‘You’re here to listen.’
‘Our disciplinary work is costing us £30,000 a year, over and above the cost of maintaining a disciplinary department. We have better ways of spending this money.’
‘You’re here to listen.’
‘We have to show that we will take disciplinary action against misdemeanours on and off the pitch; everyone agrees this has to be done.’
‘You’re here to listen.’
‘I am not pessimistic about the future of football. We showed a slight improvement in the number of disciplinary cases last season but we have to increase that rate of improvement. No one is expecting no fouls to be committed on a football field. What we are trying to get rid of is dissent, and we want an acceptance of disciplines.’
‘You’re here to listen.’
‘Leeds’s disciplinary record was so much better last season than in the year before that they have obviously made a considerable effort to put their house in order.’
I stop listening. I start telling them, ‘Eighty-four players will miss the opening-day fixtures due to suspensions from last season. Players like Stan Bowles and Mike Summerbee. Players like Norman Hunter and Allan Clarke.’
‘I told you to listen,’ says Bolton after the meeting. ‘Told you to keep it bloody shut for once.’
‘Let me give you some friendly advice, Mr Bolton,’ I tell him. ‘Never tell me what to do and then I’ll never have to tell you what to do. Now take me back to Leeds.’
* * *
On 11 April 1972 your resignations are accepted by the Derby County board.
You’ve lost to Newcastle and drawn with West Brom. You held dressing-room inquisitions. Then you went to Sheffield and beat United 4–0 away –
You are still top. But you’re still gone –
You, Pete and Jimmy. To Coventry.
Except Coventry City are getting cold feet now; their chairman has had the champagne on ice too long and the warmer his champagne gets, the colder his feet.
Three hours after your resignations are accepted, you and Pete drive out to Sam Longson’s pile. You bring one of your tame directors with you.
‘Do you really want to be remembered as the chairman who lost the best team in football management?’ you ask Sam Longson. ‘When Derby County were top of the league? The Championship within touching distance? Derby’s first ever Championship. European glory on the horizon? Is that how you want to be remembered? As the chairman who gave it all away? Is that what you want, Mr Chairman?’
‘For want of a bit more money,’ adds Pete.
Sam Longson shakes his head. Sam Longson asks, ‘But it’s too late, isn’t it? You’ve already signed with Coventry, haven’t you?’
Y ou put your arm around Sam and tell him, ‘It’s never too late, Mr Chairman.’
‘For want of a bit more money,’ adds Pete again.
‘I told them they couldn’t bloody have you,’ says Longson. ‘I told them hands off. But Coventry told me you wanted away from Derby —’
‘No, no, no,’ you tell him. ‘Home is where this heart is; right here beside you.’
‘They’ll tell Coventry City to go to hell,’ says your tame director –
‘For want of a bit more money,’ says Pete for the third time.
Longson dries his eyes, blows his nose and asks, ‘How much will it take?’
‘All we’re asking,’ you tell him, ‘is for you to match their offer.’
Longson takes out his cheque book and asks, ‘Which is?’
‘An extra five grand for me, three for Pete and one for Jimmy,’ you tell him.
Longson nods his head and signs the cheques while you pour the drinks.
In your car in his driveway, Pete asks, ‘What if the old twit finds out?’
You stop looking at your cheque and ask him, ‘Finds out what?’
‘Finds out that Coventry had already pulled out of the deal.’
‘So what if he does,’ you tell Pete. ‘What’s he going to do? Sack us?’
* * *
It’s late and pissing it down, and we’re late and pissed off when we finally arrive at the hotel alongside the M6 near Stoke. The team get off the coach and walk towards the entrance and the reception, the warmth and the light. I call them back outside –
‘Where do you think you’re going?’ I ask them. ‘Get out here, the lot of you.’
They march back down the hotel steps, into the rain and into the night.
‘This way,’ I tell them and lead them round to the back of the hotel.
They stand there in their suits and their ties, in the rain and in the night, on the hotel lawn, and they listen, they listen to me:
‘Tomorrow it all starts again; the first game of the season. I’ve won a League Championship and you’ve won a League Championship and so, no doubt, you all think you know what it bloody takes to win the fucking League Championship. Well, you don’t, because you won your titles through deceit and deception. This season you’re going to win the league my way; honestly and fairly. Now last season you played forty-two league games and you won twenty-four, drew fourteen and lost four; well, this season you’ll play forty-two games and lose only three. Last season you scored sixty-six goals and you let in thirty-one; well, this season I want you to score more than seventy and let in less than thirty. And, if you do it my way, not only will you win the league, not only will you win it honestly and fairly, you’ll also win the hearts of the public, which is something you’ve never fucking done before.’
In their suits and their ties, in the rain and the night, they listen:
‘Not only the league title either; this season we’re going after everything in sight. If Leeds United are entered for a competition, we’ll be playing to win that competition. There’ll be no reserve teams in the League Cup, no second-string teams in a Leeds shirt, not under Brian Clough. Because I won’t settle for second best for my team. It is not in my nature. I am after excellence in all things and that includes every game we play –
‘Every single fucking game, starting tomorrow. Right?’
There’s silence on the hotel lawn from the suits and the ties, in the night and in the rain, so I ask them again and ask them louder than before, ‘Right?’
‘Right,’ they mumble and they mutter.
‘Right what?’ I ask them.
‘Right, Boss,’ they say, in their suits and their ties, in the rain and in the night –
Under their breath, through gritted teeth.
‘Right then,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s go get our bloody dinners then.’
* * *
You easily beat Huddersfield Town 3–0 to stay top with just two games to go. You are now certain to finish in the top four; certain of a place in the UEFA Cup; certain of that, at the very least –
Just two games to go; two games, against Manchester City and against Liverpool. City, who are third, away; Liverpool, who are fourth, at home –
Two games to stop Leeds, two games to win the league.
On 22 April 1972 you travel to Maine Road, Manchester. It is the last home game of the season for Manchester City; Manchester City who are managed by your TV mate Malcolm Allison; Malcolm Allison who has just spent £200,000 on Rodney Marsh; Rodney Marsh who scores in the twenty-fifth minute and wins a second-half penalty, which Francis Lee converts. You have your chances too, but you also have your nerves –