MILE. ALL ICAN SAY IS IT IS AGOOD JOBSAINTS PLAYEDIN DARK-COLOUREDSHORTS.
Stuart was the scariest man I have ever played against, by a mile. All I can say is it is a good job Saints played in dark-coloured shorts. I was terrified. His thighs were wider than my torso. I think I got three kicks in that first half, and all from him. The first time he clattered me it was like ‘Welcome to the First Division son.’ To be honest I didn’t even try and take him on. The look in his eyes was enough. It was a steep learning curve for me but I can’t have done too badly because I got seven out of 10 in the paper even though we lost 3-1. Colin Clarke brought us level at 1-1 with 16 minutes to go, but they won with two goals from Gary Birtles and one from Neil Webb. It’s just as well there was only one sub back then because otherwise I might well have been off.
I found myself back on the bench after that and I was probably lucky not to be dropped altogether. In fact Chris Nicholl made a special point of kicking lumps out of me in training. I think he was trying to toughen me up and to get me used to facing players like Stuart Pearce. Chris had a real mean look in his eyes and you could tell he meant every kick, but I really believe he thought he was doing the best for me. After that I spent quite a lot of time on the bench, which was very frustrating. I think he was trying to protect me and bring me through slowly, just like Sir Alex Ferguson did with Ryan Giggs.
I, of course, thought I was good enough to play every week and reckoned I’d tell Chris, really tell him, well, once I got a bit braver. He was scary, an old-fashioned tea-cup thrower. After a defeat he had a terrible habit of picking on one person, normally me because I was the youngster. Very few dared answer back but I remember one game at home to QPR when it was 1-1 with 15 minutes left and we lost 4-1. It was rare for us to be turned over at The Dell like that, and two of the goals came from outside the area. Tim Flowers was in goal and didn’t get anywhere near them.
Chris stormed into the dressing room and slammed the door. No one dared make eye contact because we knew he’d be going for someone. Thankfully it was Tim. Chris yelled, ‘Goalie, you’ve let in two goals from outside the box and got nowhere near them. Have your eyes ever been checked?’ Tim couldn’t help himself and replied, ‘No, they have always been blue.’ How he wasn’t the second player to be punched by Chris I’ll never know. Chris was so stunned he didn’t know what to say.
Tim always had a reply but even he was dumbfounded after one game when he was injured while conceding the second goal. We were 2-1 down at half-time and Tim hobbled off the pitch. The physio Don Taylor was checking his ankle in the dressing room and Chris was laying into him as he lay there in agony. Don eventually managed to get a word in edgeways and said Tim would have to be subbed and would need to go to hospital for an x-ray.
Chris paused and then, in his distinctive northern accent, said, ‘If it’s broken, sorry. If not, W****R!’
5 I GET RON ATKINSON FIRED AND FERGIE HIRED (#ulink_ee599c46-8b18-5f23-81a0-90c40564865f)
‘CHRIS NICHOLL WAS QUITE RELUCTANT TO GIVE ME
A CHANCE IN MY EARLY DAYS BUT WHENEVER THE GAME
WAS NOT GOING WELL, THE SAINTS FANS WOULD CHANT:
“WE WANT LE TISSIER”. I WAS NEVER ONE FOR DOING
MUCH WARMING UP BUT I KNEW IF I JOGGED UP THE
TOUCHLINE THE CROWD WOULD START SINGING MY
NAME—AND IT USED TO WIND UP THE MANAGER NO
END—SO I DID IT EVEN MORE!’
One of the great things about coming through the ranks was having a minder to look after me on the field. Jimmy Case took it upon himself to look after the young players. If anyone tried to kick us, he would note their number and give them a whack; anyone, that is, except Stuart Pearce. After 40 minutes of that game against Forest, I jogged inside and said, ‘Jim that’s three times he’s done me’. Jimmy just said, ‘Not today son!’
I GREW UPWATCHINGSHILTON PLAYFOR ENGLANDAND SUDDENLY IWAS A COCKY17-YEAR-OLDTRYING TO CHIPHIM INTRAINING.
It was brilliant having senior players like Jimmy Case, Mark Dennis and Joe Jordan as minders on the field and being able to work with them in training. Joe was so fit, one of the best trainers I worked with—not that I followed his example. It was quite daunting though to betraining alongside such big names as Peter Shilton. I grew up watching him play for England and suddenly I was a cocky 17-year-old trying to chip him in training. It felt quite bizarre. He was the greatest keeper I’d ever seen and there I was trying to take the mickey out of him. I very rarely succeeded, but when I did, he hated it. Back then there was no such thing as a goalkeeping coach so Shilts used to take the sessions for the keepers, working with Phil Kite and my old mate Keith Granger.
There were times when Shilts would turn up for training looking a bit rough. We would go out and warm up then I would turn round after 20 minutes to see him walking off the field and heading for home. He was a law unto himself and just trained when he felt like it. For the majority of the time he trained like a Trojan and would really put himself and the others through a tough session. I really used to look forward to the times when he was on top form because it would be really difficult to get a shot past him and you got a real high if you did it. He hated being beaten, even in training.
It took me two months to get off the mark but I’ll never forget my first goals, and nor will Ron Atkinson. They came in a Littlewoods Cup tie against Manchester United at The Dell on November 4, 1986. We were 2-0 up when I came off the bench to score twice in a 4-1 win. The referee, Lester Shapter, allowed my first despite a massive shout for offside. There was a long kick from the keeper, Colin Clarke challenged in the air but the ball actually came off their defender. If Colin had made contact then I’d have been offside but I ran on and chipped the keeper.
I was so excited that I slid on both knees towards the fans at the Milton Road end of the ground—and then I saw the ref consulting the linesman. My heart sank because I thought I was going to look a complete arse if he disallowed it, but thankfully it stood. My second came from a Jimmy Case corner and I rose majestically (the only way to describe it!) to score with a downward header so my first two goals for Saints came, strangely, with my left foot and my head. Two days later Ron’s time was up and he was sacked. I didn’t feel guilty because it wasn’t down to that one result but it was definitely the final straw. I did think it was a shame that he lost his job because he was a good manager but, as it turned out, that was Fergie’s big chance. I hadn’t done the rest of the league any favours.
Four days later I scored my first league goal but it counted for nothing as we got thumped 3-1 at Sheffield Wednesday. I was sent on when we were already 3-0 down so I was never likely to have much impact, but Jimmy Case chipped one through for me to run on to and lob over Martin Hodge. I was on a high. With three goals in four days I thought it was the start of something good but Chris didn’t put me in the team for the next game, home to Arsenal. Maybe he was trying to keep my feet on the ground, but I have always believed in picking your best players and the ones in form. In fact it was a good one to miss because we lost 4-0, but I got a big boost from an article by Saints legend and record goalscorer Mike Channon who described me as the new Ian Rush. He called me deceptively quick and said my football brain would take me a long way and that Liverpool should try to sign me. So on the one hand my ego was soaring but on the other I spent a lot of that season on the bench, usually being sent on with the instruction to try and rescue the game. I very rarely got on when we were winning. But I do remember having fantastic support from the crowd. Whenever we were drawing the Milton Road end would start chanting ‘We want Le Tissier’. Chris Nicholl was quite stubborn; the more the fans chanted my name, the more reluctant he became to put me on. I was never one for doing much warming up but I knew if I jogged up the touchline the crowd would start singing my name—and it used to wind up the manager no end—so I did it even more!
Chris thought I wasn’t physically developed enough to play 90 minutes. Looking back, I see he was trying to protect me a bit BUT in my opinion, and I have told him this, I think he went too far. He should have given me more starts. I proved I could last a full match when I scored my first senior hat trick. It came in the snow against Leicester in the first week of March. I put us 1-0 up at half-time when Mark Wright knocked the ball down in the box and I crashed it into the roof of the net with my left foot. I remember Chris Nicholl had to virtually force Mark Wright back onto the pitch after the interval—he was refusing to go because it was so cold. I’ve never seen anything like it. His ears had turned blue and he was determined to stay in the warmth of the dressing room. Danny Wallace set me up for my second, a tap-in at the far post from his cross from the left. And then, with eight minutes left, came the pièce de resistance. I picked the ball up just inside the Leicester half and set off on a mazy run. The pitch was heavy and sodden and the snow was swirling around and I got a bit lucky when Russell Osman came in to tackle me and the ball fell back into my path. The better you are, the luckier you get. My first shot was blocked by the goalkeeper Ian Andrews but it came back to me and I rammed it in.
The best thing was that it came on a rare weekend when my dad came over to watch. It was the first time since my debut because it wasn’t usually worth trekking over from Guernsey just to see me sit on the bench. I immediately got the lads to sign the ball and gave it to my dad to thank him and my mum for all their amazing help and support. And I lapped up the headlines, particularly ‘The Wizard In The Blizzard’ which was a damn sight better than ‘Matt The Hat—And Dad Came Too’.
Even better, I reckoned I’d made my point with Chris Nicholl. I couldn’t just last 90 minutes against tough, physical opposition in the freezing cold but score by the bucket. But no. Nothing changed, even though the fans were begging for me to play. I remember Chris said he didn’t give a monkeys about all the pressure on him to play me. As he very delightfully said, ‘With a face like mine, you don’t get hurt by criticism.’
6 PUNCH UPS, HANGOVERS AND LADY BOYS (#ulink_5432cde4-49b8-54ba-bc6a-ba024b6c255c)
‘IF WE ARE GOING TO GET A ROLLOCKING AT 8.30
IN THE MORNING THEN IT MAY AS WELL BE FOR
SOMETHING WORTHWHILE!’
Everyone wants to know—what happens on club trips abroad? I’ll tell you: sex, drinks and fights.
At that time I wasn’t old enough to drink, and didn’t want to. And on just £100 a week I didn’t have a lot of spare spending money so, while the rest of the lads went out drinking in Singapore in 1987, I stayed in the hotel. My vice was nipping out to KFC for a bargain bucket at one o’clock in the morning. But for the rest of the lads it was like they’d they had been let off the leash—and it was quite an eye-opener for an innocent young lad.
On our last night I was woken at 2am by my room mate who had better remain anonymous. He told me to get out of the room for half an hour. As a 17-year-old I had no idea why or where I was supposed to go. He told me to go and sit in reception and, as I went out, this thing walked in. I think it was a woman but you can’t be sure out there. Certainly one of the lads got more than he bargained for when he took a ‘woman’ back to his room only to learn the truth when it was too late. Now if that had been me I’d never have told a soul. But he made the mistake of telling Jimmy Case in confidence, and as captain Jim felt it was his duty to ensure everyone knew.
I did go out one night but I stayed sober and just sat at the bar enjoying watching everyone else get more and more drunk. At one point Jimmy Case caught my eye and started waving to someone over my shoulder. I thought that he’d seen someone he knew but, as he walked past me, he said, ‘That feller keeps waving at me. I’m going to have a word with him.’ It was only when he walked into a huge mirror that he realized it was his reflection and that he’d been waving at himself.
Jimmy loved a drink and was fantastic value on a night out. I remember one trip to Puerta Banus near Marbella. Jimmy started before we even left Heathrow so by the time we landed he’d already had quite a bit. On the way to the hotel he made the coach driver stop at a supermarket and bought even more beer so, by the time we checked in, a lot of the lads were pissed. They just dumped their stuff in the rooms and hit the town. By midnight Jimmy wasn’t making too much sense, in fact he could barely stand.
Dennis Rofe, the first-team coach, was meant to supervise us and make sure we didn’t go too far. Now Dennis liked a drink and a good night out as much as anyone. When he was a player at Leicester he once threw a punch at someone who was threatening him only to find it was his reflection in a shop window. So he had a lot in common with Jimmy, but even he could see that Casey was hammered. After some considerable effort he finally managed to pour Jim into a taxi and took him back to the hotel. Somehow he managed to prop Jim over his shoulder and dragged him into his room and threw him on the bed to sleep it off. As a responsible member of the coaching staff, Dennis thought he had better go right back and check on the rest of us, so he got the taxi back and walked straight into Sinatra’s Bar. And there was Jimmy, sitting at the end of the bar, raising a toast. The look on Dennis’s face was priceless, and to this day I have no idea how Jimmy got back before him.
Jimmy was a formidable character when he had been drinking, as I found out when I ended up playing cards with him until 5am on another trip. We were staying at the Atalaya Park Hotel on the Costa del Sol and he owed me £80, which was a fortune to me back then. We had no cash on us so we were just writing the stakes on bits of paper. Jimmy was getting more and more drunk and wouldn’t let me go to bed while he was losing. Eventually he staggered away to the toilet so I legged it out the door and back to my room. I was sharing with Francis Benali who, incidentally, never got up to anything on these foreign trips. So he was well chuffed to be woken by me shouting that Jimmy had kept me prisoner for five hours and now owed me £80. Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door and I hissed ‘Don’t answer it.’
Next thing there was a loud bang on every door as Jimmy went down the corridor, trying to find someone who wasn’t asleep. I conked out but was woken by a rap on the patio doors. Jimmy had climbed over his balcony and was standing outside trying to get in. We just hid and eventually he calmed down and went off. Next morning, when we left the room, we were greeted by the sight of Ray and Rod Wallace’s door hanging off its hinges. It wasn’t the normal flimsy door but a big, thick wooden one and Jim had just demolished it. Apparently he wanted someone to lend him some batteries for his personal stereo. It proved mighty expensive because the cost of the door got added to his bill. And no, I never did get that £80—and I’m still not brave enough to ask for it.
The only time Jim had a drink ahead of a match was the night before the final game of the 1986-87 season. I was injured so I was back home in Guernsey but I heard all about it from Glenn Cockerill who was rooming with him, and who also liked the occasional drink. We were away to Coventry and both teams were safe and, with no prize money in those days, there was nothing riding on the match. So the lads had a few quiet drinks the night before, but Jim kept going all night. His breath was still reeking of alcohol when the game kicked off and he’d hardly had any sleep.
After five minutes we won a corner and Jim went up to take it. Coventry cleared it, broke and won a corner of their own. It was Peter Shilton’s job to set up the defence and tell everyone who to mark, and he noticed that Jim was missing. Everyone looked round and eventually spotted him still at the other end of the pitch, where we’d had our corner, sat on a wall talking to a spectator. He was quickly subbed after that.
After games, the lads would usually end up at Jeeves nightclub, but as I’ve said, at 17 and 18 I didn’t really drink. However I do remember being talked into going out one night for a few rounds. I was living in digs and didn’t want to wake everyone at 2am so Jim said I could stay at his place. We got back there at 2.30am and Jim started cooking bacon sandwiches while I sat in the lounge. I honestly just wanted to see his medal collection because he had won just about everything in the game, except an England cap, which is unforgivable when you think of his talent. On international weeks at Liverpool he’d be training all on his own. Everyone else would be with England and Scotland, etc. He was different class and I just wanted to see his championship medal because I had never seen one. I was stood looking at his trophy cabinet when his wife Lana came downstairs to see who’d woken her up.
JIM KEPT GOINGALL NIGHT. HISBREATH WASSTILL REEKING OFALCOHOL WHENTHE GAMEKICKED OFF ANDHE’D HARDLYHAD ANY SLEEP.
She had a bit of a go at Jim and I thought I was going to be in the middle of a domestic when she started having a go at me. She said, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ I stammered, ‘Jim said I could stay here…’ She hit back, ‘No, I mean what d’you think you are doing trying to keep up with Jim? You’ve got no chance.’ She packed me off to bed and warned me never to try that again. I was woken by the sound and smell of Jim cooking a full fry-up including eggs from the geese he kept in his garden.
For such a hard-tackling, harddrinking player Jimmy was very domesticated. On away trips he’d look after the whole team on the coach, making cups of tea and plates of toast. He was really happy doing it. Here was this senior pro, a real big name in the game who was happy to be the waiter. He also looked after his training kit. Most of the lads just chucked it on the floor to be cleared up by the apprentices but Jim always folded his up neatly. He was brilliant like that but very different when he’d had a few.
It was quite an eye-opener for a naïve young lad who had grown up on Guernsey with something of a sheltered upbringing. I don’t think the wives were particularly pleased about these trips but it did us good to relax in a different country, and that togetherness played a huge part in keeping Saints in the top flight. We weren’t the most talented team but we had a real bond and spirit which got us through a lot of matches. You certainly couldn’t have a conversation without one of the lads taking the mickey. If you said something stupid, you instantly panicked wondering if anyone else would pick up on it, and invariably they did. Equally, there was a time and a place for it—which took me time to learn. I was always ready with a cheeky quip but it wasn’t always appreciated. These trips were brilliant for banter and team spirit. And of course we went right OTT.
I remember when we almost got chucked out of the prestigious five-star Dona Filipa hotel on the Algarve. Why we went to a luxurious hotel during the season I’ll never know. It was full of really posh people dressed smartly for dinner while we were in shorts and T-shirts, larking around and getting drunk. There were several complaints about us so the hotel manager summoned Dennis Rofe who called a team meeting for 8.30am, which we thought was a bit unreasonable as we’d only just got in. We had no idea what was going on.
Dennis read the riot act and said the hotel manager was on the verge of throwing us out but he’d managed to talk him into giving us one last chance, and we had to be on our best behaviour or we were out. There was suddenly quite a sombre mood but I didn’t pick up on it because I hadn’t sobered up and piped up, ‘I thought if you were calling a meeting at 8.30 in the morning, it must be for something serious.’ Dennis had a face like thunder.
Generally Rofey was good value on tour, mucking in with the lads. As first-team coach he was a kind of bridge between the players and manager, someone for us to moan to or laugh with. He was popular with the fans too because he had Saints running through him, despite the fact that the club sacked him three times. The first time was when Chris Nicholl got sacked in 1991. The board assumed that the new manager would arrive with a ready-made coaching team, but that wasn’t the case. Ian Branfoot came solo so there was absolutely no reason for Rofey to go. Dave Merrington brought him back as youth team coach in July 1995, but he was sacked again a year later when Graeme Souness came in as manager and brought in his own team of coaches, most of whom weren’t a patch on Dennis, who returned for a third spell in April 1998. He was appointed as Academy coach but worked his way up through the Reserves to regain his position as first-team coach in March 2001. But he was sacked again in December 2005 following the appointment of George Burley who discarded most of the coaching staff. It was Rofe justice (OK, OK) because all the players and fans liked him, especially because he wore his trademark T-shirt on the touchline even when it was freezing in midwinter. He’d even had a stint at the club as a half-time pitch announcer, winding up the crowd to get behind the team, cracking jokes and even singing.
He fancied himself as a bit of a crooner and never hesitated to lead a sing song when he’d had a few. I remember a pre-season tour of Sweden and, after the final game, the host club laid on a dinner and drinks in a Wild West barn. There was a bucking bronco which all the lads tried, the beer flowed and Dennis got up on stage to sing a few Roy Orbison numbers before delivering a thank-you speech. Dennis thought it would be a nice touch to finish by thanking them in their native tongue but made the mistake of asking our midfielder, Anders Svensson, to tell him the Swedish for ‘Thank you and good luck.’ Dennis could never quite understand the lack of applause as he actually told them to kiss an intimate part of the female anatomy. Stunned silence all round.
Then there was the time we almost ended the career of one of England’s greatest ever strikers before it had begun. It was 1989 on a close-season trip to Portugal and Micky Adams, Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock and Barry Horne had been partying quite hard, ending up with Micky and ‘Razor’ having a punch-up even though they were best mates. They were thick as thieves but the punches were flying and I remember thinking it wasn’t a fair fight looking at the size of them. But Micky, who’s maybe 5ft 6in, could take care of himself; not for nothing was he known as Fusey because of his short temper. Anyway, everything quickly calmed down and I went back to my room while they resumed drinking until they had emptied their own mini-bars, and that’s when they went looking for someone else’s. Alan Shearer’s.
WHICH BRINGSME TO ANDYCOOK AND HISBIZARRE SEX-SPECTATORINJURY ON AMID-SEASONBREAK…
Alan wasn’t a big drinker so they decided there would be plenty of booze left in his fridge. He was relaxing in the bath as they burst into his room. ‘Razor’ emptied a bottle of vodka over Alan while Barry picked up his mini-bar and ran off with it down the corridor—as you do! Of course Alan jumped out of the bath and gave chase, unfortunately there were a load of glasses on top of the mini-bar and, as Barry raced off, they all smashed on the floor. Alan had nothing on his feet and as he ran through the shards of broken glass he practically severed three of his toes. They were cut to the bone and almost hanging off. Everyone sobered up pretty quick when they saw that. It is no exaggeration to say his career was hanging as precariously as his toes.
The only one sober enough to drive was a young lad called Steve Davis who went on to have a decent career as a player and coach with Burnley. He drove Alan to this primitive hospital where he was left in an A&E in a bed with no curtains beside an assortment of car crash and broken leg victims. Thankfully a doctor managed to sew the toes back on and no lasting damage was done, but I often wonder if he realized who he was treating and what a favour he did England.
Which brings me to Andy Cook and his bizarre sex-spectator injury on a mid-season break. We were staying at a hotel and one of the single lads brought a girl back to his room but left the curtains open. A Big Mistake. Of course we all climbed over the balcony from the next room to have a good look and, when he finally spotted us, we all clambered back apart from Andy who decided to jump to the ground. Next day in training he complained that his heel was sore but, when he was named in Saturday’s team, he decided not to mention it because he wasn’t a regular and wanted to play as much as possible. After 30 minutes he was subbed in pain and an x-ray showed he’d broken his heel with the jump. But sometimes things got even worse. Time to tell you about David Speedie, and how he joined Southampton.
In the autumn of 1992 we’d made our usual shocking start to the season. During the summer the club had decided to sell Alan Shearer, who had made it clear he wanted to move to bigger and better things. That was fair enough but Saints allowed themselves to be bullied by Blackburn through the negotiations, even though they were in the driving seat. Alan had three years left on his contract so Southampton did not have to sell, and they certainly did not have to accept any old deal. I think the directors’ eye lit up with pound signs at the prospect of a British record fee, and they rushed the deal through in case Alan got injured. They even pulled him out of a pre-season trip to Scotland for the same reason.
To be fair to Ian Branfoot (read all about it in Chapter 9), he wanted to take Blackburn striker Mike Newell as part of the deal, but Rovers didn’t want to let him go. Instead of playing hardball and holding out for a quality replacement, Saints caved in and sold Alan for £3m with NO sell-on clause. Even I can work out that if they had insisted on getting 20 per cent of any future fee then when Al eventually moved to Newcastle for £15m, Saints would have pocketed another £3m.
Instead of getting Mike Newell we ended up taking David Speedie. It seemed to me as though Speedo didn’t want to be here. He never got what Southampton was about, and it looked to me as though he resented being used as a makeweight in the deal. So Ian Branfoot spent part of the fee on Kerry Dixon in the hope of recreating the successful Dixon/Speedie partnership at Chelsea. Kerry had been an ace striker in his time but his best days were behind him. He had lost that yard of pace and sharpness and Speedie just didn’t settle. It was hardly a match made in heaven, and it didn’t help the situation or the fans’ mood when Branfoot made the staggering prediction that Speedie and Dixon would outscore Alan Shearer that season. Kerry got just two goals and Speedo precisely zero while Al had scored 16 by December, when he picked up a bad knee injury ruling him out for the rest of the campaign. The following season he scored 31. (Kerry did try and I set him up for both his goals, including his two-hundredth league strike at Leeds. I was through and could have shot but I knew he was on 199 and, the way things were going, this would be his only chance to get to 200 so I teed him up for a simple tap-in, and spurned my best chance to score at Elland Road. Leeds were the only established Premier League club that I failed to score against.)
Anyway, it is fair to say that David Speedie didn’t really settle in at Southampton. I don’t think he liked me and we certainly didn’t get off on the right foot. When he joined, he met up with us at the airport as we were heading off on a pre-season tour. As it happened the Manchester United players were at the same airport and I was chatting to Lee Sharpe because we shared the same agent. When we arrived at our hotel David Speedie accused me of being a big-time Charlie who wanted to talk only to the United players, and he promptly launched a bar stool at my head. Which was a good start. But he surpassed that several weeks into the season after we lost 2-1 at home to QPR. The fans were restless, the mood was grim. So the manager Ian Branfoot decided to take us to Jersey in the Channel Islands for a bonding trip. It suited me because it meant I was able to get home to Guernsey but it meant that I missed all the excitement.
After a meal the lads had a clear-the-air meeting in the bar where they went through all the things they felt were going wrong. As the alcohol flowed, the debate became increasingly heated to the point where David Speedie and Terry Hurlock came to blows. Very few people would ever dare tangle with Terry Hurlock but David Speedie didn’t worry about that. There were a few punches thrown and a bit of blood. Eventually it all calmed down and Speedo went off to clean himself up. As he walked back in Terry went to throw a heavy glass ash tray at his head—only for Micky Adams to get in the way. For once in his life Fusey was trying to act as peacemaker and paid the price, ending up with a cut on his forehead. To make matters worse, the hotel manager called the police and Micky ended up spending the night in the cells even though he’d done nothing wrong. Speedo was arrested and hauled before the courts the following morning before being sent home in disgrace.
I flew in from Guernsey a couple of hours later and turned up all bright and jolly. It was like gate-crashing a funeral. The mood in the camp was the most sombre I had ever experienced. There was no banter so I asked what was wrong and the lads looked at me as though I was an alien. There were no mobiles or Sky News in those days so I hadn’t heard. I was gutted to have missed it because I could have lobbed in a few of my sarcastic hand-grenades and inflamed the situation. (I met David Speedie on a golf trip to Mauritius last year. We ended up rooming together and he couldn’t have been nicer. He had certainly mellowed and I was even able to remind him of the bar stool incident without getting clouted. He was great company, good as gold and seemed very happy with life, so maybe he really didn’t want to be at Southampton.)
Games in the Channel Islands were always special to me, but for the rest of the lads they were a good chance for a few drinks and to stock up on the Duty Free before it was abolished. I remember a friendly against Guernsey in 1995 when half the team were still drunk at kick-off. I was a bit disappointed because a lot of people had turned out to see us, and my son Mitchell was our mascot. He ran out in a Southampton shirt with ‘7 Daddy’ on the back. He is 17 and very embarrassed by it now but it was cute at the time. We had to rely on a header from me to win the game 2-1 but I took it a bit personally that some of the lads couldn’t stay sober for a match which meant a lot to me.
Not all the foreign trips were to glamorous locations. We had a horrible trip to East Germany to play Carl Zeiss Jena before the wall came down. I can’t believe we went there; the club must have received a fair wedge to make it worthwhile. It was a real experience crossing the border, with East German armed guards searching every inch of the team coach. We were stuck there for at least an hour and the agent warned us not to do anything to antagonize the trigger-happy police. Even I knew when it was wise to keep quiet and we all sat there on our best behaviour—apart from John Burridge.
He was as mad as a bucket of frogs. He even slept with a football as part of his pre-match preparation and, when he was relaxing watching television, used to get his wife to suddenly throw oranges at him to test his reflexes. It was like Inspector Clouseau asking Kato to jump out and attack him. Anyway, ‘Budgie’ wasn’t noted for doing or saying the right thing and he kept on at one particular border guard asking him if there were landmines in no-man’s-land, the couple of miles of neutral territory between the two heavily armed border barriers. The guard steadfastly refused to answer him, so Budgie kept on asking. Eventually the guard admitted that there were mines in those fields and Budgie cracked, ‘Well, how do you dig up your potatoes then?’ Not the subtlest remark!
HE WAS AS MADAS A BUCKET OFFROGS. HE EVENSLEPT WITH AFOOTBALL ASPART OF HIS PRE-MATCHPREPARATION.
As we entered East Germany it was as though someone had flicked the view from colour to black and white. The whole place was so bleak and the poverty unbelievable. We had a stroll outside the hotel to try and buy souvenirs but the shops were empty apart from a few bits of rotting fruit. The food in the hotel was no better. We ate in a dungeon and it was the worst food I have ever tasted, but I did get one of the best tour gifts I ever received. Usually the players were given glassware or tacky commemorative souvenirs but we all got really nice watches from Zeiss.
The match was played in a stadium surrounded by a running track so there was very little atmosphere, and that was shattered by the sonic boom of East German fighters swooping low overhead every few minutes. But it meant a lot to the people that we were there. There was so little to brighten their lives that one guy cycled for four hours just to be there. We had a few souvenir pin badges to give out and each one caused a massive scramble, as though we were handing out food parcels. One guy burst into tears of joy at being given a simple badge.
Another grim trip was to Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. We played a game at Cliftonville, a bizarre ground tucked right in the middle of terraced houses. We actually went in through some-one’s front door and out the back, into the stadium. Iain Dowie was a big player for Northern Ireland at the time but he was obviously the wrong religion as far as the home fans were concerned. They were hurling all sorts at him, not just verbal abuse but coins and bottles. Thankfully there were huge fences around the ground and it was easy to see why. It was a horrible atmosphere and the kids were so ill-mannered. They’d just stick a piece of paper in front of you and demand that you sign it without a please or a thank you or any patience. I signed for one scruffy kid who promptly kicked me on the shin and ran off. I would have chased after him but he was quicker than me.
I had a similar experience when we went to Portsmouth to play a testimonial for their long-serving goalkeeper Alan Knight. It’s no secret that there’s no love between the two neighbours. Most of the fans restrict it to heated banter but, for a small minority, it is pure hatred, even in friendlies. I remember one game at Havant’s ground when our goalkeeper Alan Blayney hung his towel through the back of his net only to turn round a few minutes later and find someone had set fire to it. The team coach had bricks thrown at it on the way home and that was just a Reserve game.
It might not have been a league game but the atmosphere for Knight’s testimonial was evil, even though we were there to do him a favour. They fielded a lot of ex-pros, 12 of them at one point. Despite their extra man we won 5-0. Afterwards I popped my head outside to see if I could find my uncle who had come to watch the match. There was a crowd of Pompey fans, most of whom were great and I was happy to sign autographs for them until one guy spat at me and threw a right-hander. I just saw it coming and dodged it.
A few years later, during Dave Merrington’s charge, we flew to Bahrain for a mid-season game. We were allowed to drink in the hotel and Dave was OK with us having a couple. He told us not to stay up late as we had a match the next day but he didn’t say don’t drink. Another Big Mistake. It was only an easy friendly against the Bahrain national side so a few of us had quite a lot to drink but the humidity was terrible. We’d have been struggling even if we had been in the right condition but we were all over the place. At half-time we were 2-1 down and Dave ripped into us saying, ‘I hope you lot haven’t been drinking.’ Lew Chatterley, the assistant manager, was standing behind Dave and his face was a picture because he knew what we had been up to. Dave was quite scary when he was in full rant and none of us dared look at him or at each other. He must have known by the way we were playing that we were still drunk, but we blamed it on the humidity. David Hughes literally couldn’t breathe because he had never played in such conditions and I risked Dave’s wrath by telling him he had to get David off the field. The gaffer was actually quite good about it and Hughesie has been grateful to me ever since because it was due far more to the alcohol than to the heat.
7 DODGY REFS AND HAT TRICKS (#ulink_8ff0881c-3595-594d-92d8-b164f3245da6)
‘COME ON MATT, DO SOMETHING—WE DON’T WANT
TO BE GOING TO EXTRA TIME!’
The 1987-88 season was a bad one for me. I only got two goals, one in the FA Cup and one in the League Cup, and I got suspended twice and missed quite a few games. I got sent off in back-to-back Reserve matches and in those days that also meant you could miss first-team games. But, not usually, I blame the refs.
We had to play Millwall at the old Den on a Tuesday afternoon. It was always a horrible place and we got stuck in traffic so we had to get changed on the team bus. One of the coaching staff had to run to the ground with the team-sheet and we eventually arrived at 2.50pm. The ref kindly agreed to put the kick-off back—to five past three. So, that helped! By 3.15 I was back in the dressing room. I got dismissed for not retreating 10 yards and then telling the ref that he was stupid. Well worth all the time and effort of getting to Millwall then.
The following week I was sent off again, at The Dell, supposedly for elbowing, although I’ll never believe that a foul was committed. I was dribbling the ball when a player came in to tackle me. I stuck out an arm to hold him off and the next thing I knew the ref had produced a red card. It meant a double ban so, in all, I only started 10 first-team games that season with nine more appearances as a sub. I didn’t manage a league goal but scored at Reading in a 1-0 FA Cup win and in a League Cup draw with Bournemouth. It was a really poor spell for me and maybe I was spending too much time gambling and at the snooker club where I’d spend 10-11 hours after training.
Let me tell you about David Axcell. We got off to a great start in 1988-89. We actually won our first three games, which is unheard of for Southampton. We began by beating West Ham 4-0 at The Dell, I came on as sub and scored, and as of 2008 the club have still won only one opening fixture in the 20 years since then. It meant we were top of the table and full of confidence when we went to Highbury and I scored my first goal at a big club. I had previously netted on the road at Hillsborough, Elm Park and Vicarage Road but those were my only previous away goals. It was a surreal moment. When I saw the ball in the net I couldn’t quite believe I had scored at Arsenal—especially being a Spurs fan. There was a two-second gap before it dawned on me and then I went bonkers.
We played well and raced into a 2-0 lead, and were all over Arsenal but we hadn’t counted on referee David Axcell. First of all he failed to see Arsenal midfielder Paul Davis punch Glenn Cockerill off the ball, breaking his jaw. I must admit I didn’t see it either because I had been subbed. I twisted an ankle quite badly soon after scoring so I had to go off and, as Arsène Wenger will confirm, the view is terrible from the Arsenal dug outs. I only realized how bad the injury was when Glenn came off. He needed a plate inserting in his cheekbone and was out for about eight weeks, roughly the same length of time as Paul Davis who was hit by a nine-match ban. It had been a very sly punch but it was captured on TV and Davis was done by the FA in one of the first uses of video evidence. He also received more immediate punishment from Jimmy Case who ran over to Glenn and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get him.’
And he did. David Axcell awarded the Gunners a very dodgy penalty when the ball hit Kevin Moore’s arm from all of half a yard away. There is no way he could have avoided it but the ref pointed straight to the spot. All eyes were on Brian Marwood as he ran up to score the penalty so no one noticed Jimmy standing a bit further back from the edge of the area. As players from both sides went to follow up, Jimmy took a long run-up as though he was also following up but instead he ‘collided’ with Davis, who went off two minutes later!
Having missed the sly punch, Axcell assumed that Glenn had been time-wasting and added an incredible nine minutes of injury-time. It was before the days of the fourth official holding up a board so it seemed as though he was just playing on until Arsenal equalized, which they did seven minutes after the game should have ended. And that point ultimately won them the title. Everyone remembers Michael Thomas scoring at Anfield to win the league for Arsenal in the last minute of the season, but if they hadn’t been gifted that undeserved point against us they’d never have been champions.
I reckon we were robbed of a win, not just by Davis punching Glenn but by the ref who punished us for time-wasting when he had missed the cause of the hold-up. It wasn’t the last time a David Axcell decision would influence a game I played in. In 1992 we played West Ham at The Dell in the quarter-final of the Zenith Data Systems Cup. It was the first week in January and it was bitterly cold. No one wanted to be there. That included the players, the fans and, I’m pretty sure, Axcell. With 10 minutes to go it was 1-1, and with no replays there’d have been extra-time and penalties, and the pitch was beginning to freeze.
Axcell jogged past me—I was running full tilt at the time. He said, ‘Come on Matt, do something, we don’t want to be going to extra-time.’ Next time I got the ball I dribbled into the West Ham box. Tim Breacker put his arm on me, and I went down like a sack of spuds. Axcell immediately awarded us a penalty. I can’t be sure how it looked to him, but I thought the ref was a cheat for giving the penalty; it never really occurred to me that I was the cheat for going down. After all, it was frosty and I was slightly off-balance and I was genuinely amazed to see him point to the spot. I scored the penalty and we all went home.
I THOUGHT THEREF WAS ACHEAT FORGIVING THEPENALTY; ITNEVER REALLYOCCURRED TO METHAT I WAS THECHEAT FORGOING DOWN.
That set-back at Highbury seemed to stall our season and we lost our winning momentum but had a resurgence in November when Chris Nicholl won the Manager of the Month award after we beat Aston Villa 3-1. I scored with a header which I knew very little about. Nigel Spink went to punch the ball which grazed his hand; it hit me on the head and flew in. I celebrated like I had known what I was doing. That win put us third in the table, but it was our last victory until April. We went on an awful run of 17 league games without a win, diving from third top to third bottom. We didn’t even look like getting a victory, apart from an away game at Newcastle where we led 3-1 with 15 minutes to go when they sent on a young lad by the name of Michael O’Neill who scored twice, and then pretty much disappeared without trace. Tim Flowers took a whack on the head with 20 minutes to go and got concussion. He was celebrating in the dressing room because he thought we had won 3-1.
I scored past Dave Beasant but it was my last goal of the season. I had 11 goals by New Year and then no more. The team weren’t playing well and I was dropped. After 21 games without a win in all competitions, we faced a six-pointer at home to relegation rivals Newcastle on April Fool’s Day 1989, with the losers looking certain to go down.
I watched from the stands and it was an awful game between two sides badly lacking in confidence. Chris Nicholl had left me out because he felt I wasn’t the right sort of player for that kind of match which, in my opinion, was totally misguided. Totally. I thought as we were in serious trouble the team needed a creative spark. The match had 0-0 written all over it until injury-time when Rod Wallace skipped past the keeper who made the slightest contact. Rod was heading away from goal so there was no need for the foul but ref Gerald Ashby pointed to the spot. Derek Statham was the regular penalty-taker at the time but he was out injured, and I remember being gutted that I wasn’t on the pitch to take it. I would have loved the chance to be the hero, especially as none of the other lads fancied it with so much at stake. Then up stepped the unlikely figure of ‘Razor’ Ruddock, who at least had the bottle to have a go in only his sixth game for the club. I swear half the crowd ducked, expecting the ball to go high or wide or both, but he slammed it home for a 1-0 win. The outpouring of relief was incredible and it turned our season around. We lost only one of our last eight to finish an amazing thirteenth while Newcastle were relegated.
I was still trying to establish myself at that stage, and it wasn’t until the 1989-90 season that I became a regular. That was my first really good season and the one which made me think I had finally arrived. We played Wimbledon early on and I scored twice, one of which was my first penalty for the club. I got behind Terry Phelan down our right and managed to lob in a cross. Alan Shearer jumped for it with their centre-back Eric Young and goalkeeper Hans Segers who punched it clear. Amazingly, the ref gave a penalty for handball. After scoring that spot-kick against Newcastle, ‘Razor’ then missed one and Paul Rideout missed against Villa so Chris Nicholl decided to have a penalty competition in pre-season. I had always felt pretty confident of scoring with a free shot from 12 yards so I lined up with ‘Razor’, Glenn Cockerill, Rod Wallace and a few others whose hearts weren’t really in it. Chris Nicholl saw how serious I was about it and gave me the job.
A few games into that season, the club sold Danny Wallace to Manchester United, a move he memorably described as ‘the icing on the jam of my career’. But it meant that the manager obviously felt that Danny’s brother Rodney and I had developed enough to be able to become regulars in the side. Sadly, the move never worked out that well because Danny was plagued by injuries. At the time it just seemed that he was unlucky with niggles and strains but it turned out that he was in the early stages of Multiple Sclerosis. He has good days and bad days now, but he has done a lot of work to raise money and awareness for the charity. However his move helped me to play more games and I scored 24 goals that season. We played some fantastic stuff. Rod and I were just breaking into the team along with Alan Shearer. Tim Flowers and ‘Razor’ Ruddock were beginning to establish themselves and we still had the experience of Jimmy Case, Glenn Cockerill, Paul Rideout and Kevin Moore. And we also had a young Jason Dodd breaking through.
He had been signed from Bath City for £40,000 at the tail-end of the previous season, and he might as well have arrived with a piece of straw in his mouth he was that much of a yokel. He got loads of stick for his West Country roots but he dished it back, and went on to establish himself as a key member of the team for many years to come. He was a big personality, one of the loudest in the squad. You always knew when he was around because you could hear his booming laugh or his whinging—but he was a top pro and a decent player, just the kind you wanted.
He must have thought life at the top level was easy because both his first two games for the club ended in 4-1 wins. The first came away to QPR on October 14, 1989, when he was thrown in at the deep end but coped very well and we won convincingly. I celebrated my twenty-first birthday by scoring a penalty with Rod Wallace netting twice and Alan Shearer once. I decided to put highlights in my hair for the one and only time in my life. I looked shocking. A week later we were home to Liverpool who were then The Team to beat. They were top of the table and won the title at a canter that season. When they came to The Dell they were unbeaten, but it is no exaggeration to say we could have had six or seven. We hit the woodwork twice and forced some good saves as we tore the leaders to shreds. We absolutely battered them and it was one of the most complete team performances I can remember. I set up Rod Wallace for two goals and he returned the compliment by setting me up for a header. I remember flicking the ball over the head of David Burrows and crossing for Rod to volley through the legs of Bruce Grobbelaar. I got the last goal when Rod crossed from the left and I outjumped Burrows to nod in. Bruce got a hand to it but could only push it into the net. By then Liverpool were all over the place. We adopted an attacking 4-2-4 formation and had a right go, and they couldn’t handle it.
There was still a real buzz about the city the following day and I remember watching it back on ITV’s Big Match programme and wallowing in what was the best result I had ever had against one of the big teams. We had a terrific side and were probably only one or two good signings away from being genuine title contenders. Rod and I were scoring regularly and Alan Shearer was leading the line strongly, but we probably needed a couple of defenders. The midfield was getting on a bit and Chris Nicholl was under pressure to strengthen, so he splashed out a then club record of £750,000 on Alan McLoughlin from Swindon. He had done well for them against us when we played them in the League Cup. We drew up there, which was a real blow as the replay completely messed up the players’ Christmas party that was scheduled for the same night. We had a tough battle to get past them at The Dell. It was 2-2 after 90 minutes but we won 4-2 in extra-time after Chris Nicholl sent on Shearer and Ruddock to rough them up. They were christened the Bruise Brothers by the local paper and the tag stuck. Alan McLoughlin was Swindon’s main threat, so Chris signed him.
He was a bit of a panic buy. Although he was a decent player, he wasn’t what we then needed. He was a good footballer with a nice touch but lacked a bit of pace. His best position was in the hole just behind the front two, but the only way he would fit in was if they got rid of me or Rod, so he ended up playing out of position. Having got past Swindon we really should have gone on to Wembley because we were drawn at home to Oldham in the quarter-final. We were 2-1 up going into stoppage time at The Dell but somehow referee Roger Milford found four minutes of injury-time, even though neither physio had been on the field.
Oldham equalized and we knew we had no chance in the replay because they played on a plastic pitch. We hated that surface and were beaten before we even got on the coach. We were in completely the wrong frame of mind which was highlighted when we had the chance to equalize at 1-0 down. The ball was played across the box and it was crying out for Paul Rideout to hurl his head at it. But he held back and Chris Nicholl had a right go at him. Paul said, ‘You must be joking, I’m not diving on that stuff.’ Chris had a face like thunder. I honestly thought I was going to see him punch a player for the second time. There was steam coming out of his ears which at least took the pressure off the rest of us because we were all crap. That plastic pitch gave Oldham a huge advantage and they beat West Ham by six in the semi-final and went on to lose to Forest at Wembley, on grass. It was a hard final to watch because we knew it should have been us in it.
IT WAS THE ONLYTIME IN MYCAREER ITHOUGHT IMIGHT MISSBECAUSE I KNEWIF I SCOREDTHERE’D BE HELL.
We were still leaking goals but had enough firepower to outscore a lot of teams. I was feeling at home on the big stage and full of confidence, apart from an away game at Millwall. The old Den was a horrible ground, caged in and menacing. It was a great atmosphere for the Millwall players because it gave them a real lift, but away teams never felt comfortable. I was stuck out on the wing so I was close to the crowd who were giving me fearful abuse. We were losing 2-1 with a minute to go when Glenn Cockerill broke through the inside right channel and the keeper brought him down, the ref pointed to the spot and I had the job of taking the penalty in front of their fans. It was the only time in my career I thought I might miss because I knew if I scored there’d be hell. But I came to my senses and sent Brian Horne the wrong way to get a point.
I also got a couple of hat tricks in quick succession. My first for the club came in the return game against Wimbledon at Plough Lane in a match when Francis Benali got a red card for launching John Fashanu into orbit. To this day I have never seen a player go that high. He came down with ice. Of all the people for Franny to pick on. We were losing 3-1 when we went down to 10 men, but we came back to draw 3-3. I scored another penalty after Rod Wallace fell over. It wasn’t even a dive. John Scales was nowhere near him but the ref pointed to the spot, it was really funny. It was my second hat trick but I never got the ball—typical Wimbledon. My first goal took a deflection off Eric Young so they wouldn’t give it to me.
Soon afterwards, against Norwich, I got my second hat trick at The Dell, which is still my favourite treble. The first goal was a tap-in from a Kevin Moore knock-down, but I really enjoyed the next two goals. I picked the ball up about 40 yards from goal and went on a dribble. I beat my old mate Andy Townsend but didn’t have the pace to get away from him. I found him back in my way so I beat him again and scored with a lovely low right-footer in off the post. Then Francis Benali nicked the ball off their winger and hit it up the left wing to me. Their defender committed himself and I nicked the ball past him. I was still a long way from goal and right out on the left touchline but I saw Bryan Gunn coming out a long way and wondered what he was doing. I didn’t have the energy to take the ball any further and I had the whole goal to aim at so I chipped it over him. The ball drifted and hit the inside of the far post and bounced in.
At the end of that season I won the Barclays Young Eagle of the Year award and the PFA Young Player of the Year award. The PFA was a huge honour, being recognized by my fellow professionals, even more so when I saw the previous winners. The worst thing was having to make a speech. I had an idea I might have won—or at least got close—because my agent had been told to make sure I attended. And he wrote a speech for me, just in case. I’d never done any public speaking so he offered to help—and I reckoned that if an agent offered to help free of charge I must have won. And the organizers getting Saints legend Terry Paine to present the award was another big clue. I found myself rehearsing the speech in the toilets 15 minutes before the announcements. When Rod Wallace came third it was a double celebration.
The Barclays Young Eagle award was a more low-key affair so I was able to wear an open-necked short-sleeved shirt with no jacket, although Chris Nicholl wasn’t too impressed by that. It was good of him to attend to support me, but I remember getting into an argument with him because I was convinced I could be a sweeper. That would have meant playing two hulking great centre-backs to win the ball and give it to me to ping around like Franz Beckenbauer or Glenn Hoddle, making me look like a world-beater. I was always cool under pressure so I felt I could do that—although I must admit part of me was winding Chris up, getting back at him for all the times when he’d kicked me in training.
8 WHY I TOLD SOUNESS, HODDLE AND VENABLES TO GET LOST (#ulink_3dc86a6c-77d6-59f7-9ba4-4c298a1427b3)
‘I SIGNED THE CONTRACT AND WATCHED AS IT WAS
LOCKED IN THE SAFE. IT WAS SETTLED. I WAS JOINING
MY BOYHOOD HEROES. I WAS ABOUT TO BECOME
A SPURS PLAYER.’
After those awards and those goals, people woke up to Matt Le Tissier. Especially Tottenham. I got a phone call from my agent Jerome Anderson to say Spurs were interested, asking if I’d speak to them. I wasn’t going to say no, not to the team I’d always supported. Though Terry Venables was the manager I didn’t speak to him, and the deal was done through their lawyers and their agent. We had a meeting at a solicitor’s office in north London a couple of months before the end of the season. Saints didn’t know anything about it, but I agreed terms and signed a contract which was locked away in the safe in the solicitor’s office. Then it’d be brought out at the end of the season, when the clubs had agreed a fee.
Ironically our last game of the season was away to Spurs. We’d played Arsenal away a couple of days earlier and, if we’d won both matches, would have finished third. Instead we lost both and ended up seventh, but that was still my highest ever finishing position. I was due to get married (for the first time) that summer and after the Spurs game my fiancée, Cathy, announced that she didn’t want to live in London, so I had a decision to make. Go or stay. I decided to stay with Saints and don’t regret it at all, even though we ended up getting divorced. I made the decision, no one else. It’s a waste of time thinking, what if? I phoned Jerome and told him, and he was good as gold and never tried to tell me I was making a mistake, even though he could see his commission going right out the window. He never put any pressure on me. He’d just put offers in front of me and let me make up my own mind.
I then got a message from Terry Venables saying he respected my decision, but that he’d still like to speak to me on the phone. I declined (as I did later with Glenn Hoddle) because I didn’t want to be put in a position where I might be tempted to change my mind. Cathy didn’t fancy living in London, so what was the point? I don’t know if Terry held that against me when he was England manager. It’s true he picked me, but not as many times as I think he should have done.
The good news was knowing what Spurs were prepared to pay me. So I went back to Southampton and negotiated a new contract just like the one I’d have got at White Hart Lane. I now got £1,100 per week in the first year, £1,200 pw in the second and £1,300 pw in the third, but I’d have stayed even if they’d said no. Maybe I’d have won more England caps by moving club, but I was happy where I was.
I had two other opportunities to move. The first came a couple of years later when Jerome rang and said one of the biggest clubs in Europe was in for me. He didn’t want to tell me about it over the phone so I had to drive up to London to meet him in a hotel. I went up thinking it might be Real Madrid or Barcelona but it turned out to be Liverpool. Graeme Souness was the manager but again I didn’t even meet him. The move never got off the ground because I didn’t fancy living up north. Nothing against the north—but I preferred to live where I didn’t need a translator. If I’d ever moved from Southampton then I wouldn’t have gone any further than London, so Liverpool was never an option.
The only other time I came close to leaving Saints was in 1995 when Chelsea came in for me. I had a lot of things to weigh up. At that point Alan Ball was manager at Southampton and it was a brilliant time for me. He brought the best out of me and made me feel good about myself. I was happy playing for him and for Saints, I knew I’d be playing every week and I was still in the England squad. And I was in the top division. If Saints had ever been relegated then I’d have been put in a tough position. If they hadn’t bounced straight back then I think I’d have been yearning to play in the top division and would have asked for a move, but fortunately none of that happened.
So did I lack ambition? That’s what they said. But listen—I’d set my ambitions high when I was seven or eight. I wanted to be a professional footballer and play for England. By the age of 25 I had done both. If any of my critics could claim to have fulfilled their life’s ambition by the time they were 25 then they’d be entitled to their say. But most of the negative comments were coming from people who didn’t know me or who had never played the game, and definitely not to my level. So it hurt me when people said I lacked ambition because they had no idea about where I had come from or what my goals were. They certainly had no idea about my background and what an achievement it was to break away from the Channel Islands. Unless you have grown up there, you cannot begin to understand what a sheltered background it is.
A LOT OFPLAYERS MOVECLUBS CLAIMINGIT’S BECAUSETHEY AREAMBITIOUS.DON’T LET THEMFOOL YOU; THEYARE USUALLYAFTER THE EXTRACASH.
Over the decades there have been very few professional footballers (Graeme Le Saux is the obvious example) from the Channel Islands, which have a combined population of only around 150,000. To come from there and play for England is a pretty big achievement in my eyes—particularly as I managed to balance that with personal happiness, which always meant much more to me than money. And it’s worth stressing that a lot of players move clubs claiming it’s because they are ambitious. Don’t let them fool you; they are usually after the extra cash. Nothing wrong with that, so long as they’re being honest. The fans aren’t stupid, they see through it—as they did when Lucas Neill chose West Ham over Liverpool claiming he was ambitious. Nothing against the Hammers, but how could he say that West Ham had more chance of winning cups than Liverpool? And look at the likes of Steve Sidwell, who was great for Reading. He was playing every week but then moved to Chelsea, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be a regular but he’d be paid more. Is that ambition?
Is a player better off getting silly money every week but sitting on the bench, or playing regularly, earning less and keeping his self-respect? I know what I chose. And earning less does NOT mean that you are being badly paid. You can’t blame the players for taking that sort of money if it’s offered, but there comes a time when you have to wonder how much more money someone can actually spend? If you are already on £30,000 a week, what else could you buy if you get £40,000? The only difference for the likes of Steve Sidwell is they’d have more time to spend it because they’re not playing! I know times were different during my career, but the most I ever earned was just under £4,000 a week. I could never have handled sitting on the bench, week after week, and being sent on as an ‘impact player’, just for the extra cash. It was bad enough when I was dropped—and every manager left me out at some point—apart from Dave Merrington and Alan Ball. At least at Southampton I didn’t have to worry about rotation because we never had a big enough squad for that. And I’d have hated being left out even when I was playing well simply to give others a chance. I never had a problem being dropped if I was going through a bad spell, and never went knocking on the manager’s door about it. I simply waited for them to lose a couple of games, then knew I’d be back in again.
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Matt Le Tissier
The fascinating, insightful and at times hilarious memoirs of one of the most gifted and enigmatic British footballers of the last 25 years.Nicknamed "Le God" by the Southampton faithful, Matt Le Tissier was not cast from the same mould as 99% of other professional footballers. A real "one-off" if ever there was one, he was a one-club man in a 16-year career that brought little in the way of trophies but countless plaudits from footballs fans and commentators alike.To the old school brigade he was a "luxury player", someone with a less than ideal work rate and waistline who simply wouldn't conform to the blueprint of a typically hard-working, unsophisticated British player. Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle found it all too easy to leave him out of their England squads.But to the vast majority Le Tissier was a maverick to be treasured, a flair player who lit up every match he played in and delighted fans with his sumptuous technique and élan for the beautiful game. In fact, the kind of skilful, inventive player and scorer of wonderful goals this country produces all too rarely.Did he simply enjoy the comfort zone of being a big fish in a small pond? Or did he display commendable loyalty in staying with Southampton for his entire career? Did he shun opportunities to move on? Were England managers right not to pick him so many times? Would Fabio Capello pick him for England now? Does the British game discourage his style of play? And how much would he be worth in today's transfer market?Taking Le Tiss is the great man's first chance to answer all these questions and many more. It is also a delightfully self-deprecating and witty story from a player who was more of a Big-Mac-and-fries than a chicken-and-beans man.
Taking Le Tiss
My Autobiography
Matt Le Tissier
Copyright (#ulink_d9fcd0c1-699e-585c-ba69-a994c7bcb70c)
First published in 2009 by
HarperSport
an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk)
© Matt Le Tissier 2009
Matt Le Tissier asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
Source ISBN: 9780007310913
Ebook Edition © AUGUST 2009 ISBN: 9780007341085
Version: 2018-06-18
All photographs provided courtesy of the author or the Southern Daily Echo with the exception of: Guernsey Press 2t, 2br; Brian J. Green 3t; Press Association 5t, 7b, 8m; Solent News 11t
To my wife,
my children and my parents
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u553ab63a-e685-5351-b0fb-baaac47be468)
Title Page (#ua105d917-bff1-5efd-96cf-3a0cefa03959)
Copyright (#u8a5555f3-0376-5acf-b0d0-63755708e3ca)
Dedication (#u036c7274-e2a5-5cd8-ae72-79e9ef541046)
Foreword (#u93c6958a-3d4d-56ec-967d-2ff4c85bad5c)
Introduction (#u0207b760-8472-5974-8dc5-1cb05aef85bf)
Preface (#ubbfdd4f0-59a5-5b4b-946f-99c384e89410)
1 - HOD’S LAW (#u770853ec-7ba9-5e22-b4b6-53be7350a028)
2 - SOUTHAMPTON HERE I COME (#u108bc88a-29c1-5835-8030-189dd91d6660)
3 - KNOCKED INTO SHAPE BY THE HAIRDRIER (#ubb700227-f3c1-5083-b459-9607a41c7998)
4 - IT’S STUART PEARCE—‘OH…MY…GOD!’ (#ua859280c-7330-5bcc-8bf2-5a0b0a7658e8)
5 - I GET RON ATKINSON FIRED AND FERGIE HIRED (#u9e35343c-a766-5c92-8dca-dae0aec5fe4a)
6 - PUNCH UPS, HANGOVERS AND LADY BOYS (#u1db1092d-eaa4-54ec-8b35-4f1c438d004a)
7 - DODGY REFS AND HAT TRICKS (#u4b047035-eb7b-5859-b01d-48d606986f81)
8 - WHY I TOLD SOUNESS, HODDLE AND VENABLES TO GET LOST (#u0f572445-c523-5ab8-86df-64a6952217ad)
9 - IAN WHO? (#litres_trial_promo)
10 - HOW TO GET A MANAGER SACKED (#litres_trial_promo)
11 - GET THE BALL TO TISS (#litres_trial_promo)
12 - ONE DRUNK GAFFER AND A MATCHFIXING SCANDAL (#litres_trial_promo)
13 - FINAL DAY COCK-UP (#litres_trial_promo)
14 - SUBBED BY A FISH UP A TREE or PEOPLE CALLED RUPERT SHOULD NOT RUN FOOTBALL CLUBS (#litres_trial_promo)
15 - LAWRIE OUT, DAVE JONES IN (#litres_trial_promo)
16 - LAST-DAY ESCAPE (#litres_trial_promo)
17 - SAINT AND SINNER (#litres_trial_promo)
18 - GLENN, CHIPS AND FRY-UPS (#litres_trial_promo)
19 - MATT OUT OF DELL (#litres_trial_promo)
20 - END OF THE ROAD (#litres_trial_promo)
21 - FROM FINAL TO FARCE (#litres_trial_promo)
22 - LOWE DOWN (#litres_trial_promo)
23 - THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER (#litres_trial_promo)
24 - FAIRWAY TO HEAVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
25 - REACH FOR THE SKY (#litres_trial_promo)
26 - LIFE BEGINS AT 40 (#litres_trial_promo)
27 - WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT MATT (#litres_trial_promo)
Alan Ball (#litres_trial_promo)
Matt Stats (#litres_trial_promo)
What the Fans Say (#litres_trial_promo)
Index (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
Foreword (#ulink_5baff73d-5946-5f5f-9814-370983cba9f9)
By Alan Shearer
I wasn’t surprised when Matt asked me to write the foreword to his autobiography. After all, I did all his work for him when we were teammates so it is only fitting I should help him now. The big surprise is that he hasn’t asked me to write the whole thing—with him adding the one brilliant punchline which people will remember and talk about for ever.
Matt might not have been noted for his work-rate, but he is one of the most naturally gifted players it has been my privilege to play with. He could do things with a ball which left you, literally, speechless. His skill and technique were sublime and the really annoying thing is that it all came so naturally to him. The rest of us would be working our backsides off, chasing, closing down, taking knocks and tackling, while he would amble around like he didn’t have a care in the world. Then, suddenly, he’d explode into life and win the game with a piece of pure genius. And he got almost as much pleasure creating goals for others. If you made a run, you knew he had the ability to find you with an exquisite pass or cross.
I had to do all the running for him. Well, we all did. We were told to get the ball and give it to Matt because he had the ability to create something special. People thought he was lazy but what they don’t appreciate is that he concentrated on doing his running in all the right areas. We, his teammates, knew that if we lost possession he was never going to chase back and help. You accepted that because when the ball was played forward and there was just a sniff of goal, he’d be on it in a flash.
Once you got to know him, you realized he cared passionately about winning and scoring—and about Southampton Football Club. That’s why he stayed there his whole career when he could have had his pick of teams. He had several opportunities to leave but he didn’t see why he should, and he was single-minded enough to dig his heels in when others were saying he should go. You have to applaud him because that sort of loyalty is very rare.
I can identify with that because that’s just how I felt about Newcastle—it was always my dream to play for them. But I have a lot of affection for the Saints. They were my first club and I am very sad to see what has happened to them in recent years. I know it has hurt Matt, who gave so much to keep them in the Premier League against the odds for so many years. And he provided the fans with wonderful entertainment along the way.
He was capable of scoring from virtually anywhere. Some of his goals were absolutely breathtaking. Even when I was playing against him, there were times I almost found myself applauding his goals. But Matt was not just a great goal-scorer—he was a scorer of great goals. Some of them left you puzzling, ‘How the heck did he do that?’
I’ll never forget the one he put past his big mate Tim Flowers for Southampton, at Blackburn. He beat a couple of men as though they weren’t there and then fired into the top left corner from 35 yards. There was no luck about it, he knew exactly where he wanted to put the ball. It was a really special goal, and the fact he beat Tim all ends up gave him even more satisfaction. Tim has never lived it down even though we won the game. It always seemed to be Newcastle or Blackburn he scored against. He really seemed to enjoy scoring against my teams.
Being a similar age, we always had a bit of friendly rivalry going right from our days together in the Southampton youth team. And we are still good friends now—even though we are the exact opposite in terms of lifestyle and looks.
He has never been your stereotypical footballer, either on the field or off. The club’s nutritionists must have wondered how he was still alive, let alone playing at the top level. His idea of a diet was picking the lettuce out of his burger. And he hasn’t changed now that he has retired. Even as a TV pundit he looks like a sack of spuds—or as though he has eaten one. He’s never bothered what people think of him. He openly admits, ‘This is the way I am, take me or leave me.’ And everyone respects that. They are quick to poke fun at his failings—but always in a good-natured way. He takes it well—with his body size and dress sense he hasn’t got any choice—and he can certainly dish it back. In spades.
I have to say he is perfect for Sky’s Soccer Saturday show because he is so laid back, but his wit is as sharp as his shooting. He can laugh at himself and has the perfect sense of humour for that show, coupled with the fact he knows the game inside out and isn’t afraid to speak his mind.
This autobiography has been written very much in that vein—self-deprecating with a great sense of his own worth and a lot of jokes. And obviously it has been written by someone else because it is far too much like hard work for Tiss. But I bet he takes all the credit.
Introduction (#ulink_ecddc0d3-73d8-50ff-b30b-72b7f81e8fbc)
If you are hoping for smut and scandal from this book then look away now. A lot of ‘celebrities’ rely on revelations about their personal lives in order to sell books, but I have always been a very private person so there’s no sleaze here. It’s Tiss and Dell not Kiss and Tell.
So if I guard my privacy so carefully, why write an autobiography? Mainly because my Sky colleagues Jeff Stelling and Phil Thompson have recently published books, and I thought if they could get in the bestseller list with such a pile of tosh, I might as well have a go. Thommo said he found it so therapeutic that the idea suddenly became very tempting.
Southampton supporters have been asking me to tell my story ever since I finished playing, but I wanted to wait until I had achieved something else. Now, with the popularity of Sky’s Soccer Saturday and the controversial double relegation of the Saints, it seems the perfect time to talk about my career at The Dell and why I stayed with one supposedly unfashionable club for my whole career when I could have got far more money, and maybe medals, by moving.
There have been a lot of misconceptions about me over the years and a lot of wildly inaccurate stories in the press, so this is the perfect chance to put a few things straight. A lot of people think they know what went on—but they don’t. Now I can say exactly what happened.
I am acutely aware of my own failings, so I’m not going to gloss over the fact I didn’t have the best diet and was never the greatest runner. I was once carried off in training after a fainting fit caused by eating too many sausage and egg McMuffins before we even started. Tim Flowers was asked to write a few lines for this book to describe me and he sent in: ‘Matt Le Tissier signed for Southampton, ate a lot, scored some bloody good goals, should have left.’ That pretty much sums it up so there’s no point reading the book now—apart from the football, the fun and my forthright views about the likes of Alan Ball, Graeme Souness, Ian Branfoot, Rupert Lowe—and a certain Glenn Hoddle.
Unfortunately I never won the Footballer of the Year award; in fact the only vote I got each year came from the reporter on the Southampton Echo, so that hardly counted. But for a decade I did have my acceptance speech ready, just in case, and here it is…
‘I really want to thank all the people who have been so important to me, starting with my mum and dad. I couldn’t have wished for better parents. They were the most supportive people possible—but without interfering. They got the balance brilliantly right and I have them to thank for everything I have achieved in life. They had three kids by the time they were 20 but have remained married for 48 years, which is a fantastic achievement—although I think the reason they stayed together is because neither of them wanted custody of me. My grandparents have been superb and my brothers have been fantastic. All three of them could have been professional players but they have never shown any jealousy or resentment towards me, only pride and support.
My own children, Mitchell and Keeleigh, are growing up to be fantastic kids and have given me a lot of pleasure. I now have a new baby girl, Ava, with my wife Angela. We were together many years ago and there was a lot of love left over so she recently made the decision to come back to this country to see if we could make a go of it. It is wonderful to be married to her finally. We didn’t think she could have children so she needed to have fertility treatment. There was only a 20 per cent chance of success but we were lucky it worked first time, and we are now blessed with Ava who is an absolute joy.
Family and friends are important to me and there are some people who really do need a special mention. Pete and Pat Ford, and their children Martin and Stuart, and the Phillips family all really helped me to settle when I first came to Southampton and homesickness might have been a problem. My “mum” in England, Celia Mills, has looked after me for the last 12 years and seen me through a lot. She is one of the loveliest people you could wish to meet.’
I also need to thank Jerome Anderson who was my agent during my playing days and never put me under any pressure to move, even though he would have made more money from a transfer. (If any young players ever want a good agent then go straight to him at the S.E.M. group.) And I must thank Richard Thompson who representedme during this book deal with HarperCollins, for whom Jonathan Taylor has been a big help. Thanks too to Jordan Sibley at Southampton Football Club for sourcing some of the photos, to the club photographer Paul Watts for taking them and to the Southern Daily Echo for supplying some of the older pictures. They say the camera never lies but do some of them seem to make me look overweight?
I also need to single out my golf buddies Laurie Parsonage, Ben Johnson and Paul Mico, one of the best DJs in Southampton. I’m absolutely obsessed with golf and I will always be grateful to pro Richard Bland who allowed me to caddy for him on the European Tour, giving me the best time of my life outside football. He and his brother Heath are really good friends, along with taxi driver Mark Harris who has ferried Saints players around the city for years and knows all their secrets. If he ever wrote a book he’d make millions. In contrast, I must thank Mike Osman for costing me a fortune by persuading me to invest in a nightclub. Despite the huge loss, we have remained friends throughout, which must say something. I must also thank Big Dave and his wife Teresa who have been a big help in recent years.
Francis Benali and Claus Lundekvam are close mates but I have to thank all my former teammates, too numerous to mention individually, for doing my running and allowing me the licence to play the way I did. I couldn’t have done it without them, and it was nice to know they were prepared to graft on my behalf.
I want to thank all my former managers but especially Alan Ball—and it is so sad he isn’t here to read this. My time playing under him really defined me as a player and I must thank both him and Lawrie McMenemy for their joint efforts in finding the perfect position in the team for me. Thanks, too, to all the Saints staff I have worked with over the years, from the backroom team to the stadium personnel and, of course, I will always be grateful to all the Saints fans for their constant support and belief in me.
More recently I need to thank everyone at Sky for giving me the chance on Soccer Saturday and making me so welcome. They have ensured I can stay involved in football in a casual way, with no pressure or fear of getting the sack if results don’t go well. And finally I must thank the man who has put all these words to paper, Graham Hiley, who was lucky enough to follow my entire career as the Saints correspondent with the Southern Daily Echo. Obviously when I was playing I needed people around me to do all the hard work, so I thought I’d carry on in the same vein and get Graham to do the writing while I just sat and talked. It is a tactic which has worked well for me over the years and you wouldn’t want to change a winning formula—unless you are Ian Branfoot.
Preface (#ulink_1ee3952f-3fd4-50f0-bb2e-64091b4ad396)
Even now people still ask me why I stayed with Southampton throughout my playing career when I probably could have earned a lot more money elsewhere. The fact is, I loved the club—and still do. That’s why it breaks my heart to see where they are now. And that’s why I almost gave up my job with Sky Sports to become the club chairman.
When I was playing we had four last-day escapes from relegation, some against almost overwhelming odds. And yet I always had a feeling that we would do it. Many fans say that it was all down to my goals but the fact is I couldn’t have scored them without ten players alongside me. We had such a fantastic team spirit that we somehow survived every crisis—and I loved being part of it.
We punched above our weight for years while we were at the homely but inadequate Dell. With a capacity of just 15,200, the club desperately needed to move to a new stadium in order to continue competing at the highest level. I was so proud that my goals helped keep us in the Premier League long enough for St Mary’s to be built—and when I retired at the end of the club’s first season in their new home, I felt the future was secure.
But somehow the spirit of Southampton seemed to seep away and, through a catalogue of errors, this great club has slipped into the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years. Worse than that, it almost went out of existence altogether. The financial problems which had dogged the Saints for more than a year suddenly came to a head in April 2009 when the holding company went into administration. It meant an automatic 10-point deduction and certain relegation, and there was a very real chance that, after 125 years, the club might fold.
I have always said I would do anything I can to help the Saints, so when I was asked to front a consortium to save the club, I readily agreed. It would have meant giving up my cushy number talking about games in the warmth of the Sky Soccer Saturday studio. It would have meant getting a proper job for the first time in my life, working in an office, starting at 9am…and having to wear a tie! Perhaps it is for the best that our consortium couldn’t quite put the finishing touches to the deal. Thankfully, another group did manage to step in and save the club—and I genuinely wish them well. Meanwhile I can get back to working four days a month—pretty much the same as when I was playing…
1 HOD’S LAW (#ulink_8049e10b-ef16-5c9d-aa1b-dab9cbc233a0)
‘YOU’LL NEVER PLAY
FOR ENGLAND, YOU’LL NEVER PLAY FOR ENGLAND!’ THAT WASN’T THE FANS CHANTING,
IT WAS TERRY VENABLES AND GLENN HODDLE.
So how does a scrawny, incredibly talented kid from Guernsey get to play for England? I’ll tell you.
I grew up playing against three older, highly talented brothers—that sharpened me up. And then I flew to the mainland and joined the nearest top-flight club. Southampton. I played for the England Under-20s and B side and then, finally, when I was 25, I got the call. Terry Venables was the new England manager and I was in his in his first squad for a home friendly against Denmark. I couldn’t believe it. I came off the bench to replace Paul Gascoigne. It was a fairly low-key game but I felt 10ft tall when I went on. I didn’t get much chance to shine but we won 1-0 and I reckoned I was now on my way to becoming a regular. That was in 1994.
It had been my dream to play for England for as long as I can remember. I used to watch these superstars on a flickering black and white television and imagine that it was me pulling on the white jersey in the World Cup Finals. And yet, when the first call came, I didn’t go. I’d had a few training camps at schoolboy level but my first real international recognition came in 1987 when I was selected for the England Under-20 tour to Brazil. Saints were on a close-season trip to Singapore at the time and I was meant to fly direct from there to South America but I twisted an ankle. Chris Nicholl gave me a fitness test and effectively wrote me a note excusing me from games. It was nothing to do with the fact that I had a holiday booked in Tenerife.
I told Gordon Hobson, an older journeyman pro in the best sense of the word. He couldn’t grasp that I had turned down the chance to play for the Under-20 squad. He thought I was mad. Even at that young age I was a cocky git and I knew I was young enough to get in again the following year. And I did. Graham Taylor picked me along-side the likes of Neil Ruddock, David Howells, Kevin Pressman and Carl Leaburn, a tall skinny lad from Charlton who was a bit like John Fashanu and a real handful.
We played three games in Brazil. I scored in the first two with Neil Ruddock setting me up for one, and then Carl Leaburn was picked to play in the final match. It would have been his first appearance for England but he made the mistake of going shopping when he had been told to rest—and he bumped into Graham Taylor who promptly dropped him. It didn’t matter because it rained heavily and the match was called off. The humidity out there was unbelievable. I know I wasn’t the fittest but I was struggling to breathe after 10 minutes.
I never actually played for the England Under-21 side, probably because I was picked for the England B-team instead. I made my debut for them against the Republic of Ireland on what appeared to be a potato field in Cork. It was an awful day. It hammered down with rain, again—to the disgust of the VIPs including Southampton manager Chris Nicholl because they all had to sit out in the open. And all the subs had to sit on a gym bench and got drenched. The only ones with any shelter were the press who were put in the Perspex team dug-outs. It could only happen in Ireland. I had a shocker, but then so did everyone else, and we lost 4-1.
Now, under my Southampton manager Alan Ball I was playing the best football of my career, scoring and creating goals for fun and there was a growing campaign to get me in Terry Venables’ full England team. There was even a CD ‘Bring Him On For England’ by a Southampton band called the Valley Slags. When they mimed to it on the pitch at half-time during a home game against Leeds, the lead singer almost caused a riot by standing in front of the Leeds fans trying to get them to join in.
Terry didn’t speak to me much but I enjoyed his coaching. The sessions were short and sharp with the emphasis on skill; on being comfortable on the ball. That’s what counted. I came on as a sub against Greece and Norway before I got my first start in a home friendly against Romania in October 1994. I played the full 90 minutes but had only a couple of half chances in a 1-1 draw. It was tight and scrappy and I had to fit into the formation, and that was never my strength. At times I really did think that some of the more established players (and NO, I won’t name names) saw me as a threat given their occasional reluctance to give me the ball.
And what did the media say? Having campaigned to get me in the team they now had a go at me. I was a sub against Nigeria and then the Pro Tissier movement started up again. Terry was under a fair bit of pressure to play me, with many feeling he hadn’t given me a fair chance (it couldn’t possibly be because I’d turned him down at Spurs when he tried to buy me, could it?). So far I had figured mainly as a bit-part player. Then I was picked for that extraordinary infamous match against the Republic of Ireland in Dublin. Some reckoned he was actually setting me up to fail by picking me for a match against a team then noted for its physical approach and long-ball game. The pitch certainly wasn’t conducive to good football.
HE ORDERED METO SEE ADIETICIAN. ANDA FAT LOT OFGOOD THAT DID.
But I wasn’t thinking about that at the time. I was just thrilled to get my second start and then it all went horribly wrong because the England fans went beserk and rioted. The flashpoint came when Ireland took the lead after 25 minutes, but the tension had been increasing for hours. We thought it was just routine crowd trouble, but then came the seats and missiles. People ask were you frightened and the answer is ‘WHAT D’YOU THINK?’ The game was cut short but Terry never picked me again. In fact, I was the only one dropped from his next squad but he did at least have the decency to phone and tell me, though he didn’t give a reason. And I was too stunned to ask. Instead he put his faith in Paul Gascoigne and probably felt he couldn’t play two ‘luxury’ players. To be fair Gazza was outstanding in Euro 96, but I don’t think I got a chance to prove I could be equally influential.
When Terry was replaced by Glenn Hoddle, my schoolboy idol and another manager who had tried to buy me (when he was at Chelsea), I reckoned things were looking up. We were similar players and I hoped he’d give me a fair chance, especially when the media got going, but this time with a succession of scare stories that I might play for another country. Because I came from the Channel Islands I was eligible to play for any of the Home Countries. And because all my previous caps had been in friendlies, I could still opt to play for Ireland, Scotland or Wales. Well, in theory. But it was never on. My dream had always been to play for England, though that didn’t stop the Wales manager Bobby Gould saying he’d love to pick me. There was even a story linking me with France, which was bonkers. In fact, when I was in my early twenties my dad did get phone calls from the French FA asking about my availability. Michel Platini was the manager and his assistant, Gerard Houllier, kept ringing dad badgering him to talk to me. But it was never going to happen. The only good thing was that it increased the pressure on Glenn to play me in a competitive match so that I couldn’t play for another country, and that’s exactly what he did in his first match in charge, bringing me off the bench for NINE whole minutes in a World Cup qualifier away to Moldova when England were already 3-0 up and the game was stone dead. And then he had a go at my brother Carl.
Glenn picked me for the vital World Cup qualifier against Italy at Wembley in February 1997 but it was overshadowed by a massive row because the team was leaked to the press. Glenn was furious and actually blamed my brother when another player had leaked the news because he had been dropped and he got the hump. Big time. Glenn hauled me in front of him that lunchtime and had a right go at me. That was the only one-to-one I ever had with him as England manager, and come to think of it I only had one when he was the manager at Southampton when he ordered me to see a dietician. And a fat lot of good that did, if you’ll pardon the pun.
It wasn’t a great night against Italy. We lost 1-0 although I did go close to scoring with a header, but the press were out for me. What they didn’t know was that I was struggling with injuries. I needed a hernia operation and I’d also torn the tendon from my heel to my toe. It was horrible, and I was having to run on the outside of my foot but I had to keep playing because Saints were near the bottom of the table. I told Glenn I was OK to play for Southampton but I didn’t think I could do myself justice playing for England. He asked if I would mind going to see his faith healer Eileen Drewery because she might be able to help. I wasn’t rude but just said I’d prefer not to because that wasn’t my sort of thing. And that was the last full England squad I was in. Any connection? Ask Glenn.
Glenn did pick me for an England B game against Russia at Loftus Road in April 1998, which was like a final trial match for the fringe players before the World Cup Finals in France 98. I was on a hot streak, pretty close to my best, and had scored seven goals in the last nine games of the season for Saints. A lot of people were pushing my claims, so Glenn put me in the B game. It was Last Chance Saloon. Peter Taylor took charge of the team and I was very impressed by his training and ideas. I knew I must be in with a shout of making the preliminary 30-man squad because Glenn was getting blood tests done for all the candidates, and I was one of only three (with Les Ferdinand and Darren Anderton) in the B team to be tested.
The game couldn’t have gone any better. I know I’ve got a reputation for playing in fits and starts but this was one of my best ever 90 minutes. Everything went right. I scored a hat trick, hit the woodwork twice and ended up with the captain’s armband for the last 10 minutes of a 4-1 win. I was besieged by the media afterwards. They were taking it for granted that I’d get selected. I tried to play it down, at least in public; I didn’t want to appear arrogant or over-confident but inside I was BUBBLING. I walked away from the ground with my parents and Angela (now my wife) on a real high and I was pestering my mum to let me get a bag of chips but she told me I had to eat properly if I was going to the World Cup. And did Glenn pick me? No way. I only heard when my brother saw the news on Teletext and told me. It was like being punched in the stomach; I felt sick, bewildered and absolutely devastated. It was the most disappointing moment of my career.
There was a widely held theory that Glenn had been hoping I’d fail in the Russia match, which would let him off the hook with the fans and the media. Then he tried making out that Russia weren’t very good—in which case why did he organize a match against them?—and while that’s true I did get a hat trick. You can only beat what’s in front of you. And if Russia were so weak, how come Darren Anderton and Les Ferdinand got in the squad? To make matters worse, Glenn rang a few people on the fringes of the squad to let them know they weren’t in it, but he must have lost my number. I still have no idea why he made that decision. I shouldn’t think he regrets it though—people that arrogant are never wrong. To make matters worse, he didn’t take Paul Gascoigne either. I could just about have accepted it if he had thought that Gazza was better than me but he didn’t take a playmaker at all, which I found very strange.
Or maybe we got on so badly because I didn’t sign for him at Chelsea. In fact, I didn’t even agree to speak to him. He must have rated me, though I think it was actually the director, the late Matthew Harding (who died in a helicopter crash), who wanted me. If I’d kicked up a stink and said I wanted to go then I think Saints would have sold me, but I said I was happy. I didn’t want to leave. I loved the club and the city and felt at home there, and that was always very important. A lot of people told me I was mad because Chelsea was a bigger club and it would have been a chance to play for Hoddle.
My agent rang me and said Glenn still wanted to talk to me, even though I insisted I was staying put, but again I said ‘No’. I knew that if I did speak to him—and he was my idol—he might change my mind. All that happened three years before he said ‘No’ to me, dropping me from the 30-man squad. When I was growing up my uncle always said you should never meet your heroes because they always let you down. Bloody hell, he was right!
After that I hastily booked a holiday to get away and watched the World Cup Finals on TV. I was never churlish enough to want England to fail just because I had been left out and I was gutted when England went out to Argentina. I was furious at the injustice when Sol Campbell had a perfectly good goal disallowed and was bitterly disappointed when we went out on penalties. I’d have given anything to be out there taking one.
MY UNCLEALWAYS SAIDYOU SHOULDNEVER MEETYOUR HEROESBECAUSE THEYALWAYS LET YOUDOWN. BLOODYHELL, HE WASRIGHT!
Looking back, being snubbed was a crushing blow and I wonder if it had a bigger impact on my career than I then realized, because I never reached the same heights again. It was as though the ultimate goal had been snatched away from me and my greatest incentive had gone. It had always been my ambition to play for England and now knew that was it.
Glenn and I have since made up, although we will never be close friends. We were both staying in the same hotel on a golfing trip in Dubai in 2006 and I decided to clear the air. I walked in to breakfast one day and there he was, sitting on his own, so I went and sat with him. He looked surprised—and a bit wary. I think he wondered what was coming but I just said that life is too short for any bad feelings, and I wanted to sort things out. I admitted that I’d made mistakes while playing under him and I apologized, even though I actually felt he was far more in the wrong than me. I felt it was right to apologize and get the ball rolling. It was actually quite a hard thing to do and I got quite emotional because I really had idolized him. I told him that he’d been my hero. He was a fantastic footballer and someone I’ll admire for his skills. Always.
It was equally tough because the rift and the not speaking to each other had gone on for so long, and here I was making the first move when I didn’t really think I had anything to be sorry for. But we cleared the air, shook hands and moved on. I bear no grudges and wish him all the best with his academy in Spain. It’s a terrific idea, taking on lads who have been released by clubs, working on their weaknesses and trying to get them back into professional football. Glenn will be good at that because he won’t have to manage players with massive opinions and the lads will be desperate to get back into football. They’ll take on board everything he says, no argument, so he’ll probably get on well with them. But I still find it sad he isn’t managing a top club and, if he does get the chance, I hope he’ll have learned from his mistakes. If he could get a semblance of man-management he’d be a huge asset to any club.
2 SOUTHAMPTON HERE I COME (#ulink_c0977758-e08a-55f0-85f6-dc3007cec617)
THE ENTIRE TOTTENHAM TEAM WATCHED OUR MATCH.
I’D LIKE TO SAY I TURNED ON THE STYLE, BUT I MADE
A COMPLETE IDIOT OF MYSELF…
The stereotypical British pro footballer is said to be a gutsy, bust-a-gut, working-class northener. And me? I come from Guernsey, best known for its cows, in the Channel Islands, closer to France than England. And you can’t get more south than that.
At school I was a good all-round sportsman, i.e. good at anything which involved a ball—tennis, squash, snooker, table tennis, hockey and particularly cricket. If I hadn’t made it as a footballer I’d have tried to become a professional cricketer because I was a pretty decent wicketkeeper, mainly because that was the only position which did not involve much running. I remember scoring 164 not out in a 20-over game, which is still a Guernsey record. And I was amazed, while researching this book, to find that I broke several school athletics records including the 75m, 55m hurdles and the 6 x 10m shuttle runs (when you sprint to the first marker, touch the ground, sprint back to the start and then run to the second marker, touch the ground, and so on). It is mind-boggling because I was always the first one to drop out when we had to do them at Southampton.
To be fair, there was precious little else to do on Guernsey apart from going to the beach. So it was sport, Sport, SPORT. The island was obsessed with it, and I came from a very sporting family. I was born on October 14, 1968, the youngest of four boys, after Mark, Kevin and Carl. I turned up as an afterthought, or because my parents wanted a girl.
My mum and dad (Ruth and Marcus) got married at 16 and had had three children by the time they were 19—and they are still happily together—despite the strain of looking after the four of us. They’ve been behind everything I have ever achieved, but the only principle I didn’t follow involved hard work. They grafted like mad when we were young, often holding down two jobs each to ensure we didn’t go without. We grew up on an estate and didn’t have a lot. It was a bit rough and ready but not a bad place, and when you are a kid you don’t really think about your surroundings, you just accept that’s how life is. And Guernsey was a fantastic place to grow up, with wonderful beaches close by. It was so safe. It really was the kind of place where people didn’t lock their front doors or their cars, and I must admit I’m quite pleased two of my kids are growing up there. The only thing people weren’t relaxed about was sport, particularly when it came to competing against Jersey.
Both me and my brothers inherited our skill from our dad, who was good at softball, cricket and football and had trials with Arsenal. He was a lightning quick right-winger and I think the Gunners would have signed him but for a bad ankle injury. Mark was a solid defender and the only one of us ever to win Man of the Match in the annual Muratti game between Guernsey and Jersey. He was a decent player but not quite on a par with Kevin and Carl who could have both made it as pro footballers. In fact Kevin was a better finisher than me. He was an out and out centre-forward in the Alan Shearer mould and lethal in front of goal. He broke the Guernsey scoring record and averaged a goal a game over 20 years. Carl was a bit more like me and played deeper. He was skilful and creative and Guernsey’s leading midfield scorer.
THE FACT THATTWO OF MYBROTHERS HADBEEN OFFEREDTERMS SHOWEDIT COULD BEDONE. IN FACT ITMADE ME MOREDETERMINEDTHAN EVER.
Both had the chance to make it as pros but suffered from homesickness. Kevin had trials with Middlesbrough, who were keen to take him but they were close to going bust at the time. He went to Oxford United and did so well that they offered him a professional contract but he turned it down. I was gobsmacked. Even at 13 I knew all I wanted to be was a professional footballer. Carl had trials with Southampton who offered him an apprenticeship but, again, he didn’t want to leave Guernsey. That may seem bizarre but unless you have grown up there, you can’t understand what a close-knit, insular place it is. But it did make me realize that being a professional footballer wasn’t a pipedream. The fact that two of my brothers had been offered terms showed it could be done. In fact it made me more determined than ever, and my parents started to take steps to ensure that I didn’t suffer from homesickness if and when I got the chance to go. They encouraged me to go on school trips and residential soccer schools to get me used to being away from home. I have no idea where they got the money from but, somehow, they managed to scrimp and save in order to get me off the island. So when the time came for me to go, I was up for it.
For my thirteenth birthday I went away to a soccer skills week at Calshot Activity Centre near Southampton. I wouldn’t say it was done on the cheap but my prize for being Player of the Week was two photographs, one of Kevin Keegan and one of Lawrie McMenemy—both unsigned. The sad thing is I still have them, and they are still not autographed. By now I was starting to realize I was pretty good at football and was playing regularly against much older opposition without looking out of place. That was partly because I had three talented older brothers and because I had the ability to cope with it.
The first sign of that came when I played in the final of the island’s Under-11 school tournament. I was just eight (and physically there’s a big difference between an eight-year old and a lad not quite 11) but I scored both goals to give my school, Mare de Carteret, a 2-0 win over Vale. It was my first ever medal and I remember thinking, ‘I’m bloody good at this!’ Even then I knew how to swear, although my vocabulary soon expanded as I learned to shout at referees.
By 1983 I was playing regularly for Guernsey’s Under-15 side and I still remember the Muratti Cup Final against Jersey that year. We were the warm-up act before a friendly between the full Guernsey side and Tottenham Hotspur, the team I supported as a boy. I was a huge fan, mainly because I idolized Glenn Hoddle who was everything I ever wanted to be as a player. His skill, touch, vision and finishing were sublime. It was 1-1 when the Tottenham team arrived and they actually watched our match. We could see them all in the stand with the likes of Ray Clemence, Ossie Ardiles, Steve Archibald and Glenn watching us. I’d like to say I turned on the style but I made a complete idiot of myself.
With seven minutes remaining I was pushed in the box and we got a penalty—and I made a hash of it. I put the kick wide, a cardinal sin. A free shot from just 12 yards. It is the first penalty I remember missing and it had to be in front of the Spurs players. They weren’t best pleased because it meant our match went to extra-time so they had to wait to play their game. We won in the end but I was still mortified at missing in front of so many big names.
My dad was a big Spurs fan so I supported them too, and I’ll never forget when they reached the FA Cup Final in 1981. Every year my dad and a group of mates went to the final. I have no idea how he got tickets, but it always coincided with his birthday so it was his big annual treat to himself. He was more excited than ever when Spurs got to that final, and I nipped home from school at lunchtime to say goodbye but he told me not to bother going back for the afternoon, and handed me a ticket for the match. I was absolutely stunned. Instead of going back for lessons I was suddenly packing my bag and flying to the mainland to see Spurs v Manchester City at Wembley. Obviously, having me there cramped his style a bit because it meant he had to look after a 12-year-old boy instead of going out for a few drinks, so I’ll always be grateful. We didn’t get to see Spurs lift the Cup as it finished 1-1 and, in those days, there’d be a replay, but it was still an amazing experience and I was more determined than ever to make it as a pro.
I remember the thrill of walking up Wembley Way, jostling with thousands of other fans, seeing the Twin Towers (before they became an arch) and dreaming that one day Michael Gilkes would be cup-tied and that I’d get to take his place. I was absolutely buzzing as I handed in my ticket at the turnstiles and walked inside the stadium for the first time. Excitement? I nearly exploded. I can still recall walking out into that giant concrete bowl and seeing that famous pitch down there in front of me. I loved every second of the build-up, the flags, the scarves, even the smell of the place. It was then the most magical day of my life and I vowed I’d would be back as a player.
I was already on the right path. Manchester Utd didn’t exactly come knocking, but when I was 14 Oxford offered me a trial, ironically in a game against Southampton. I stayed with Keith and Gill Rogers, friends of my dad and the people who had got Kevin his trial. Ray Graydon was the youth team coach at the time and he’d pick me up each day and take me to training. Oxford wanted me back and said it would be easier if I lived there so I left Guernsey to start school in Oxford, and I absolutely hated it. I didn’t know anyone and wanted to leave after the first lesson. I think I managed two full days—so at least I gave it a good go.
Keith put me on a flight back to Guernsey and I think he was a bit annoyed, not least because the same thing had happened with Kevin. I just wasn’t ready. I hope he didn’t take it personally but it was too soon for me to leave home. Oxford were doing well then under Jim Smith, and had got to the League Cup Final, but I knew Southampton were interested. I had another chance. They’d spotted me playing for Guernsey Schools when we came over on tour and were keen for a closer look. They said they were happy for me to finish my schooling in Guernsey, and would wait to make a decision about an apprenticeship until I was 16. That was better. I still have the letter, addressed to ‘Matthew Le Tissieur’. Maybe they were already thinking ahead to shirt printing, charging £1 a letter.
When I went to Southampton I stayed with Andy Cook and Leroy Whale who were also on schoolboy terms. Their families made me very welcome and I had no hesitation accepting the apprenticeship. My parents had received a letter from the manager Lawrie McMenemy but again my name was spelled wrongly, and the letter stressed the importance of finishing my exams. Bizarrely it said, ‘I will quite understand if you do not want to tell Matthew of this offer until after he has completed his exams, but please let me know his decision within a week.’
Of course they told me, and I was always going to accept. My parents had ensured I was used to the surroundings at Southampton and that I was ready to move away. It also took all the pressure off my exams because I knew they didn’t matter. I was never too fussed about schoolwork though I was pretty good at mental maths, which came in handy for working out goal difference, and I once won the Guernsey Eisteddfod Society Certificate of Merit for an essay about a dream in which I scored the winning goal in the World Cup Final. In short, I always just did enough because I always knew I’d be a footballer.
MANCHESTERUTD. DIDN’TEXACTLY COMEKNOCKING BUTWHEN I WAS 14OXFORDOFFERED ME ATRIAL.
By that stage I knew I was head and shoulders above everyone I was playing against, often scoring five or six goals a game in the Under-16s and Under-18s leagues and also turning out at adult level for Vale Rec Reserves. And then I got a call for the England Under-17 training camp, which was a huge honour. It was also an opportunity to fiddle the expenses and make a few quid. We were able to claim train fare, food and taxi fares when of course I actually got a lift. Julian Dicks and Andy Hinchcliffe were also in the group, along with around 50 others I’d never heard of before or since. It’s quite astonishing how many of that group never made it at any level, so there must have been something seriously wrong with either the scouting or the development. Who’s to blame— the talent scouts or the players with no desire? Me—I’d had a burning ambition from the age of eight. I never thought about anything but football. I knew I was good on Guernsey, but what about on the mainland? What was the competition like? Did I have any? It didn’t take me long to realize that the answer was ‘No’.
When news spread that I was moving away to join Southampton, I received a special presentation at the Guernsey FA annual awards evening. Former QPR goalkeeper Phil Parkes handed me a framed cartoon which had appeared on the back of the local paper. It said, ‘Best wishes Matt for a long and successful career in England—from all the Channel Island goalies.’
Was I confident? It was weird. I was on a high because I’d just enjoyed a great season and I had faith in my own ability, but I was stepping into the unknown.
3 KNOCKED INTO SHAPE BY THE HAIRDRIER (#ulink_9783609e-66ae-5c10-a361-26dd30752ced)
WE WERE ALL LISTENING OUTSIDE THE DRESSING
ROOM AS IT ALL KICKED OFF AND CHRIS NICHOLL
THUMPED MARK DENNIS.
There was just one great big obstacle: I’d been suspended for the first two youth matches. All the bookings were for dissent and I had to appear before the Guernsey Island FA where we argued that a ban could harm my prospects at Southampton. Thankfully they voted by six votes to five to overturn the ban and give me a severe warning about my future conduct. So that obviously worked well!
I had always been quick to voice my opinion. I still remember one schools match which we struggled to win away. The ref was one of the teachers at their school and he did all he possibly could to get them a win. I was only 13 or 14 but I let him have it. As we came off the pitch the ref went up to our coach and said he needed to ‘Keep an eye on that Le Tissier, and tell him to calm down and stop arguing.’ I overheard and said to my mate, ‘He’s talking out of his arse.’ Too loudly. The next thing I’m being frogmarched to the coach’s car and he’s driving me straight home to tell my parents, but what he didn’t know was that my mum had been at the game and she’d seen that the ref was a disgrace. A cheat. She stuck up for me but made it quite clear I had to be more careful in future.
And I remembered that at Southampton. What was it like there? Now Saints have a well-run lodge where all the trainees stay, but in those days you had digs, and it was pot luck what sort of family you ended up with. You were driven to someone’s front door and told, here’s your new home. I was very lucky and stayed with Pete and Pat Ford. Pete is a massive Saints fan who has one of the biggest collections of autographs I have ever seen, and he had two football-mad sons, Martin and Stuart, who were then 11 and nine. I went from being the youngest of four to the oldest of three, so instead of getting beaten up the whole time I was suddenly the one dishing it out!
I was getting £26 a week with a £4 win bonus and £2 for a draw, which was quite good as a percentage of the wage. We also got £16 every four weeks to buy a monthly bus pass. The clever ones soon realized that the date was on the back and that drivers never checked it, so we didn’t bother renewing it and pocketed the £16. Most of my money went on fruit machines. They didn’t exist on Guernsey and the bright lights were one hell of an attraction. I ended up losing big time in the amusement arcades. I’d just signed as a professional on £100 a week but I was already £1,500 overdrawn. It sounds like it was out of control but I knew I had a £5,000 loyalty bonus coming at the end of the season and that I could easily pay it off. As addictions go this was nothing, but I can see why some players get hooked. You get such a big buzz on match days that you desperately feel the need to recreate that during the week, and gambling is a quick-fix thrill. And don’t forget footballers have plenty of time to kill. I played snooker. Straight after training I’d go to the Cueball Snooker Club where I became good friends with Warren King, the resident pro who got as high as Number 35 in the world. I thought I was pretty good until I played him. I’ll never forget him rattling off a 145 break against me. He used to give me a head start of 60 and it’d go up by 10 each frame until I won. I had a couple of century breaks in practice but the most I ever managed in a match was 89. I’d stay there until it was time for the last bus home.
On the playing side there were nine of us apprentices, of which five of us made a decent living out of the game. Andy Cook went on to play for Pompey and Exeter, Steve Davis had a long career at Burnley before moving into coaching, Allen Tankard played for Port Vale for a long time and Franny Benali became a Southampton legend. He set up my first goal as an apprentice in a 4-2 win over Reading. I missed a penalty in that match but got an easy tap-in when Franny crossed from the left. Bizarrely, for a man who only ever scored one senior goal, he started out as a striker. At 15 he was a big strapping centre-forward but then he stopped growing and, as the others caught up, he moved further and further back, first to midfield and then fullback. If he had been two or three inches taller he’d have made a top-class centre-back. He was an excellent man-marker and very disciplined, except when the red mist descended. Like many of the game’s hard men he’s quiet off the field, one of the nicest guys you could meet—articulate, kind and gentle—but hard as nails on the pitch.
The youth team coach was Dave Merrington, who was a terrific bloke and a huge influence on me, but he was terrifying. He was a teak-tough, no-nonsense Geordie. There are very few things in life which faze me but Dave in full flow was awesome. The original hairdrier-blaster, long before Fergie. He was actually very religious, which you’d never guess from his language, but he was wonderful, warm and infectious. We had some great fun but were terrified of him. When Dave blew his top we knew he’d have us running, running and RUNNING, and I hated that. He didn’t take any backchat or slacking but was absolutely brilliant, and even the likes of Alan Shearer still hail him as the biggest influence on their careers. He was brilliant for me, and never tried to stifle my talent. All the apprentices still keep in touch with him but, bloody hell, he was tough.
In those days they really made apprentices work for a living. It isn’t like that today, where many have agents and boot deals and cars. Our system was better, even though I hated it. Besides training we had to pick up the dirty laundry, sweep the floors, clean the dressing rooms and showers, and Heaven help anyone who slacked.
One day a PFA rep called in to talk to the players, including the apprentices. We were all summoned so we couldn’t finish cleaning the dressing room. While we were in the meeting, Dave walked past and saw some kit on the floor and went ballistic. He stormed into the players’ lounge with a face like thunder and ordered us all downstairs immediately. He pointed to the dirty kit and asked why it was there. We said we’d been told to go to the meeting but he just barked that we should have finished the cleaning first. He gave us 10 minutes to complete the job, and to get changed and ready on the running track. He ordered us to do 40 laps while he sat in the corner of the stand and counted them. We jogged round as a group while he ticked them off until he got to 36. When we completed the next lap, he called 36 again. No one dared correct him, so next time he called 37 and then 37 again, and so on, until eventually he reached 40, making us do four EXTRA laps. He made his point all right. I’ll never forget that, or the time one of the lads thought it would be funny to press the fuel cut-off button in the youth team mini-bus. No matter what he tried, Dave couldn’t start it. We all thought it was hilarious until he told us to run back. And in those days, before Saints bought their own training ground, we trained a good six miles from The Dell. We weren’t best pleased but it was one time we actually got the better of Dave. We’d gone no more than 400 yards when a truck drove past. We got a lift and jumped on the back. He dropped us off near The Dell so we waited a while then sprinted the remaining half mile to make it look like we were knackered, and I was.
DAVE WENTMENTAL, ANDORDERED US ALLIN FOR TRAININGAT 6AM THE NEXTDAY. UP TO THATPOINT I THOUGHTTHERE WAS ONLYONE SIX O’CLOCKIN THE DAY.
We had a good squad and won the South East Counties title both seasons I was an apprentice. In fact that was the last winner’s medal I got. With the ability we had, and the likes of Alan Shearer and Rod Wallace in the year below, we should have won the FA Youth Cup. I remember we got drawn against West Ham who tanked us 5-0 at The Dell and Dave went mental, and ordered us all in for training at 6am the next day. Up to that point I thought there was only one six o’clock in the day so it came as a real shock. We all made it apart from Andy Cook, who turned up at 8.45 because he lived in Romsey and there were no early buses. He was taken round the track for some severe running which took the heat off the rest of us.
For all his bluster you could have a laugh with Dave, at the right time, although it took me about a year to learn when to do it. I took a bit of a chance after a game at Spurs. I had an absolute shocker in the first half and Dave laid into me at half-time telling me I had 10 minutes to improve or I was off. After about five minutes I scored and I had a decent second half. Dave used to phone through the match details for the Pink, the local sports paper. He was writing his notes after the game and asked me what time I scored. I said, ‘Five minutes after you told me I had 10 minutes or I was off.’ The rest of the lads held their breath but I got away with it. It was certainly a better retort than Alan Shearer managed when he was having a ‘mare in one game. It was a blustery day and he couldn’t trap a bag of cement. The wind was howling and the rain was swirling and Dave was absolutely caning Alan from the touchline. Finally, in desperation, Alan turned round and yelled, ‘I can’t see because of the wind.’ That was right up there on a par with his answer at the pre-match meal before his first-team debut. He was asked what he wanted in his omelette and he replied, ‘Egg.’
Dave’s approach wouldn’t work now, partly because it’s not politically correct and partly because many of the apprentices now have too much money, fast cars, inflated opinions of themselves, too much bargaining power and agents who’ll approach another club the moment there’s a problem. Some of them have even got agents and boot deals before they sign YTS forms. (I was 20 before I got my first car. I failed my first driving test because I nearly crashed. I was waiting at a roundabout and thought I saw enough of a gap to get through—and there wasn’t. But I passed second time, bought myself a second-hand Ford Fiesta for £1,100 and thought I was pretty cool.) Clubs are scared of losing their talent so they give apprentices the kid-glove treatment, not the iron fist.
We all mucked in as cleaners and scrapers and that really made us appreciate the good times when we actually made it. We were basically part-time paid slaves. Each apprentice had to look after a pro, which basically meant cleaning his boots and making sure his training kit was ready on time. I looked after Joe Jordan and David Armstrong. At Christmas they were supposed to give a tip as a thank you. Trust me to get a Scotsman. I got the lowest tips, but that might be because Joe got the dirtiest boots. I was more interested in playing head tennis.
ALAN SHEARERWAS ASKEDWHAT HEWANTED IN HISOMELETTE ANDHE REPLIED,‘EGG.’
I vowed that when I got to be a pro I’d look after my apprentice well. The one who did best out of me was Matthew Oakley. I gave him a bonus of £5 for every goal I scored from 1993-95, some of my best years, which cost me a fortune. I remember Alan Shearer had his boots cleaned by a young lad called Kevin Phillips. For some reason we played him at right-back but decided he wasn’t good enough, which was hardly surprising because he was a striker. Saints didn’t offer him professional terms and he drifted into non-league football with Baldock Town before being snapped up by Watford and then Sunderland, where he became one of the most prolific goalscorers in Premier League history. Every club has players who slip through the net and go on to prove them wrong, but that was a pretty big mistake and, in fairness, a rare one for Southampton. But it’s a good lesson for any youngster with self-belief and talent. You can still make it.
As apprentices we also had to work in various departments of the club to understand what everyone did, and how hard the staff worked. We also did one day a week at college, and the club placed great importance on that. With such a high percentage of youngsters failing to make the grade as players, they wanted to ensure that we all had qualifications to fall back on if necessary. I did a BTech in ‘Sports and Leisure Something Or Other’. I’ve no idea what it was because I didn’t finish the course. I signed as a pro in my second year as soon as I reached my eighteenth birthday.
My first professional contract was worth £100 a week, rising to £120 in the second year. My negotiations with the manager Chris Nicholl consisted of him telling me what I would get and me saying, ‘Thanks very much.’ He was quite scary, as Mark Dennis found out. There were a lot of big names in the first-team squad including the likes of Peter Shilton, Jimmy Case and Mark Wright, and it was tough for Chris to impose his authority in his first major job in management. He hit the roof when he learned that Mark Dennis’s preparation for the home leg of the League Cup semi-final against Liverpool consisted of him playing snooker until 2am, so he decided to have it out with him in front of the rest of the lads.
We were all listening outside the dressing room when it kicked off. Chris was absolutely boiling and hit out and cut Mark’s eye with a right-hander. He thought Mark was going to hit him, so he got his retaliation in first. Mark had pushed him to the limit and Chris snapped. He was a big man and I don’t think many people would have fancied their chances in a fist fight with this big, bruising ex-centre-half. Mark Wright took Mark Dennis to hospital for stitches, and typically Denno just wanted to come straight back and finish it off once he’d been patched up. He stormed back into the changing room to find Chris having a shower, naked in all his glory. Thankfully Mark Wright stepped in and calmed it down, which was unusual for him. As soon as he was dressed, Chris went up to see a senior club official and told him he had just punched Mark Dennis. ‘It’s about time somebody did,’ came the reply.
4 IT’S STUART PEARCE—‘OH…MY…GOD!’ (#ulink_775df543-f44d-5ad9-be2f-742505597e60)
IT WAS LIKE ONE OF THOSE KIDS’ CARTOONS WHERE
A FEARSOME BULL IS SNORTING STEAM AND PAWING
THE GROUND BEFORE CHARGING.
I got my proper first-team start—and I don’t mean as a sub—when I was 17, playing in a Division One (now the Premier League) game against Spurs. That was a big one. The team I’d supported as a boy. The team with Glenn Hoddle, my idol. He was everything I wanted to be. I was fascinated by what he could do with a ball and by his range of passing with both feet. He was a great vollier and scored some fantastic goals from outside the box. Everything he did I tried to emulate. I can’t put into words just how important he was to me.
Things had been building up nicely because I’d already made my debut at St James’ Park—no, not Newcastle, Exeter—after I’d been included in the pre-season tour. I was still in my second year as an apprentice, and came on for the last 20 minutes of a 1-1 draw and was chuffed to read the write-up in the Southampton Echo which said I’d had a confident baptism and stole the show with some dazzling ball work. That gave me a real confidence boost because in those days I thought the press knew what they were talking about. I’d always read the papers if I had done OK but not if I’d had a stinker. I didn’t need some reporter rubbing it in, and if someone is slagging you off that’s not good for the confidence. I’d pick and choose when to read the papers, and I’d tell any young players to do the same.
My first senior appearance at The Dell came a few weeks later as a sub in a 4-1 win against Benfica in a testimonial match for Nick Holmes, although I didn’t play very well. Then I was called in to the senior squad for a league game at Norwich on August 30, 1986. These days, with five or even seven subs, it’s easier for a youngster to get on the bench, but back then there was only one sub allowed so it was a big ask to give the number 12 shirt to a kid. We were 3-2 down when I was sent on for the last 15 minutes with instructions to change the game, and I did. We lost 4-3.
First thing on the Monday morning I was summoned to Chris Nicholl’s office and I remember thinking I had only been on for 15 minutes so I couldn’t have had time to do that badly, but he wanted to let me know I’d be starting the following night. Giving me 24 hours’ notice was a brilliant decision. Normally he didn’t announce the team until the day of the match, but he knew it wouldn’t be easy for my family to get over from Guernsey. And he knew how important they were to me, so he gave me the nod which was a lovely touch. In the end 24 friends and family came over, although I have no idea how I managed to get them all tickets.
It was fantastic just to be told I was starting, but even more special because it was against Spurs. The fact I had 24 hours’ notice meant I had plenty of time to get nervous, but I spent most of the build-up wondering whether my parents were going to get there. There was only one seat left on the plane so Mum told Dad to take it and promised she would get there somehow. She ended up getting a boat and a lift so it really was a case of trains, planes and automobiles. The butterflies grew as the match drew nearer and I was a bit worried about the physical side as I was just a skinny lad and didn’t know how to look after myself at that time—but that’s what Jimmy Case was there for! I got a lot of support from all of the lads who were really helpful.
Bizarrely, I don’t remember too much about the game, which zipped by in a blur. I know I started on the right wing and that we won 2-0 with goals by Colin Clarke and Danny Wallace, and I played the full 90 minutes, which was a bit of a surprise. My big moment was when Mark Blake hit a ball out from the back. It was going over my shoulder but I produced a bit of great control, brought the ball down and cut inside Mitchell Thomas and slipped a reverse pass to Danny Wallace, putting him one-on-one. He rounded the keeper but slotted it into the side-netting just as I was ready to celebrate my first assist. I also remember Chris Waddle—CHRIS WADDLE of all people—got booked for a foul on me. Five minutes from time I got cramp in both hamstrings but no one noticed and I didn’t care because I was on such a high.
My debut gave me a massive boost because I now knew I could play at that level and not look out of place. And of course the £35 win bonus came in very handy. That doesn’t sound much now, especially compared to the players’ huge salaries, but I have never been motivated by money. The biggest basic wage I ever earned was £3,950 per week. That was from the four-year contract I signed in July 1997. The first year I received £3,450 per week, the second I got £3,700 per week and in the third £3,950 per week. And the fourth year? £3,450, but that’s a chairman for you (thank you, Rupert Lowe).
People always ask if I wish I was playing now with all that money in the game and my answer is always the same…
Of course I bloody well do.
Though I was never money-motivated, when I see very ordinary players getting 10 or even 20 times what I did, it does rankle. On the other hand I played in a fabulous era, the money was decent and you didn’t get the intrusive media. And I don’t think I’d have got away with eating the way I did, or playing with such freedom. I couldn’t have put up with that, not even for £60,000 a week. I certainly think I was good enough for the modern game but the big question is, would I have been given the chance? If I was coming through the ranks as a young lad now clubs would probably take one look at my work-rate and get rid of me.
So what’s wrong with the modern game? Where shall I start?
It’s taken much too seriously in every way, as a business, sports science, you name it.
The players don’t look as though they enjoy it, like we did.
There is too much pressure. It’s so serious.
I’d love to see more home-grown players being brought through the system without all these big buys from abroad. Certain clubs develop their own talent but not enough.
And the money is now quite staggering; clubs need to ask if they are getting value for the vast salaries they are paying out.
Rant over. I was very grateful for that win bonus against Spurs. We were given the day off after the game and I spent most of it reading match reports. The Echo described me as a ‘mere slip of a lad’ for the first and only time in my career. We trained on the Thursday and the Friday and I kept my place for the Saturday home game against Nottingham Forest. I felt really confident as I lined up on the right wing and then I saw Forest’s left-back Stuart Pearce and just thought, ‘Oh…My…God!’ It was like one of those kids’ cartoons where a fearsome bull is snorting steam and pawing at the ground before charging.
STUART WAS THESCARIEST MAN IHAVE EVERPLAYED AGAINST,BY A MILE. ALL ICAN SAY IS IT IS AGOOD JOBSAINTS PLAYEDIN DARK-COLOUREDSHORTS.
Stuart was the scariest man I have ever played against, by a mile. All I can say is it is a good job Saints played in dark-coloured shorts. I was terrified. His thighs were wider than my torso. I think I got three kicks in that first half, and all from him. The first time he clattered me it was like ‘Welcome to the First Division son.’ To be honest I didn’t even try and take him on. The look in his eyes was enough. It was a steep learning curve for me but I can’t have done too badly because I got seven out of 10 in the paper even though we lost 3-1. Colin Clarke brought us level at 1-1 with 16 minutes to go, but they won with two goals from Gary Birtles and one from Neil Webb. It’s just as well there was only one sub back then because otherwise I might well have been off.
I found myself back on the bench after that and I was probably lucky not to be dropped altogether. In fact Chris Nicholl made a special point of kicking lumps out of me in training. I think he was trying to toughen me up and to get me used to facing players like Stuart Pearce. Chris had a real mean look in his eyes and you could tell he meant every kick, but I really believe he thought he was doing the best for me. After that I spent quite a lot of time on the bench, which was very frustrating. I think he was trying to protect me and bring me through slowly, just like Sir Alex Ferguson did with Ryan Giggs.
I, of course, thought I was good enough to play every week and reckoned I’d tell Chris, really tell him, well, once I got a bit braver. He was scary, an old-fashioned tea-cup thrower. After a defeat he had a terrible habit of picking on one person, normally me because I was the youngster. Very few dared answer back but I remember one game at home to QPR when it was 1-1 with 15 minutes left and we lost 4-1. It was rare for us to be turned over at The Dell like that, and two of the goals came from outside the area. Tim Flowers was in goal and didn’t get anywhere near them.
Chris stormed into the dressing room and slammed the door. No one dared make eye contact because we knew he’d be going for someone. Thankfully it was Tim. Chris yelled, ‘Goalie, you’ve let in two goals from outside the box and got nowhere near them. Have your eyes ever been checked?’ Tim couldn’t help himself and replied, ‘No, they have always been blue.’ How he wasn’t the second player to be punched by Chris I’ll never know. Chris was so stunned he didn’t know what to say.
Tim always had a reply but even he was dumbfounded after one game when he was injured while conceding the second goal. We were 2-1 down at half-time and Tim hobbled off the pitch. The physio Don Taylor was checking his ankle in the dressing room and Chris was laying into him as he lay there in agony. Don eventually managed to get a word in edgeways and said Tim would have to be subbed and would need to go to hospital for an x-ray.
Chris paused and then, in his distinctive northern accent, said, ‘If it’s broken, sorry. If not, W****R!’
5 I GET RON ATKINSON FIRED AND FERGIE HIRED (#ulink_ee599c46-8b18-5f23-81a0-90c40564865f)
‘CHRIS NICHOLL WAS QUITE RELUCTANT TO GIVE ME
A CHANCE IN MY EARLY DAYS BUT WHENEVER THE GAME
WAS NOT GOING WELL, THE SAINTS FANS WOULD CHANT:
“WE WANT LE TISSIER”. I WAS NEVER ONE FOR DOING
MUCH WARMING UP BUT I KNEW IF I JOGGED UP THE
TOUCHLINE THE CROWD WOULD START SINGING MY
NAME—AND IT USED TO WIND UP THE MANAGER NO
END—SO I DID IT EVEN MORE!’
One of the great things about coming through the ranks was having a minder to look after me on the field. Jimmy Case took it upon himself to look after the young players. If anyone tried to kick us, he would note their number and give them a whack; anyone, that is, except Stuart Pearce. After 40 minutes of that game against Forest, I jogged inside and said, ‘Jim that’s three times he’s done me’. Jimmy just said, ‘Not today son!’
I GREW UPWATCHINGSHILTON PLAYFOR ENGLANDAND SUDDENLY IWAS A COCKY17-YEAR-OLDTRYING TO CHIPHIM INTRAINING.
It was brilliant having senior players like Jimmy Case, Mark Dennis and Joe Jordan as minders on the field and being able to work with them in training. Joe was so fit, one of the best trainers I worked with—not that I followed his example. It was quite daunting though to betraining alongside such big names as Peter Shilton. I grew up watching him play for England and suddenly I was a cocky 17-year-old trying to chip him in training. It felt quite bizarre. He was the greatest keeper I’d ever seen and there I was trying to take the mickey out of him. I very rarely succeeded, but when I did, he hated it. Back then there was no such thing as a goalkeeping coach so Shilts used to take the sessions for the keepers, working with Phil Kite and my old mate Keith Granger.
There were times when Shilts would turn up for training looking a bit rough. We would go out and warm up then I would turn round after 20 minutes to see him walking off the field and heading for home. He was a law unto himself and just trained when he felt like it. For the majority of the time he trained like a Trojan and would really put himself and the others through a tough session. I really used to look forward to the times when he was on top form because it would be really difficult to get a shot past him and you got a real high if you did it. He hated being beaten, even in training.
It took me two months to get off the mark but I’ll never forget my first goals, and nor will Ron Atkinson. They came in a Littlewoods Cup tie against Manchester United at The Dell on November 4, 1986. We were 2-0 up when I came off the bench to score twice in a 4-1 win. The referee, Lester Shapter, allowed my first despite a massive shout for offside. There was a long kick from the keeper, Colin Clarke challenged in the air but the ball actually came off their defender. If Colin had made contact then I’d have been offside but I ran on and chipped the keeper.
I was so excited that I slid on both knees towards the fans at the Milton Road end of the ground—and then I saw the ref consulting the linesman. My heart sank because I thought I was going to look a complete arse if he disallowed it, but thankfully it stood. My second came from a Jimmy Case corner and I rose majestically (the only way to describe it!) to score with a downward header so my first two goals for Saints came, strangely, with my left foot and my head. Two days later Ron’s time was up and he was sacked. I didn’t feel guilty because it wasn’t down to that one result but it was definitely the final straw. I did think it was a shame that he lost his job because he was a good manager but, as it turned out, that was Fergie’s big chance. I hadn’t done the rest of the league any favours.
Four days later I scored my first league goal but it counted for nothing as we got thumped 3-1 at Sheffield Wednesday. I was sent on when we were already 3-0 down so I was never likely to have much impact, but Jimmy Case chipped one through for me to run on to and lob over Martin Hodge. I was on a high. With three goals in four days I thought it was the start of something good but Chris didn’t put me in the team for the next game, home to Arsenal. Maybe he was trying to keep my feet on the ground, but I have always believed in picking your best players and the ones in form. In fact it was a good one to miss because we lost 4-0, but I got a big boost from an article by Saints legend and record goalscorer Mike Channon who described me as the new Ian Rush. He called me deceptively quick and said my football brain would take me a long way and that Liverpool should try to sign me. So on the one hand my ego was soaring but on the other I spent a lot of that season on the bench, usually being sent on with the instruction to try and rescue the game. I very rarely got on when we were winning. But I do remember having fantastic support from the crowd. Whenever we were drawing the Milton Road end would start chanting ‘We want Le Tissier’. Chris Nicholl was quite stubborn; the more the fans chanted my name, the more reluctant he became to put me on. I was never one for doing much warming up but I knew if I jogged up the touchline the crowd would start singing my name—and it used to wind up the manager no end—so I did it even more!
Chris thought I wasn’t physically developed enough to play 90 minutes. Looking back, I see he was trying to protect me a bit BUT in my opinion, and I have told him this, I think he went too far. He should have given me more starts. I proved I could last a full match when I scored my first senior hat trick. It came in the snow against Leicester in the first week of March. I put us 1-0 up at half-time when Mark Wright knocked the ball down in the box and I crashed it into the roof of the net with my left foot. I remember Chris Nicholl had to virtually force Mark Wright back onto the pitch after the interval—he was refusing to go because it was so cold. I’ve never seen anything like it. His ears had turned blue and he was determined to stay in the warmth of the dressing room. Danny Wallace set me up for my second, a tap-in at the far post from his cross from the left. And then, with eight minutes left, came the pièce de resistance. I picked the ball up just inside the Leicester half and set off on a mazy run. The pitch was heavy and sodden and the snow was swirling around and I got a bit lucky when Russell Osman came in to tackle me and the ball fell back into my path. The better you are, the luckier you get. My first shot was blocked by the goalkeeper Ian Andrews but it came back to me and I rammed it in.
The best thing was that it came on a rare weekend when my dad came over to watch. It was the first time since my debut because it wasn’t usually worth trekking over from Guernsey just to see me sit on the bench. I immediately got the lads to sign the ball and gave it to my dad to thank him and my mum for all their amazing help and support. And I lapped up the headlines, particularly ‘The Wizard In The Blizzard’ which was a damn sight better than ‘Matt The Hat—And Dad Came Too’.
Even better, I reckoned I’d made my point with Chris Nicholl. I couldn’t just last 90 minutes against tough, physical opposition in the freezing cold but score by the bucket. But no. Nothing changed, even though the fans were begging for me to play. I remember Chris said he didn’t give a monkeys about all the pressure on him to play me. As he very delightfully said, ‘With a face like mine, you don’t get hurt by criticism.’
6 PUNCH UPS, HANGOVERS AND LADY BOYS (#ulink_5432cde4-49b8-54ba-bc6a-ba024b6c255c)
‘IF WE ARE GOING TO GET A ROLLOCKING AT 8.30
IN THE MORNING THEN IT MAY AS WELL BE FOR
SOMETHING WORTHWHILE!’
Everyone wants to know—what happens on club trips abroad? I’ll tell you: sex, drinks and fights.
At that time I wasn’t old enough to drink, and didn’t want to. And on just £100 a week I didn’t have a lot of spare spending money so, while the rest of the lads went out drinking in Singapore in 1987, I stayed in the hotel. My vice was nipping out to KFC for a bargain bucket at one o’clock in the morning. But for the rest of the lads it was like they’d they had been let off the leash—and it was quite an eye-opener for an innocent young lad.
On our last night I was woken at 2am by my room mate who had better remain anonymous. He told me to get out of the room for half an hour. As a 17-year-old I had no idea why or where I was supposed to go. He told me to go and sit in reception and, as I went out, this thing walked in. I think it was a woman but you can’t be sure out there. Certainly one of the lads got more than he bargained for when he took a ‘woman’ back to his room only to learn the truth when it was too late. Now if that had been me I’d never have told a soul. But he made the mistake of telling Jimmy Case in confidence, and as captain Jim felt it was his duty to ensure everyone knew.
I did go out one night but I stayed sober and just sat at the bar enjoying watching everyone else get more and more drunk. At one point Jimmy Case caught my eye and started waving to someone over my shoulder. I thought that he’d seen someone he knew but, as he walked past me, he said, ‘That feller keeps waving at me. I’m going to have a word with him.’ It was only when he walked into a huge mirror that he realized it was his reflection and that he’d been waving at himself.
Jimmy loved a drink and was fantastic value on a night out. I remember one trip to Puerta Banus near Marbella. Jimmy started before we even left Heathrow so by the time we landed he’d already had quite a bit. On the way to the hotel he made the coach driver stop at a supermarket and bought even more beer so, by the time we checked in, a lot of the lads were pissed. They just dumped their stuff in the rooms and hit the town. By midnight Jimmy wasn’t making too much sense, in fact he could barely stand.
Dennis Rofe, the first-team coach, was meant to supervise us and make sure we didn’t go too far. Now Dennis liked a drink and a good night out as much as anyone. When he was a player at Leicester he once threw a punch at someone who was threatening him only to find it was his reflection in a shop window. So he had a lot in common with Jimmy, but even he could see that Casey was hammered. After some considerable effort he finally managed to pour Jim into a taxi and took him back to the hotel. Somehow he managed to prop Jim over his shoulder and dragged him into his room and threw him on the bed to sleep it off. As a responsible member of the coaching staff, Dennis thought he had better go right back and check on the rest of us, so he got the taxi back and walked straight into Sinatra’s Bar. And there was Jimmy, sitting at the end of the bar, raising a toast. The look on Dennis’s face was priceless, and to this day I have no idea how Jimmy got back before him.
Jimmy was a formidable character when he had been drinking, as I found out when I ended up playing cards with him until 5am on another trip. We were staying at the Atalaya Park Hotel on the Costa del Sol and he owed me £80, which was a fortune to me back then. We had no cash on us so we were just writing the stakes on bits of paper. Jimmy was getting more and more drunk and wouldn’t let me go to bed while he was losing. Eventually he staggered away to the toilet so I legged it out the door and back to my room. I was sharing with Francis Benali who, incidentally, never got up to anything on these foreign trips. So he was well chuffed to be woken by me shouting that Jimmy had kept me prisoner for five hours and now owed me £80. Suddenly there was a loud bang on the door and I hissed ‘Don’t answer it.’
Next thing there was a loud bang on every door as Jimmy went down the corridor, trying to find someone who wasn’t asleep. I conked out but was woken by a rap on the patio doors. Jimmy had climbed over his balcony and was standing outside trying to get in. We just hid and eventually he calmed down and went off. Next morning, when we left the room, we were greeted by the sight of Ray and Rod Wallace’s door hanging off its hinges. It wasn’t the normal flimsy door but a big, thick wooden one and Jim had just demolished it. Apparently he wanted someone to lend him some batteries for his personal stereo. It proved mighty expensive because the cost of the door got added to his bill. And no, I never did get that £80—and I’m still not brave enough to ask for it.
The only time Jim had a drink ahead of a match was the night before the final game of the 1986-87 season. I was injured so I was back home in Guernsey but I heard all about it from Glenn Cockerill who was rooming with him, and who also liked the occasional drink. We were away to Coventry and both teams were safe and, with no prize money in those days, there was nothing riding on the match. So the lads had a few quiet drinks the night before, but Jim kept going all night. His breath was still reeking of alcohol when the game kicked off and he’d hardly had any sleep.
After five minutes we won a corner and Jim went up to take it. Coventry cleared it, broke and won a corner of their own. It was Peter Shilton’s job to set up the defence and tell everyone who to mark, and he noticed that Jim was missing. Everyone looked round and eventually spotted him still at the other end of the pitch, where we’d had our corner, sat on a wall talking to a spectator. He was quickly subbed after that.
After games, the lads would usually end up at Jeeves nightclub, but as I’ve said, at 17 and 18 I didn’t really drink. However I do remember being talked into going out one night for a few rounds. I was living in digs and didn’t want to wake everyone at 2am so Jim said I could stay at his place. We got back there at 2.30am and Jim started cooking bacon sandwiches while I sat in the lounge. I honestly just wanted to see his medal collection because he had won just about everything in the game, except an England cap, which is unforgivable when you think of his talent. On international weeks at Liverpool he’d be training all on his own. Everyone else would be with England and Scotland, etc. He was different class and I just wanted to see his championship medal because I had never seen one. I was stood looking at his trophy cabinet when his wife Lana came downstairs to see who’d woken her up.
JIM KEPT GOINGALL NIGHT. HISBREATH WASSTILL REEKING OFALCOHOL WHENTHE GAMEKICKED OFF ANDHE’D HARDLYHAD ANY SLEEP.
She had a bit of a go at Jim and I thought I was going to be in the middle of a domestic when she started having a go at me. She said, ‘What do you think you are doing?’ I stammered, ‘Jim said I could stay here…’ She hit back, ‘No, I mean what d’you think you are doing trying to keep up with Jim? You’ve got no chance.’ She packed me off to bed and warned me never to try that again. I was woken by the sound and smell of Jim cooking a full fry-up including eggs from the geese he kept in his garden.
For such a hard-tackling, harddrinking player Jimmy was very domesticated. On away trips he’d look after the whole team on the coach, making cups of tea and plates of toast. He was really happy doing it. Here was this senior pro, a real big name in the game who was happy to be the waiter. He also looked after his training kit. Most of the lads just chucked it on the floor to be cleared up by the apprentices but Jim always folded his up neatly. He was brilliant like that but very different when he’d had a few.
It was quite an eye-opener for a naïve young lad who had grown up on Guernsey with something of a sheltered upbringing. I don’t think the wives were particularly pleased about these trips but it did us good to relax in a different country, and that togetherness played a huge part in keeping Saints in the top flight. We weren’t the most talented team but we had a real bond and spirit which got us through a lot of matches. You certainly couldn’t have a conversation without one of the lads taking the mickey. If you said something stupid, you instantly panicked wondering if anyone else would pick up on it, and invariably they did. Equally, there was a time and a place for it—which took me time to learn. I was always ready with a cheeky quip but it wasn’t always appreciated. These trips were brilliant for banter and team spirit. And of course we went right OTT.
I remember when we almost got chucked out of the prestigious five-star Dona Filipa hotel on the Algarve. Why we went to a luxurious hotel during the season I’ll never know. It was full of really posh people dressed smartly for dinner while we were in shorts and T-shirts, larking around and getting drunk. There were several complaints about us so the hotel manager summoned Dennis Rofe who called a team meeting for 8.30am, which we thought was a bit unreasonable as we’d only just got in. We had no idea what was going on.
Dennis read the riot act and said the hotel manager was on the verge of throwing us out but he’d managed to talk him into giving us one last chance, and we had to be on our best behaviour or we were out. There was suddenly quite a sombre mood but I didn’t pick up on it because I hadn’t sobered up and piped up, ‘I thought if you were calling a meeting at 8.30 in the morning, it must be for something serious.’ Dennis had a face like thunder.
Generally Rofey was good value on tour, mucking in with the lads. As first-team coach he was a kind of bridge between the players and manager, someone for us to moan to or laugh with. He was popular with the fans too because he had Saints running through him, despite the fact that the club sacked him three times. The first time was when Chris Nicholl got sacked in 1991. The board assumed that the new manager would arrive with a ready-made coaching team, but that wasn’t the case. Ian Branfoot came solo so there was absolutely no reason for Rofey to go. Dave Merrington brought him back as youth team coach in July 1995, but he was sacked again a year later when Graeme Souness came in as manager and brought in his own team of coaches, most of whom weren’t a patch on Dennis, who returned for a third spell in April 1998. He was appointed as Academy coach but worked his way up through the Reserves to regain his position as first-team coach in March 2001. But he was sacked again in December 2005 following the appointment of George Burley who discarded most of the coaching staff. It was Rofe justice (OK, OK) because all the players and fans liked him, especially because he wore his trademark T-shirt on the touchline even when it was freezing in midwinter. He’d even had a stint at the club as a half-time pitch announcer, winding up the crowd to get behind the team, cracking jokes and even singing.
He fancied himself as a bit of a crooner and never hesitated to lead a sing song when he’d had a few. I remember a pre-season tour of Sweden and, after the final game, the host club laid on a dinner and drinks in a Wild West barn. There was a bucking bronco which all the lads tried, the beer flowed and Dennis got up on stage to sing a few Roy Orbison numbers before delivering a thank-you speech. Dennis thought it would be a nice touch to finish by thanking them in their native tongue but made the mistake of asking our midfielder, Anders Svensson, to tell him the Swedish for ‘Thank you and good luck.’ Dennis could never quite understand the lack of applause as he actually told them to kiss an intimate part of the female anatomy. Stunned silence all round.
Then there was the time we almost ended the career of one of England’s greatest ever strikers before it had begun. It was 1989 on a close-season trip to Portugal and Micky Adams, Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock and Barry Horne had been partying quite hard, ending up with Micky and ‘Razor’ having a punch-up even though they were best mates. They were thick as thieves but the punches were flying and I remember thinking it wasn’t a fair fight looking at the size of them. But Micky, who’s maybe 5ft 6in, could take care of himself; not for nothing was he known as Fusey because of his short temper. Anyway, everything quickly calmed down and I went back to my room while they resumed drinking until they had emptied their own mini-bars, and that’s when they went looking for someone else’s. Alan Shearer’s.
WHICH BRINGSME TO ANDYCOOK AND HISBIZARRE SEX-SPECTATORINJURY ON AMID-SEASONBREAK…
Alan wasn’t a big drinker so they decided there would be plenty of booze left in his fridge. He was relaxing in the bath as they burst into his room. ‘Razor’ emptied a bottle of vodka over Alan while Barry picked up his mini-bar and ran off with it down the corridor—as you do! Of course Alan jumped out of the bath and gave chase, unfortunately there were a load of glasses on top of the mini-bar and, as Barry raced off, they all smashed on the floor. Alan had nothing on his feet and as he ran through the shards of broken glass he practically severed three of his toes. They were cut to the bone and almost hanging off. Everyone sobered up pretty quick when they saw that. It is no exaggeration to say his career was hanging as precariously as his toes.
The only one sober enough to drive was a young lad called Steve Davis who went on to have a decent career as a player and coach with Burnley. He drove Alan to this primitive hospital where he was left in an A&E in a bed with no curtains beside an assortment of car crash and broken leg victims. Thankfully a doctor managed to sew the toes back on and no lasting damage was done, but I often wonder if he realized who he was treating and what a favour he did England.
Which brings me to Andy Cook and his bizarre sex-spectator injury on a mid-season break. We were staying at a hotel and one of the single lads brought a girl back to his room but left the curtains open. A Big Mistake. Of course we all climbed over the balcony from the next room to have a good look and, when he finally spotted us, we all clambered back apart from Andy who decided to jump to the ground. Next day in training he complained that his heel was sore but, when he was named in Saturday’s team, he decided not to mention it because he wasn’t a regular and wanted to play as much as possible. After 30 minutes he was subbed in pain and an x-ray showed he’d broken his heel with the jump. But sometimes things got even worse. Time to tell you about David Speedie, and how he joined Southampton.
In the autumn of 1992 we’d made our usual shocking start to the season. During the summer the club had decided to sell Alan Shearer, who had made it clear he wanted to move to bigger and better things. That was fair enough but Saints allowed themselves to be bullied by Blackburn through the negotiations, even though they were in the driving seat. Alan had three years left on his contract so Southampton did not have to sell, and they certainly did not have to accept any old deal. I think the directors’ eye lit up with pound signs at the prospect of a British record fee, and they rushed the deal through in case Alan got injured. They even pulled him out of a pre-season trip to Scotland for the same reason.
To be fair to Ian Branfoot (read all about it in Chapter 9), he wanted to take Blackburn striker Mike Newell as part of the deal, but Rovers didn’t want to let him go. Instead of playing hardball and holding out for a quality replacement, Saints caved in and sold Alan for £3m with NO sell-on clause. Even I can work out that if they had insisted on getting 20 per cent of any future fee then when Al eventually moved to Newcastle for £15m, Saints would have pocketed another £3m.
Instead of getting Mike Newell we ended up taking David Speedie. It seemed to me as though Speedo didn’t want to be here. He never got what Southampton was about, and it looked to me as though he resented being used as a makeweight in the deal. So Ian Branfoot spent part of the fee on Kerry Dixon in the hope of recreating the successful Dixon/Speedie partnership at Chelsea. Kerry had been an ace striker in his time but his best days were behind him. He had lost that yard of pace and sharpness and Speedie just didn’t settle. It was hardly a match made in heaven, and it didn’t help the situation or the fans’ mood when Branfoot made the staggering prediction that Speedie and Dixon would outscore Alan Shearer that season. Kerry got just two goals and Speedo precisely zero while Al had scored 16 by December, when he picked up a bad knee injury ruling him out for the rest of the campaign. The following season he scored 31. (Kerry did try and I set him up for both his goals, including his two-hundredth league strike at Leeds. I was through and could have shot but I knew he was on 199 and, the way things were going, this would be his only chance to get to 200 so I teed him up for a simple tap-in, and spurned my best chance to score at Elland Road. Leeds were the only established Premier League club that I failed to score against.)
Anyway, it is fair to say that David Speedie didn’t really settle in at Southampton. I don’t think he liked me and we certainly didn’t get off on the right foot. When he joined, he met up with us at the airport as we were heading off on a pre-season tour. As it happened the Manchester United players were at the same airport and I was chatting to Lee Sharpe because we shared the same agent. When we arrived at our hotel David Speedie accused me of being a big-time Charlie who wanted to talk only to the United players, and he promptly launched a bar stool at my head. Which was a good start. But he surpassed that several weeks into the season after we lost 2-1 at home to QPR. The fans were restless, the mood was grim. So the manager Ian Branfoot decided to take us to Jersey in the Channel Islands for a bonding trip. It suited me because it meant I was able to get home to Guernsey but it meant that I missed all the excitement.
After a meal the lads had a clear-the-air meeting in the bar where they went through all the things they felt were going wrong. As the alcohol flowed, the debate became increasingly heated to the point where David Speedie and Terry Hurlock came to blows. Very few people would ever dare tangle with Terry Hurlock but David Speedie didn’t worry about that. There were a few punches thrown and a bit of blood. Eventually it all calmed down and Speedo went off to clean himself up. As he walked back in Terry went to throw a heavy glass ash tray at his head—only for Micky Adams to get in the way. For once in his life Fusey was trying to act as peacemaker and paid the price, ending up with a cut on his forehead. To make matters worse, the hotel manager called the police and Micky ended up spending the night in the cells even though he’d done nothing wrong. Speedo was arrested and hauled before the courts the following morning before being sent home in disgrace.
I flew in from Guernsey a couple of hours later and turned up all bright and jolly. It was like gate-crashing a funeral. The mood in the camp was the most sombre I had ever experienced. There was no banter so I asked what was wrong and the lads looked at me as though I was an alien. There were no mobiles or Sky News in those days so I hadn’t heard. I was gutted to have missed it because I could have lobbed in a few of my sarcastic hand-grenades and inflamed the situation. (I met David Speedie on a golf trip to Mauritius last year. We ended up rooming together and he couldn’t have been nicer. He had certainly mellowed and I was even able to remind him of the bar stool incident without getting clouted. He was great company, good as gold and seemed very happy with life, so maybe he really didn’t want to be at Southampton.)
Games in the Channel Islands were always special to me, but for the rest of the lads they were a good chance for a few drinks and to stock up on the Duty Free before it was abolished. I remember a friendly against Guernsey in 1995 when half the team were still drunk at kick-off. I was a bit disappointed because a lot of people had turned out to see us, and my son Mitchell was our mascot. He ran out in a Southampton shirt with ‘7 Daddy’ on the back. He is 17 and very embarrassed by it now but it was cute at the time. We had to rely on a header from me to win the game 2-1 but I took it a bit personally that some of the lads couldn’t stay sober for a match which meant a lot to me.
Not all the foreign trips were to glamorous locations. We had a horrible trip to East Germany to play Carl Zeiss Jena before the wall came down. I can’t believe we went there; the club must have received a fair wedge to make it worthwhile. It was a real experience crossing the border, with East German armed guards searching every inch of the team coach. We were stuck there for at least an hour and the agent warned us not to do anything to antagonize the trigger-happy police. Even I knew when it was wise to keep quiet and we all sat there on our best behaviour—apart from John Burridge.
He was as mad as a bucket of frogs. He even slept with a football as part of his pre-match preparation and, when he was relaxing watching television, used to get his wife to suddenly throw oranges at him to test his reflexes. It was like Inspector Clouseau asking Kato to jump out and attack him. Anyway, ‘Budgie’ wasn’t noted for doing or saying the right thing and he kept on at one particular border guard asking him if there were landmines in no-man’s-land, the couple of miles of neutral territory between the two heavily armed border barriers. The guard steadfastly refused to answer him, so Budgie kept on asking. Eventually the guard admitted that there were mines in those fields and Budgie cracked, ‘Well, how do you dig up your potatoes then?’ Not the subtlest remark!
HE WAS AS MADAS A BUCKET OFFROGS. HE EVENSLEPT WITH AFOOTBALL ASPART OF HIS PRE-MATCHPREPARATION.
As we entered East Germany it was as though someone had flicked the view from colour to black and white. The whole place was so bleak and the poverty unbelievable. We had a stroll outside the hotel to try and buy souvenirs but the shops were empty apart from a few bits of rotting fruit. The food in the hotel was no better. We ate in a dungeon and it was the worst food I have ever tasted, but I did get one of the best tour gifts I ever received. Usually the players were given glassware or tacky commemorative souvenirs but we all got really nice watches from Zeiss.
The match was played in a stadium surrounded by a running track so there was very little atmosphere, and that was shattered by the sonic boom of East German fighters swooping low overhead every few minutes. But it meant a lot to the people that we were there. There was so little to brighten their lives that one guy cycled for four hours just to be there. We had a few souvenir pin badges to give out and each one caused a massive scramble, as though we were handing out food parcels. One guy burst into tears of joy at being given a simple badge.
Another grim trip was to Northern Ireland at the height of the troubles. We played a game at Cliftonville, a bizarre ground tucked right in the middle of terraced houses. We actually went in through some-one’s front door and out the back, into the stadium. Iain Dowie was a big player for Northern Ireland at the time but he was obviously the wrong religion as far as the home fans were concerned. They were hurling all sorts at him, not just verbal abuse but coins and bottles. Thankfully there were huge fences around the ground and it was easy to see why. It was a horrible atmosphere and the kids were so ill-mannered. They’d just stick a piece of paper in front of you and demand that you sign it without a please or a thank you or any patience. I signed for one scruffy kid who promptly kicked me on the shin and ran off. I would have chased after him but he was quicker than me.
I had a similar experience when we went to Portsmouth to play a testimonial for their long-serving goalkeeper Alan Knight. It’s no secret that there’s no love between the two neighbours. Most of the fans restrict it to heated banter but, for a small minority, it is pure hatred, even in friendlies. I remember one game at Havant’s ground when our goalkeeper Alan Blayney hung his towel through the back of his net only to turn round a few minutes later and find someone had set fire to it. The team coach had bricks thrown at it on the way home and that was just a Reserve game.
It might not have been a league game but the atmosphere for Knight’s testimonial was evil, even though we were there to do him a favour. They fielded a lot of ex-pros, 12 of them at one point. Despite their extra man we won 5-0. Afterwards I popped my head outside to see if I could find my uncle who had come to watch the match. There was a crowd of Pompey fans, most of whom were great and I was happy to sign autographs for them until one guy spat at me and threw a right-hander. I just saw it coming and dodged it.
A few years later, during Dave Merrington’s charge, we flew to Bahrain for a mid-season game. We were allowed to drink in the hotel and Dave was OK with us having a couple. He told us not to stay up late as we had a match the next day but he didn’t say don’t drink. Another Big Mistake. It was only an easy friendly against the Bahrain national side so a few of us had quite a lot to drink but the humidity was terrible. We’d have been struggling even if we had been in the right condition but we were all over the place. At half-time we were 2-1 down and Dave ripped into us saying, ‘I hope you lot haven’t been drinking.’ Lew Chatterley, the assistant manager, was standing behind Dave and his face was a picture because he knew what we had been up to. Dave was quite scary when he was in full rant and none of us dared look at him or at each other. He must have known by the way we were playing that we were still drunk, but we blamed it on the humidity. David Hughes literally couldn’t breathe because he had never played in such conditions and I risked Dave’s wrath by telling him he had to get David off the field. The gaffer was actually quite good about it and Hughesie has been grateful to me ever since because it was due far more to the alcohol than to the heat.
7 DODGY REFS AND HAT TRICKS (#ulink_8ff0881c-3595-594d-92d8-b164f3245da6)
‘COME ON MATT, DO SOMETHING—WE DON’T WANT
TO BE GOING TO EXTRA TIME!’
The 1987-88 season was a bad one for me. I only got two goals, one in the FA Cup and one in the League Cup, and I got suspended twice and missed quite a few games. I got sent off in back-to-back Reserve matches and in those days that also meant you could miss first-team games. But, not usually, I blame the refs.
We had to play Millwall at the old Den on a Tuesday afternoon. It was always a horrible place and we got stuck in traffic so we had to get changed on the team bus. One of the coaching staff had to run to the ground with the team-sheet and we eventually arrived at 2.50pm. The ref kindly agreed to put the kick-off back—to five past three. So, that helped! By 3.15 I was back in the dressing room. I got dismissed for not retreating 10 yards and then telling the ref that he was stupid. Well worth all the time and effort of getting to Millwall then.
The following week I was sent off again, at The Dell, supposedly for elbowing, although I’ll never believe that a foul was committed. I was dribbling the ball when a player came in to tackle me. I stuck out an arm to hold him off and the next thing I knew the ref had produced a red card. It meant a double ban so, in all, I only started 10 first-team games that season with nine more appearances as a sub. I didn’t manage a league goal but scored at Reading in a 1-0 FA Cup win and in a League Cup draw with Bournemouth. It was a really poor spell for me and maybe I was spending too much time gambling and at the snooker club where I’d spend 10-11 hours after training.
Let me tell you about David Axcell. We got off to a great start in 1988-89. We actually won our first three games, which is unheard of for Southampton. We began by beating West Ham 4-0 at The Dell, I came on as sub and scored, and as of 2008 the club have still won only one opening fixture in the 20 years since then. It meant we were top of the table and full of confidence when we went to Highbury and I scored my first goal at a big club. I had previously netted on the road at Hillsborough, Elm Park and Vicarage Road but those were my only previous away goals. It was a surreal moment. When I saw the ball in the net I couldn’t quite believe I had scored at Arsenal—especially being a Spurs fan. There was a two-second gap before it dawned on me and then I went bonkers.
We played well and raced into a 2-0 lead, and were all over Arsenal but we hadn’t counted on referee David Axcell. First of all he failed to see Arsenal midfielder Paul Davis punch Glenn Cockerill off the ball, breaking his jaw. I must admit I didn’t see it either because I had been subbed. I twisted an ankle quite badly soon after scoring so I had to go off and, as Arsène Wenger will confirm, the view is terrible from the Arsenal dug outs. I only realized how bad the injury was when Glenn came off. He needed a plate inserting in his cheekbone and was out for about eight weeks, roughly the same length of time as Paul Davis who was hit by a nine-match ban. It had been a very sly punch but it was captured on TV and Davis was done by the FA in one of the first uses of video evidence. He also received more immediate punishment from Jimmy Case who ran over to Glenn and said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ll get him.’
And he did. David Axcell awarded the Gunners a very dodgy penalty when the ball hit Kevin Moore’s arm from all of half a yard away. There is no way he could have avoided it but the ref pointed straight to the spot. All eyes were on Brian Marwood as he ran up to score the penalty so no one noticed Jimmy standing a bit further back from the edge of the area. As players from both sides went to follow up, Jimmy took a long run-up as though he was also following up but instead he ‘collided’ with Davis, who went off two minutes later!
Having missed the sly punch, Axcell assumed that Glenn had been time-wasting and added an incredible nine minutes of injury-time. It was before the days of the fourth official holding up a board so it seemed as though he was just playing on until Arsenal equalized, which they did seven minutes after the game should have ended. And that point ultimately won them the title. Everyone remembers Michael Thomas scoring at Anfield to win the league for Arsenal in the last minute of the season, but if they hadn’t been gifted that undeserved point against us they’d never have been champions.
I reckon we were robbed of a win, not just by Davis punching Glenn but by the ref who punished us for time-wasting when he had missed the cause of the hold-up. It wasn’t the last time a David Axcell decision would influence a game I played in. In 1992 we played West Ham at The Dell in the quarter-final of the Zenith Data Systems Cup. It was the first week in January and it was bitterly cold. No one wanted to be there. That included the players, the fans and, I’m pretty sure, Axcell. With 10 minutes to go it was 1-1, and with no replays there’d have been extra-time and penalties, and the pitch was beginning to freeze.
Axcell jogged past me—I was running full tilt at the time. He said, ‘Come on Matt, do something, we don’t want to be going to extra-time.’ Next time I got the ball I dribbled into the West Ham box. Tim Breacker put his arm on me, and I went down like a sack of spuds. Axcell immediately awarded us a penalty. I can’t be sure how it looked to him, but I thought the ref was a cheat for giving the penalty; it never really occurred to me that I was the cheat for going down. After all, it was frosty and I was slightly off-balance and I was genuinely amazed to see him point to the spot. I scored the penalty and we all went home.
I THOUGHT THEREF WAS ACHEAT FORGIVING THEPENALTY; ITNEVER REALLYOCCURRED TO METHAT I WAS THECHEAT FORGOING DOWN.
That set-back at Highbury seemed to stall our season and we lost our winning momentum but had a resurgence in November when Chris Nicholl won the Manager of the Month award after we beat Aston Villa 3-1. I scored with a header which I knew very little about. Nigel Spink went to punch the ball which grazed his hand; it hit me on the head and flew in. I celebrated like I had known what I was doing. That win put us third in the table, but it was our last victory until April. We went on an awful run of 17 league games without a win, diving from third top to third bottom. We didn’t even look like getting a victory, apart from an away game at Newcastle where we led 3-1 with 15 minutes to go when they sent on a young lad by the name of Michael O’Neill who scored twice, and then pretty much disappeared without trace. Tim Flowers took a whack on the head with 20 minutes to go and got concussion. He was celebrating in the dressing room because he thought we had won 3-1.
I scored past Dave Beasant but it was my last goal of the season. I had 11 goals by New Year and then no more. The team weren’t playing well and I was dropped. After 21 games without a win in all competitions, we faced a six-pointer at home to relegation rivals Newcastle on April Fool’s Day 1989, with the losers looking certain to go down.
I watched from the stands and it was an awful game between two sides badly lacking in confidence. Chris Nicholl had left me out because he felt I wasn’t the right sort of player for that kind of match which, in my opinion, was totally misguided. Totally. I thought as we were in serious trouble the team needed a creative spark. The match had 0-0 written all over it until injury-time when Rod Wallace skipped past the keeper who made the slightest contact. Rod was heading away from goal so there was no need for the foul but ref Gerald Ashby pointed to the spot. Derek Statham was the regular penalty-taker at the time but he was out injured, and I remember being gutted that I wasn’t on the pitch to take it. I would have loved the chance to be the hero, especially as none of the other lads fancied it with so much at stake. Then up stepped the unlikely figure of ‘Razor’ Ruddock, who at least had the bottle to have a go in only his sixth game for the club. I swear half the crowd ducked, expecting the ball to go high or wide or both, but he slammed it home for a 1-0 win. The outpouring of relief was incredible and it turned our season around. We lost only one of our last eight to finish an amazing thirteenth while Newcastle were relegated.
I was still trying to establish myself at that stage, and it wasn’t until the 1989-90 season that I became a regular. That was my first really good season and the one which made me think I had finally arrived. We played Wimbledon early on and I scored twice, one of which was my first penalty for the club. I got behind Terry Phelan down our right and managed to lob in a cross. Alan Shearer jumped for it with their centre-back Eric Young and goalkeeper Hans Segers who punched it clear. Amazingly, the ref gave a penalty for handball. After scoring that spot-kick against Newcastle, ‘Razor’ then missed one and Paul Rideout missed against Villa so Chris Nicholl decided to have a penalty competition in pre-season. I had always felt pretty confident of scoring with a free shot from 12 yards so I lined up with ‘Razor’, Glenn Cockerill, Rod Wallace and a few others whose hearts weren’t really in it. Chris Nicholl saw how serious I was about it and gave me the job.
A few games into that season, the club sold Danny Wallace to Manchester United, a move he memorably described as ‘the icing on the jam of my career’. But it meant that the manager obviously felt that Danny’s brother Rodney and I had developed enough to be able to become regulars in the side. Sadly, the move never worked out that well because Danny was plagued by injuries. At the time it just seemed that he was unlucky with niggles and strains but it turned out that he was in the early stages of Multiple Sclerosis. He has good days and bad days now, but he has done a lot of work to raise money and awareness for the charity. However his move helped me to play more games and I scored 24 goals that season. We played some fantastic stuff. Rod and I were just breaking into the team along with Alan Shearer. Tim Flowers and ‘Razor’ Ruddock were beginning to establish themselves and we still had the experience of Jimmy Case, Glenn Cockerill, Paul Rideout and Kevin Moore. And we also had a young Jason Dodd breaking through.
He had been signed from Bath City for £40,000 at the tail-end of the previous season, and he might as well have arrived with a piece of straw in his mouth he was that much of a yokel. He got loads of stick for his West Country roots but he dished it back, and went on to establish himself as a key member of the team for many years to come. He was a big personality, one of the loudest in the squad. You always knew when he was around because you could hear his booming laugh or his whinging—but he was a top pro and a decent player, just the kind you wanted.
He must have thought life at the top level was easy because both his first two games for the club ended in 4-1 wins. The first came away to QPR on October 14, 1989, when he was thrown in at the deep end but coped very well and we won convincingly. I celebrated my twenty-first birthday by scoring a penalty with Rod Wallace netting twice and Alan Shearer once. I decided to put highlights in my hair for the one and only time in my life. I looked shocking. A week later we were home to Liverpool who were then The Team to beat. They were top of the table and won the title at a canter that season. When they came to The Dell they were unbeaten, but it is no exaggeration to say we could have had six or seven. We hit the woodwork twice and forced some good saves as we tore the leaders to shreds. We absolutely battered them and it was one of the most complete team performances I can remember. I set up Rod Wallace for two goals and he returned the compliment by setting me up for a header. I remember flicking the ball over the head of David Burrows and crossing for Rod to volley through the legs of Bruce Grobbelaar. I got the last goal when Rod crossed from the left and I outjumped Burrows to nod in. Bruce got a hand to it but could only push it into the net. By then Liverpool were all over the place. We adopted an attacking 4-2-4 formation and had a right go, and they couldn’t handle it.
There was still a real buzz about the city the following day and I remember watching it back on ITV’s Big Match programme and wallowing in what was the best result I had ever had against one of the big teams. We had a terrific side and were probably only one or two good signings away from being genuine title contenders. Rod and I were scoring regularly and Alan Shearer was leading the line strongly, but we probably needed a couple of defenders. The midfield was getting on a bit and Chris Nicholl was under pressure to strengthen, so he splashed out a then club record of £750,000 on Alan McLoughlin from Swindon. He had done well for them against us when we played them in the League Cup. We drew up there, which was a real blow as the replay completely messed up the players’ Christmas party that was scheduled for the same night. We had a tough battle to get past them at The Dell. It was 2-2 after 90 minutes but we won 4-2 in extra-time after Chris Nicholl sent on Shearer and Ruddock to rough them up. They were christened the Bruise Brothers by the local paper and the tag stuck. Alan McLoughlin was Swindon’s main threat, so Chris signed him.
He was a bit of a panic buy. Although he was a decent player, he wasn’t what we then needed. He was a good footballer with a nice touch but lacked a bit of pace. His best position was in the hole just behind the front two, but the only way he would fit in was if they got rid of me or Rod, so he ended up playing out of position. Having got past Swindon we really should have gone on to Wembley because we were drawn at home to Oldham in the quarter-final. We were 2-1 up going into stoppage time at The Dell but somehow referee Roger Milford found four minutes of injury-time, even though neither physio had been on the field.
Oldham equalized and we knew we had no chance in the replay because they played on a plastic pitch. We hated that surface and were beaten before we even got on the coach. We were in completely the wrong frame of mind which was highlighted when we had the chance to equalize at 1-0 down. The ball was played across the box and it was crying out for Paul Rideout to hurl his head at it. But he held back and Chris Nicholl had a right go at him. Paul said, ‘You must be joking, I’m not diving on that stuff.’ Chris had a face like thunder. I honestly thought I was going to see him punch a player for the second time. There was steam coming out of his ears which at least took the pressure off the rest of us because we were all crap. That plastic pitch gave Oldham a huge advantage and they beat West Ham by six in the semi-final and went on to lose to Forest at Wembley, on grass. It was a hard final to watch because we knew it should have been us in it.
IT WAS THE ONLYTIME IN MYCAREER ITHOUGHT IMIGHT MISSBECAUSE I KNEWIF I SCOREDTHERE’D BE HELL.
We were still leaking goals but had enough firepower to outscore a lot of teams. I was feeling at home on the big stage and full of confidence, apart from an away game at Millwall. The old Den was a horrible ground, caged in and menacing. It was a great atmosphere for the Millwall players because it gave them a real lift, but away teams never felt comfortable. I was stuck out on the wing so I was close to the crowd who were giving me fearful abuse. We were losing 2-1 with a minute to go when Glenn Cockerill broke through the inside right channel and the keeper brought him down, the ref pointed to the spot and I had the job of taking the penalty in front of their fans. It was the only time in my career I thought I might miss because I knew if I scored there’d be hell. But I came to my senses and sent Brian Horne the wrong way to get a point.
I also got a couple of hat tricks in quick succession. My first for the club came in the return game against Wimbledon at Plough Lane in a match when Francis Benali got a red card for launching John Fashanu into orbit. To this day I have never seen a player go that high. He came down with ice. Of all the people for Franny to pick on. We were losing 3-1 when we went down to 10 men, but we came back to draw 3-3. I scored another penalty after Rod Wallace fell over. It wasn’t even a dive. John Scales was nowhere near him but the ref pointed to the spot, it was really funny. It was my second hat trick but I never got the ball—typical Wimbledon. My first goal took a deflection off Eric Young so they wouldn’t give it to me.
Soon afterwards, against Norwich, I got my second hat trick at The Dell, which is still my favourite treble. The first goal was a tap-in from a Kevin Moore knock-down, but I really enjoyed the next two goals. I picked the ball up about 40 yards from goal and went on a dribble. I beat my old mate Andy Townsend but didn’t have the pace to get away from him. I found him back in my way so I beat him again and scored with a lovely low right-footer in off the post. Then Francis Benali nicked the ball off their winger and hit it up the left wing to me. Their defender committed himself and I nicked the ball past him. I was still a long way from goal and right out on the left touchline but I saw Bryan Gunn coming out a long way and wondered what he was doing. I didn’t have the energy to take the ball any further and I had the whole goal to aim at so I chipped it over him. The ball drifted and hit the inside of the far post and bounced in.
At the end of that season I won the Barclays Young Eagle of the Year award and the PFA Young Player of the Year award. The PFA was a huge honour, being recognized by my fellow professionals, even more so when I saw the previous winners. The worst thing was having to make a speech. I had an idea I might have won—or at least got close—because my agent had been told to make sure I attended. And he wrote a speech for me, just in case. I’d never done any public speaking so he offered to help—and I reckoned that if an agent offered to help free of charge I must have won. And the organizers getting Saints legend Terry Paine to present the award was another big clue. I found myself rehearsing the speech in the toilets 15 minutes before the announcements. When Rod Wallace came third it was a double celebration.
The Barclays Young Eagle award was a more low-key affair so I was able to wear an open-necked short-sleeved shirt with no jacket, although Chris Nicholl wasn’t too impressed by that. It was good of him to attend to support me, but I remember getting into an argument with him because I was convinced I could be a sweeper. That would have meant playing two hulking great centre-backs to win the ball and give it to me to ping around like Franz Beckenbauer or Glenn Hoddle, making me look like a world-beater. I was always cool under pressure so I felt I could do that—although I must admit part of me was winding Chris up, getting back at him for all the times when he’d kicked me in training.
8 WHY I TOLD SOUNESS, HODDLE AND VENABLES TO GET LOST (#ulink_3dc86a6c-77d6-59f7-9ba4-4c298a1427b3)
‘I SIGNED THE CONTRACT AND WATCHED AS IT WAS
LOCKED IN THE SAFE. IT WAS SETTLED. I WAS JOINING
MY BOYHOOD HEROES. I WAS ABOUT TO BECOME
A SPURS PLAYER.’
After those awards and those goals, people woke up to Matt Le Tissier. Especially Tottenham. I got a phone call from my agent Jerome Anderson to say Spurs were interested, asking if I’d speak to them. I wasn’t going to say no, not to the team I’d always supported. Though Terry Venables was the manager I didn’t speak to him, and the deal was done through their lawyers and their agent. We had a meeting at a solicitor’s office in north London a couple of months before the end of the season. Saints didn’t know anything about it, but I agreed terms and signed a contract which was locked away in the safe in the solicitor’s office. Then it’d be brought out at the end of the season, when the clubs had agreed a fee.
Ironically our last game of the season was away to Spurs. We’d played Arsenal away a couple of days earlier and, if we’d won both matches, would have finished third. Instead we lost both and ended up seventh, but that was still my highest ever finishing position. I was due to get married (for the first time) that summer and after the Spurs game my fiancée, Cathy, announced that she didn’t want to live in London, so I had a decision to make. Go or stay. I decided to stay with Saints and don’t regret it at all, even though we ended up getting divorced. I made the decision, no one else. It’s a waste of time thinking, what if? I phoned Jerome and told him, and he was good as gold and never tried to tell me I was making a mistake, even though he could see his commission going right out the window. He never put any pressure on me. He’d just put offers in front of me and let me make up my own mind.
I then got a message from Terry Venables saying he respected my decision, but that he’d still like to speak to me on the phone. I declined (as I did later with Glenn Hoddle) because I didn’t want to be put in a position where I might be tempted to change my mind. Cathy didn’t fancy living in London, so what was the point? I don’t know if Terry held that against me when he was England manager. It’s true he picked me, but not as many times as I think he should have done.
The good news was knowing what Spurs were prepared to pay me. So I went back to Southampton and negotiated a new contract just like the one I’d have got at White Hart Lane. I now got £1,100 per week in the first year, £1,200 pw in the second and £1,300 pw in the third, but I’d have stayed even if they’d said no. Maybe I’d have won more England caps by moving club, but I was happy where I was.
I had two other opportunities to move. The first came a couple of years later when Jerome rang and said one of the biggest clubs in Europe was in for me. He didn’t want to tell me about it over the phone so I had to drive up to London to meet him in a hotel. I went up thinking it might be Real Madrid or Barcelona but it turned out to be Liverpool. Graeme Souness was the manager but again I didn’t even meet him. The move never got off the ground because I didn’t fancy living up north. Nothing against the north—but I preferred to live where I didn’t need a translator. If I’d ever moved from Southampton then I wouldn’t have gone any further than London, so Liverpool was never an option.
The only other time I came close to leaving Saints was in 1995 when Chelsea came in for me. I had a lot of things to weigh up. At that point Alan Ball was manager at Southampton and it was a brilliant time for me. He brought the best out of me and made me feel good about myself. I was happy playing for him and for Saints, I knew I’d be playing every week and I was still in the England squad. And I was in the top division. If Saints had ever been relegated then I’d have been put in a tough position. If they hadn’t bounced straight back then I think I’d have been yearning to play in the top division and would have asked for a move, but fortunately none of that happened.
So did I lack ambition? That’s what they said. But listen—I’d set my ambitions high when I was seven or eight. I wanted to be a professional footballer and play for England. By the age of 25 I had done both. If any of my critics could claim to have fulfilled their life’s ambition by the time they were 25 then they’d be entitled to their say. But most of the negative comments were coming from people who didn’t know me or who had never played the game, and definitely not to my level. So it hurt me when people said I lacked ambition because they had no idea about where I had come from or what my goals were. They certainly had no idea about my background and what an achievement it was to break away from the Channel Islands. Unless you have grown up there, you cannot begin to understand what a sheltered background it is.
A LOT OFPLAYERS MOVECLUBS CLAIMINGIT’S BECAUSETHEY AREAMBITIOUS.DON’T LET THEMFOOL YOU; THEYARE USUALLYAFTER THE EXTRACASH.
Over the decades there have been very few professional footballers (Graeme Le Saux is the obvious example) from the Channel Islands, which have a combined population of only around 150,000. To come from there and play for England is a pretty big achievement in my eyes—particularly as I managed to balance that with personal happiness, which always meant much more to me than money. And it’s worth stressing that a lot of players move clubs claiming it’s because they are ambitious. Don’t let them fool you; they are usually after the extra cash. Nothing wrong with that, so long as they’re being honest. The fans aren’t stupid, they see through it—as they did when Lucas Neill chose West Ham over Liverpool claiming he was ambitious. Nothing against the Hammers, but how could he say that West Ham had more chance of winning cups than Liverpool? And look at the likes of Steve Sidwell, who was great for Reading. He was playing every week but then moved to Chelsea, knowing full well that he wouldn’t be a regular but he’d be paid more. Is that ambition?
Is a player better off getting silly money every week but sitting on the bench, or playing regularly, earning less and keeping his self-respect? I know what I chose. And earning less does NOT mean that you are being badly paid. You can’t blame the players for taking that sort of money if it’s offered, but there comes a time when you have to wonder how much more money someone can actually spend? If you are already on £30,000 a week, what else could you buy if you get £40,000? The only difference for the likes of Steve Sidwell is they’d have more time to spend it because they’re not playing! I know times were different during my career, but the most I ever earned was just under £4,000 a week. I could never have handled sitting on the bench, week after week, and being sent on as an ‘impact player’, just for the extra cash. It was bad enough when I was dropped—and every manager left me out at some point—apart from Dave Merrington and Alan Ball. At least at Southampton I didn’t have to worry about rotation because we never had a big enough squad for that. And I’d have hated being left out even when I was playing well simply to give others a chance. I never had a problem being dropped if I was going through a bad spell, and never went knocking on the manager’s door about it. I simply waited for them to lose a couple of games, then knew I’d be back in again.
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Matt Tissier
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Хобби, увлечения
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 18.04.2024
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О книге: The fascinating, insightful and at times hilarious memoirs of one of the most gifted and enigmatic British footballers of the last 25 years.Nicknamed «Le God» by the Southampton faithful, Matt Le Tissier was not cast from the same mould as 99% of other professional footballers. A real «one-off» if ever there was one, he was a one-club man in a 16-year career that brought little in the way of trophies but countless plaudits from footballs fans and commentators alike.To the old school brigade he was a «luxury player», someone with a less than ideal work rate and waistline who simply wouldn′t conform to the blueprint of a typically hard-working, unsophisticated British player. Terry Venables and Glenn Hoddle found it all too easy to leave him out of their England squads.But to the vast majority Le Tissier was a maverick to be treasured, a flair player who lit up every match he played in and delighted fans with his sumptuous technique and élan for the beautiful game. In fact, the kind of skilful, inventive player and scorer of wonderful goals this country produces all too rarely.Did he simply enjoy the comfort zone of being a big fish in a small pond? Or did he display commendable loyalty in staying with Southampton for his entire career? Did he shun opportunities to move on? Were England managers right not to pick him so many times? Would Fabio Capello pick him for England now? Does the British game discourage his style of play? And how much would he be worth in today′s transfer market?Taking Le Tiss is the great man′s first chance to answer all these questions and many more. It is also a delightfully self-deprecating and witty story from a player who was more of a Big-Mac-and-fries than a chicken-and-beans man.