My way –
‘Gentlemen, I might as well tell you now. You lot may have won all the domestic honours there are and some of the European ones but, as far as I am concerned, the first thing you can do for me is to chuck all your medals and all your caps and all your pots and all your pans into the biggest fucking dustbin you can find, because you’ve never won any of them fairly. You’ve done it all by bloody cheating.’
Through Jesus Christ our Lord …
‘And there’s one other thing,’ I tell them all, tell every last fucking one of them. ‘I don’t ever want to hear the name of Don bloody fucking Revie again. Never ever again. So the next player who does mention that bloody name again will spend his working week with the fucking apprentices. Learning his lesson, whoever he bloody is, no matter who he fucking is –
‘Now bugger off home, the lot of you.’
Amen.
* * *
You meet the chairman of Derby County at a hotel at Scotch Corner. Peter waits in the car. Len Shackleton makes the introductions. This Sam Longson is another self-made millionaire, another blunt and plain-speaking man who drives a Rolls-Royce. His money from haulage. Proud of it. Proud of Derby County too. But Derby County are in the Second Division and going nowhere. Their only cup won back in 1946. Third Division North Champions in 1957. Nothing since. Nowhere since. They have just finished seventeenth in Division Two and Sam Longson has just sacked their manager, Tim Ward. Now Longson is getting hate mail. Now Longson is shitting himself –
‘That’ll soon be a thing of the past,’ you tell him. ‘And I’ll be the reason why —’
Then you start telling him why. Never stop telling him why. Never shut up.
Three hours later, Longson is so excited he won’t be able to sleep tonight.
You go out to the car. Peter has the window down. Peter asks, ‘How did it go?’
‘Job’s mine,’ you tell him. ‘Bloody mine!’
He’s as happy as Larry. Pleased as punch. Then he says, ‘What about me?’
* * *
Down the corridors. Round the corners. The empty corridors. The dark corners. The office is bare; just his old telephone and Jean Reid’s resignation letter on the floor by the door. I pull my kit bag across the carpet towards me and take out an unopened bottle of Martell. I light a cigarette and pick the price off the brandy –
£3.79 — Wineways.
Tomorrow is Saturday. Away at Huddersfield. My first game here –
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck …
I haven’t got a clue who to pick. I haven’t got a clue what to say –
Not a fucking one. Not a fucking one.
There are voices and feet outside the door. Laughter, then silence –
Down the corridors. Round the corners …
I get up off the floor. I open the door –
Nothing. No one.
I don’t believe in God. But I do believe in doubt. I do believe in fear.
Day Four
You drive down to a meeting with the Derby County directors at the Baseball Ground. The job’s yours but it still has to be ratified and confirmed by the full board, according to Sam. You’ve got the wife with you, the three bairns in the back of the Rover. You drop them by the swings in Normanton Park. You tell the wife you’ll be back within the hour. You drive on to the Baseball Ground.
Sam Longson is waiting for you with the rest of the board: Sidney Bradley, Harry Paine, Bob Kirkland and three others who say nothing and whose names you do not catch. Turns out the board have been overwhelmed with applications for the job, least that’s what they’re telling you. Turns out they have a shortlist of four –
Alan Ashman, Billy Bingham, Tommy Cummings and you –
Turns out the job’s not quite yours –
The Derby board do not even offer you a drink, so you help yourself.
‘My injury finished me as a player and took away the thing I loved most in this world,’ you tell them. ‘But it did give me an early start in management at Hartlepools. Re-election had become an annual event for them, but I changed that. I cut the playing staff down. I got rid of the players who were crap. I brought in one or two who were slightly better than crap. Hartlepools finished eighth at the end of this season. I also built them a new stand as well as a new team and have left them solvent. But I didn’t do it alone. I couldn’t have done it without Peter Taylor, and I want him here with me at Derby. We come as a pair or not at all.’
They shuffle their papers and fiddle with their pens, these worried rich men.
‘Me and Peter Taylor can turn this club around. We can guarantee you that you’ll not finish as low as you have this season and, more to the point, we can get the public off your backs. But we can only do it together –
‘Me and Peter Taylor!’
They are interested now, these worried rich men, thinking of walking the streets of Derby without abuse, thinking of holding their heads up high again with their wives on their arms, thinking of finally getting the appreciation they deserve. They nod in the direction of their chairman, these worried rich men –
They have been overwhelmed by you, the shortlist down to one –
‘I remember when you played here with Sunderland,’ says Sam Longson. ‘Pointing here, pointing there. Shouting at this one, shouting at that one. Telling everyone what to do. Lot of folk said you were arrogant, but I said you were a leader. That’s what we need here: a leader.’
‘And that’s what you’ll get,’ you tell him. ‘I promise you that. But I want a contract because you’ve got seven directors here and, within a month, at least one of them will want us gone. I promise you that and all.’
‘Mr Clough,’ says Longson. ‘Your salary shall be £5,000 a year and your assistant’s shall be £2,500. Furthermore, £70,000 will be available for new players and you shall both have contracts, don’t you worry about that.’
Eight hours later you get back to Normanton Park; your boys are asleep on the swings, your wife and daughter curled up on a bench.
* * *
Saturday’s come, with Saturday’s stink. The sweat and the mud, the liniment and the grease. The steam and the soap, the sewer and the shampoo. The beer and the wine, the spirits and the cigars –
It’s only a friendly, only a testimonial. But it’s still a game, still my first.
I watch them climb up the steps onto the coach with their paperback books and their packs of cards and I count the hearts –
Not one among them.
No one speaks and no one smiles. But the journey to Leeds Road, Huddersfield, is supposed to be a short one.
I sit down next to Bremner. I ask him, ‘You get my telegram, did you?’
‘What telegram?’ he says.
‘The one I sent from Majorca,’ I tell him. ‘The one I sent inviting you and your family to join me and mine for a few days in the sun. The one in which I said how proud I was to be the new manager of Leeds United.’
‘No,’ he says and looks back down at his paperback book –
The Beautiful Couple.
I am first off the coach and the reception is warm. I sign autographs for the kids and shake hands with their dads –