Always Managing: My Autobiography (14 page)

I certainly can’t complain about my time at Bournemouth, though. All of John’s new signings moved into the same little housing estate in Christchurch, me with Sandra and our oldest son, Mark. Jimmy Gabriel and Bobby Howe lived nearby and we’d share a car into training every morning, talking football all the way. Little did I know that those journeys were going to lead to more than thirty years in football management. And despite narrowly missing out on promotion on two occasions, we all knew
Bournemouth were going places thanks to John’s ideas and the money invested by Harold Walker, the chairman. Unfortunately, as often happens to a promising project in the lower leagues, it was not to last. In November 1973, John got an offer to manage Norwich City, who were in the First Division, and Bournemouth accepted £10,000 compensation for him and first-team coach Ken Brown. He promptly bought MacDougall and Boyer, too, and he tried to sign me, although by then a long-standing knee problem had deteriorated to such an extent that I could barely run. Bournemouth went on a gradual slide once John left with our best players and, by 1976, after a lengthy period in plaster, I gave up. I made one last attempt to revive my career at Brentford, with a month-long trial. My only game away at Aldershot lasted 38 minutes before the knee problem intervened and the manager that set up the trial, John Docherty, got sacked at half-time. I took that as a sign. There was no way I could continue as a professional footballer in England. America, however, where my friend Jimmy Gabriel was embarking on a new career, was a different matter.

Jimmy’s time at Bournemouth had not ended well. He was eased out after a very strange row with John Bond. I couldn’t see why they didn’t just patch it up. We were playing a league game away from home and one of our players had been taken out by this big lump shortly just before half-time. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Jimmy, ‘I’ll snap him in half.’ He meant it, too – Jimmy was a seriously tough guy when he needed to be. John Bond overheard and rounded on him. ‘What do you mean by that?’ he asked. John had been around. He knew exactly what Jimmy meant. ‘I’ll do him,’ Jimmy said. ‘I’ll go right over the top.’ ‘Not in my team you won’t,’ John shouted, and they ended up having a huge argument. And that
was the end of Jimmy at Bournemouth. He was shipped out on loan to Swindon Town and ended up at Brentford. By the time I retired in 1976 he was player-coach of Seattle Sounders under John Best, an ex-Tranmere Rovers defender who had been playing and managing in America since 1962. Best had moved upstairs to be general manager and Jimmy had succeeded him as coach. We had stayed in touch since our time together as players and when I told him I was retiring he immediately suggested coming out to Seattle to play for him. It was a big decision, but what options did I have back home? In March 1976 I flew out with Sandra and our two little boys, Mark and Jamie, who had been born during my time at Bournemouth, to begin our new life in America.

A lot of us ended up out there in the end: Bobby Moore, Geoff Hurst, Alan Hudson, Bobby Howe. The social side was great, and the football wasn’t bad either. It was the time when Pelé and Franz Beckenbauer were playing for New York Cosmos, and there was real interest in this new sport called soccer. We averaged 28,000 for home matches in Seattle, and in my first game against Cosmos the crowd was 66,000. As for the lifestyle, that was fantastic. We all lived on the same complex and, while we went off to train, our wives would go to Green Lake and get a barbecue ready. We’d come back, eat, have a swim and play with the kids until nightfall. It was like being on holiday. There was none of the hooliganism that was blighting the game back in England, and the fans loved the foreign players, who were the stars of the league. There was a real feel-good atmosphere around football in America.

And Jimmy must have liked what he heard during those short trips into training in the car from Christchurch, because he made me his coach. I had played most of the first season, when we reached
the final of the Soccer Bowl and lost to New York Cosmos, but although I still turned out as regularly as my knees would allow, I was more involved with Jimmy and the staff. The reserves at first, but then with the first team. I liked it immediately.

To be fair, Ron Greenwood had whetted my appetite for coaching when I was at West Ham. We used to be paid £2.50 an hour to train the kids at the local schools. I started with Forest Gate School and then one in Howard Road, East Ham, and ended up at Frank Lampard’s old school off Green Street. We’d do Monday to Thursday, £10 per week. You don’t see that sort of thing any more, but I thought it was very important because it kept the players and the club connected to the local community. Ron didn’t want me working in a supermarket, but he didn’t mind any of us coaching school children. I think all the players in the first team did it at one time or another.

So things were going well in America. We had twelve-month contracts but were allowed to spend the close season back home. It was a great little job. And then Jimmy rang up and said he’d been offered a job in Phoenix, Arizona, and that’s where it all fell apart. Phoenix Fire were not in the North American Soccer League, which was the top division, but in the second tier, known as the American Soccer League. The club owner, Len Lesser, had told Jimmy that this inferior status was strictly temporary and with the money he was investing they would be promoted within a season. Jimmy had signed up and wanted me to come with him. When Lesser called he talked telephone numbers. The best money I had ever received in my life. A housing budget, a convertible for Sandra – and she couldn’t even drive. For a bloke who had ended up playing for Bournemouth it seemed too good to be true – which it was.

Lesser wanted me to bring some players back with me from England, and I did. Not the greatest talent, but plenty good enough for the American Soccer League. Families in tow, they returned with me to Phoenix to begin our new adventure. The first warning sign came when Jimmy and I had lunch with Lesser, and I saw him altering the bill. I tried to tell Jimmy, but he wasn’t having any of it. With ten minutes to go before our first game with Chicago Fire, we had no kit. When it finally arrived there was no goalkeeper’s shirt. ‘We’ll be the smartest team in America,’ said Lesser. ‘We’ll all wear the same, none of this different shirt shit.’ I tried to explain that the goalkeeper had to dress differently because he was allowed to pick the ball up, but I couldn’t make him see sense. In the end, Kieron Baker, a goalkeeper I had got from Ipswich Town, borrowed an alternate shirt.

Kieron’s wife had stayed back in England because she was pregnant so, when he returned home, I instructed him to bring out all new equipment – boots, shin pads, gloves, everything we would need to become a serious football club – with him on his return. But, by the time he came back, the full reality of Lesser’s con had started to dawn. It was my birthday, 2 March, and I was going to take the family out for dinner. I went to a bank to get some money out, only to be told the account had been closed. The Phoenix Fire tab was three quarters of a million dollars overdrawn, and had subsequently been shut and all money reclaimed – including that from my account, which held £5,000 of my own savings. I got that back after an argument with the bank manager, but it was cold comfort. There were no wages, backdated or current, and when I rang Jimmy, his wife Pat told me that her cheque had bounced at the supermarket, too.

Jimmy and I confronted Lesser at his office – he had a huge photograph of himself and former President Jimmy Carter on the wall – and he assured us it was all a misunderstanding caused by the transfer of money between Phoenix Fire accounts. Then he offered me twenty dollars to fund my birthday dinner. He must have thought we would be driving through McDonald’s on our way home. ‘It will be sorted out by Monday,’ was his promise. Of course, it wasn’t.

Phoenix Fire was just Lesser’s scam. On the back of appointing the management team – ‘our super coaches’, he would call us – that had taken Seattle Sounders to the Championship final, he had persuaded five investors to stump up two and half million dollars. That had now disappeared, and Lesser just brazened it out. He knew he was in trouble, but had hidden the money away. Meanwhile, Kieron Baker was returning to Phoenix all smiles, with forty pairs of boots and a heavily pregnant wife, to play for a team that no longer existed.

Lesser ended up getting two years, but nobody recovered any money. All our cars were repossessed, except mine, which I used to ferry all the players back to the airport with their wives and families, our American dream at an end. The repossession company were hunting everywhere for me, and I kept moving from motel to motel to stay out of their reach until the job was done. We stayed a little longer in Phoenix, trying to get a second team off the ground, but it was a dead end. About five months later I came home.

Considering that my first jobs in management ended in that nightmare, to be followed by a period of going nowhere fast with Bobby at Oxford City, you might think I would be sick of it – but when David Webb called to offer me the job as his coach at
Bournemouth, I jumped at the chance. The money wasn’t great, but it was close to home and the club was ambitious. Well, Dave was anyway.

He wasn’t the greatest coach, but Webby was a good motivator and he could spot a player. I haven’t see too many better than him at mining talent from the lower leagues. He went to watch Andover one night – they had a player we fancied – and came back with Nigel Spackman, who went on to play four years at Chelsea and won the league at Liverpool. Dave paid £2,000 for Nigel and Andover couldn’t believe their luck – he wasn’t even getting in their team at the time. The night Dave went, Spackman didn’t so much as start. He came on as a substitute and Dave liked what he saw immediately: a 6 foot 1 inch midfield player, good technique, and could run all day. I don’t know too many managers who have dug one out like that.

Dave’s problem was that he was always on the lookout for something bigger and better. He had petrol stations and property interests outside football, and if there was something going, he wanted in on it. He didn’t want to manage Bournemouth, he wanted to run Bournemouth; and not even Bournemouth, but Chelsea. He would persuade a hotel receptionist to announce a telephone call for him, so all the board could hear. ‘Mr Webb, Mr Ken Bates is on the line for you.’ And every time he pulled a stroke like that, his wages would go up. He was a great one for telling doormen, ‘Do you know who I am?’ They didn’t always. Then Dave would tell them to fetch the manager because he was going to buy the place and give them all the sack. Meanwhile, I would be trying to hide in a corner with embarrassment. Sometimes he just pushed it too far. Dave’s big mistake was thinking Harold Walker, the Bournemouth
chairman, was a mug. A couple of times he called Dave’s bluff when he was threatening to quit, saying he was too big for Bournemouth, and one day he simply talked himself out of a job. The chairman had been courting a couple of investors, but Dave had it in his mind to pull off a coup. He had Jim Davidson, the comedian, onside, plus Barry Briggs, the former World Champion speedway rider. When the two investors arrived at Bournemouth, Dave was there to meet them, heading them off before they went inside. ‘Don’t go in with Harold Walker,’ he told them. ‘I’m taking over. Come in with me, I’ve got big plans.’ Unfortunately one of the prospective directors was the chairman’s best friend from his time at university: two days later, Dave was sacked.

Typically, though, he believed he could sweet talk his way out of it. Walker had given him until the end of the week to clear his desk, but on the Friday, Dave attempted his final stunt as Bournemouth manager. He phoned the chairman. ‘I’ve got two fantastic players I can get on free transfers,’ he said. ‘We could sell them later for a fortune. Obviously, though, there’s no point if you meant what you said about me leaving.’ He waited for the chairman to climb down. ‘Don’t sign them, then, Dave,’ said Mr Walker, ‘because I meant every word. Goodbye.’

Frankly, my first thought when I heard Dave was leaving was for myself, my family and our future. Dave was always going to get fixed up somewhere – and he did end up managing Chelsea, with Ken Bates as chairman – but I had barely got a chance in English football, and now it looked like I was about to get sacked as well. I was earning £90 a week and we were only making ends meet because Sandra had started hairdressing again. She had one of those big hairdryers and was doing a £1.50 shampoo-and-set for
a few old girls around our way. It was a struggle. I didn’t even have a contract. I was cursing Dave. I had told him to sort it out with the chairman. Now what was I going to do? ‘You’ll be all right,’ he said. ‘They’ll give you a couple of weeks’ wages.’ Great, two hundred quid if I was lucky. And after that?

Dave had left and I was sitting at the ground wondering what my next move could be, when there was a knock at the door. ‘Would you take the team tomorrow?’ asked Mr Walker. ‘We’ve got no one else.’ Suddenly, from being close to unemployed, I was caretaker manager of Bournemouth, and we were away to Lincoln City, who were top of Division Three at the time.

Lincoln were managed by Colin Murphy and, although they faded that season and failed to win promotion, they were still a very strong team in our league. They had John Fashanu and Neil Shipperley upfront and Steve Thompson, who was an imposing centre-half. They played West Ham in the League Cup the following month and took them to a replay. They were three points clear going into our game and would have been hot favourites for a home win.

As for me, I had John Kirk as my only member of staff. John was a former goalkeeper and his official title was physiotherapist, but he was an old-fashioned trainer, really. If someone broke a leg, John would run a cold sponge over them first just to make sure. He didn’t really have a clue. It was a bitterly cold day, 18 December 1982, and there were games off all over the country due to frozen pitches. Lincoln had a pitch inspection at their ground, Sincil Bank, too, and we expected our match to be among those postponed. I hadn’t counted on Colin’s desperation to play Bournemouth, in turmoil with a rookie manager. When I arrived he had lit small coal fires all over the pitch, about eight of them. God knows what they
were supposed to do, but the referee fell for it and announced that we would play. How these fires were meant to thaw anything out, I don’t know.