There are some very familiar names included, but equally there are others who are not so well known, and perhaps some who are not known at all outside of the game. However, they all share something in common, and that’s football. There are many people involved in the game and who earn their living from it. They are part of what modern football is about, and although it would have been impossible to include everyone who plays a part, I have tried to speak to people who I believe can shed some light on the workings of the game at the top in this country.
Supporters see their favourite team or player running out onto the field each week, but might not have any idea about those involved in making sure that can happen – people such as the coaches, the medical and sports science team, the player liaison officers and the kit men. They all play their part, and that is why I have tried to talk to a broad cross-section of people from the boardroom to the bootroom.
Things are always changing in football, with managers, players and others involved in the game moving on or changing clubs. The vast majority of the interviews I conducted took place in 2015, with the others happening in the early part of 2016. Although circumstances may have changed for some of the people I spoke to at the time, I hope the relevance of what they told me and the candid way in which they were prepared to speak about their roles within the game give the sort of insight that fans will be interested in.
Football at the highest level might now be an industry, but at the same time it is still a very simple game with very simple rules. The drama, spectacle, excitement, happiness and sadness that come along with it make it special for those of us who love it. Once you’re hooked, football becomes an addiction – and it stays with you for life.
Chapter 1
Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, Harry Redknapp, Chris Powell
When it comes to talking about football management in Britain there is probably only one place to start. If you’ve won two Champions League finals, a couple of European Cup Winners’ Cups, seventeen domestic league titles and fourteen domestic cup competitions, the chances are you know what you’ve been doing. Add to all of that a managerial career that lasted for almost forty years, twenty-seven of which were spent at Manchester United – one of the biggest clubs in the world – and you can see why Sir Alex Ferguson has rightly earned legendary status as one of the greatest managers of all time.
He took his first steps in management in 1974 with East Stirlingshire in Scotland, and then went on to have success with St Mirren, winning the Scottish First Division, before taking over at Aberdeen for eight years, during which time he won three Scottish Premier Division titles, four Scottish Cups, one League Cup and, perhaps most remarkably of all, the European Cup Winners’ Cup. During his spell at United he not only won the Champions League twice, he also guided his teams to an incredible thirteen Premier League titles in the space of twenty years. He built and rebuilt his United teams, producing an attacking brand of football that enabled the club to become consistent winners.
Throughout his time as a manager his fierce drive and determination to win stayed at the centre of what he was about, producing teams on either side of the border that were successful and entertaining. As a manager I faced Alex’s teams on several occasions, and the one thing you could always be sure of was that they were going to come after you and attack, whether it was at Old Trafford or your own ground. His teams played in a certain way and were incredibly successful as a result.
‘It was the way I was,’ he says. ‘At Aberdeen I always played with two wide players and at St Mirren I always played with two wide players, and I always had a player who’d play off the centre-forward. When I started as a player I had a wee bit of pace, but when I got towards the end of my career I used to drop in and it’s a problem for defenders. Brian McClair was the first one to do it for me at United, when I had Mark Hughes with him. Then it was Hughes and Cantona, then it was Andy Cole and Cantona. I’ve always done it.’
Something else he always did as a manager was to go for a win where others might have settled for a draw. I remember some years ago Alex telling me he didn’t do draws, and he’d often end up with five forwards on the pitch because he always wanted those three points.
‘Yes, that’s why I was prepared to take a risk in the last fifteen minutes of a game,’ he admits. ‘We just threw them all up front! Sometimes it was dictated by substitutions our opponents made. A lot of them would put a defender on, that gave me the licence to bring an extra forward on. Reducing their own attacking position meant I could risk it. I think risk is part of football. I never worried about it. I was always happy to have a gamble.’
Those gambles paid off on so many occasions for United, and they were something that ran right through his time at the club. Players came and players went, teams were built and then rebuilt, but the level of success never dropped as United consistently won trophies. Yet it wasn’t all about success for Alex during his early years at the club, and after three years with them he hit what was to be one of his worst periods in management.
‘I had a really bad period at United in 1989,’ he recalls. ‘In the whole of December I never won a game. We had a lot of injuries. But no matter who you are your job is to win games, and it was probably a lesson for me in how to handle that part of the game. At United you’re expected to win. That’s the expectation – and it was a great lesson for me. I used to pick teams with five players injured, and the games in December come one on top of the other during that Christmas and New Year period.
‘I remember we played Crystal Palace at home and lost 2–1, and we were 1–0 up. It was one of those horrible rainy days in Manchester, and when I got home I got a call to say we’d drawn Nottingham Forest away in the FA Cup, who at that time were arguably the best cup team in the country. When we got to that game we still had a lot of players injured. You’d find it impossible to think that the team won that day, but they did. We had players playing out of position, we had Ince out, Danny Wallace out, Neil Webb was out – and we won. We won 1–0 when Mark Robins scored. One of the best crossers I had at United, of all time, was not a winger. It was Mark Hughes. He was a fantastic crosser of a ball, with either foot. He got the ball on the wing and then bent it in with the outside of his foot. In actual fact, Stuart Pearce shoved Mark Robins on to the ball and he scored. We won, went through and won the cup that season.’
The FA Cup win in 1990 after a replay against Crystal Palace at Wembley was the first trophy Alex won as United manager, and it was followed the next season by victory in the European Cup Winners’ Cup. In 1993 United became the first winners of the newly formed Premier League. That year not only ushered in a golden period for United in terms of their title-winning ability as a club. It was also the dawn of a new era in English football, with television money playing a significantly more prominent role for those clubs who were part of the Premier League. It was one of the major changes to take place during the time he was in charge, although there have been others that he feels have had an impact on managers.
‘I came into management before Sky really took off. I started in 1974 when I was thirty-two years of age, so when those various changes happened and the explosion came I had the experience to handle all of that,’ he says. ‘You integrated into all the various changes, so in terms of dealing with players at that time I could see if there was a change in the player’s personality because of the success we were having. I could deal with that because I had a few years behind me. I always remember when I started at Aberdeen the vice-chairman, Chris Anderson, said to me, “We need to be at the top of the Scottish Premier Division when satellite television comes in.” I had absolutely no idea what he meant, but I didn’t want to say, “What do you mean?” It just registered in my head that I had to be successful. The way Sky have elevated the game and made all these players film stars, in terms