Always Managing: My Autobiography (21 page)

So every day would start the same. I’d be in first, waiting for Billy, and then he’d arrive and issue instructions for the training or the match the next day. ‘Shirt and tie tomorrow,’ Bill would say. ‘Bollocks to that,’ Julian Dicks would reply, pick up a ball and boot it over the fence on to the railway line. You can imagine Bill’s face in those moments.

I remember his absolute disgust before our first match in the Premier League, against Wimbledon. I got to Upton Park early and the groundsman told me that Sam Hammam, Wimbledon’s owner, had gone into the away dressing room with a big pile of pens. ‘He’s been in there about forty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing.’ I told him to find out and come back and tell me. Neither of us could believe what we saw. There was graffiti all over the dressing-room walls. Filthy insults aimed at the Wimbledon players: stuff about Vinnie Jones, stuff about John Fashanu, calling them all wankers and worse. At that moment, Sam walked in. I was furious. ‘What have you done?’ I asked him. ‘No, not me, you have done this,’ he said, standing there with the pens in his hand. I told the groundsman to get a policeman. We used to take kids on a tour of Upton Park before match days. That was
now ruined because they couldn’t visit the dressing rooms and see this rubbish scrawled everywhere. Hammam then had the audacity to try to throw us out. ‘This is our dressing room, you must leave,’ he said. ‘Get out, you have written this on our walls.’

We removed him in the end, but Billy was really upset when he arrived. It wasn’t long after Bobby Moore had died. ‘We’ve just buried Bobby,’ he said, ‘and this is what we’ve got to deal with.’ He was all for going to the police and the Football Association with an official complaint, but the club must have talked him out of it. I thought Hammam was sick in the head at first, but then I realised it was merely a crude motivational tactic. He wanted his players to think we had insulted and demeaned them, so they could be wound up into a frenzy and would go out wanting to kill us. Apparently, the previous season, when Wimbledon played at Blackburn Rovers, he had got to Ewood Park early and thrown all their boots and the neatly laid-out kit into a freezing bath and written graffiti all over the walls there, too. Kenny Dalglish was holding a team meeting when half the Wimbledon team burst in threatening all sorts. Wimbledon came away with a point that day – they’d frightened the life out of them.

It was at those moments that I could really understand some of Bill’s disdain for the modern game, so when a former chairman of Bournemouth, Geoffrey Hayward, called to offer me the opportunity to return to the club, I must say I was interested. Geoffrey lived around the corner from me, and his family had been involved with Bournemouth, off and on, for decades. He said he wanted to buy it again, but would only do so if I came back. I could have whatever title and job I liked, from manager to managing director. ‘I’ll give you the club, it’s yours to run,’
he said. It sounded a very appealing proposition. I was enjoying my time at West Ham professionally, but personally it was hard. I lived in a flat in Emerson Park, Romford, and only went home to Bournemouth and my family at weekends after the game. I thought that having helped the club win promotion, and consolidate in our first season in the Premier League, I could leave with head held high and no hard feelings. The news of Geoffrey’s takeover was being announced by local newspapers the next day and as I was such a big part of it, I told Bill that I should come clean with the West Ham board. Bill knew how much this new job appealed to me. When I told him I wanted to go back to Bournemouth, his first reaction was, ‘I don’t blame you.’

We were in Scotland at the time on a pre-season tour, but Terry Brown, the chairman, and Peter Storrie, the managing director, were also staying at our hotel. We arranged a meeting and I explained my position, but Brown’s reaction came as a shock. ‘Why do you want to go back to Bournemouth?’ he asked. ‘Is it because you’d like to be a manager again?’ I explained that wasn’t the case. I wanted to go home to where my wife lived, and to a club where I had been very happy for most of my ten years. It wasn’t about being a manager. The way Geoffrey had told it, I could be more than just the manager there anyway. ‘Why don’t you be our manager instead?’ Brown continued. ‘Bill can be the director of football – with a ten-year contract.’ This wasn’t what I expected and I felt very uncomfortable being offered Bill’s job with him sat there in front of me. ‘Bill’s the manager,’ I said. ‘We didn’t come in here for this. That’s not the idea at all.’ But Terry Brown had shown his hand.

‘It’s obvious you want Harry instead of me,’ Bill interrupted. ‘You think he’s a better manager than me, and you want him to
replace me.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Right,’ Bill continued. ‘What does “director of football” mean, anyway?’

Brown began outlining the job. It seemed a very loose arrangement. Go to training when he liked, turn up on match days, and be the club ambassador. It was a job for life, too. Complete security and no pressure – I was beginning to wish they had offered it to me. Bill said he needed time to consider and we all parted company. It wasn’t the meeting I had planned, the one in which I made a dignified exit to start anew at Bournemouth; and Bill was genuinely undecided, as well. We had dinner together that night, as usual, and there was not a squeak of difference between us. I told Billy I still wanted to go back to Bournemouth. ‘I’m living in a flat, Bill,’ I told him. ‘Back home, we’ve got room, we’re on the coast, my wife’s there with our dogs. This doesn’t suit me – I don’t want to live this way any more.’

I don’t know what the final straw was for Billy. Certainly, Joey Beauchamp turning up late for a friendly at Portsmouth that Saturday and not trying one leg did not help his mood greatly. I was torn as well. It still all hinged on his decision, though, and on the Monday Bill called me. ‘I’m at the ground,’ he said. ‘I’m packing up.’

I drove down there as quickly as I could with Ronnie Boyce, our chief scout, but we couldn’t talk him around. I even offered to stay as his number two, but he was set on resigning. He went in to see Terry Brown and quit.

Immediately, Terry called me in and asked if I would be manager.

I said I needed time to think it over. My head was spinning. A few days earlier I had decided to go back to Bournemouth, to be with Sandra and the family. Now I was going to be the manager of a Premier League club and more immersed and distanced than
ever. I should have simply driven home and given myself time to think, but the club were eager to put on a united public face, and the biggest mistake I made, in hindsight, was agreeing to a press conference. The club wanted to make it appear that the loose end of Billy’s resignation had been tied up, but I should never have agreed. I wasn’t ready to be manager – I hadn’t even made my own mind up yet, and I was so uncertain that I did not return to Upton Park for a week.

It wasn’t until Frank Lampard Senior came to see me over the next weekend that I made my decision. ‘I don’t want Bill’s job, Frank,’ I told him. ‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘Look, Harry, they clearly wished to make a change. Someone else is going to get offered this even if you turn it down. They wanted you – give them what they want.’

Peter Storrie kept calling asking for a decision, but I was still troubled by how Bill felt. It was only when we spoke that I felt content I was doing the right thing. ‘Take it,’ Billy said. ‘It’s a good job, well paid; you’d be a fool not to. Don’t worry about me, I’ve been well looked after. Take it.’

Yet, even on the day I walked into West Ham as manager, I still felt most comfortable with the thought of returning to Bournemouth. People see me as a very ambitious person, but I’m not like that at all. If I’m happy with my life, that is good enough. All week, I kept telling Peter Storrie that I didn’t want to be manager of West Ham, and it wasn’t until Frank came down to see me that I began to open my mind. What I did not expect, though, was to lose Bill’s friendship over the decision. All these years later, that still hurts – and I would swap having Billy as a mate for all of my seven years as manager at Upton Park.

Let me get this straight: I didn’t push Billy Bonds out of West Ham. In fact, for the two weeks after I took the job we continued to speak. Yet each conversation grew more stilted and, in the end, I could tell it wasn’t right. I knew what was happening. People were mixing it for us. That always happens when a manager leaves a club. There is always someone who can’t wait to tell you what is being said, or what was going on behind your back. It happened when I left Bournemouth. Tony Pulis said this; Tony Pulis did that. The same at Tottenham with Tim Sherwood, who everyone said had the ear of Daniel Levy, the chairman. There is always a story, that is how it is in football, and probably Billy heard too many stories about me. The difference was that he believed them. I asked him to have his photograph taken with me, to show there were no hard feelings, but he refused. I realised then that it was over, and that it was always going to be difficult between us.

That is what happens when people stir the pot. Tony Gale was a terrific centre-half for West Ham, but in 1994 we let him go on a free transfer to Blackburn. Tony always blamed me – although it worked out well for him, because he got a championship winner’s medal up there the following season – and he’s barely had a good word to say about me since. But it was Bill who wanted Tony out of the club. Tony used to spend the summer working at a holiday camp owned by our chairman, Terry Brown, and Bill was convinced he was telling him our business.

Looking back, from the club’s perspective, it could have been handled better. I think the way that Terry Brown sprung the director of football position on Bill was silly. Terry knew I had overseen the sale of Julian Dicks to Liverpool, and probably thought I was more into being a manager than Billy. In that respect, he was right. Bill
often gave the impression that he found the job exhausting and if it had been broached differently, I think he might have enjoyed his ambassadorial role. It could have been a great job for him. I certainly wouldn’t have turned it down had the positions been reversed. A job for life? I’d have said, ‘Thanks very much, Mr Chairman,’ and they wouldn’t have had to ask twice. Bill would have been a perfect director of football for the club, and I genuinely think Terry Brown was trying to find a solution that would make Bill happy. In Terry’s eyes, I was more of a manager than Bill at the time. I’d done well at Bournemouth, I liked scouting and coaching and mixing with players, and Billy just wasn’t into that. With better management, I think Billy could still be there now, the one constant through the many changes of ownership.

So it was his decision to leave and, knowing that, I have been disappointed with some of what has subsequently been said. Billy clearly feels I overstepped the mark as his assistant. He says I gave interviews before matches on Sky discussing tactics, but that is certainly not my recollection of it. I may have sat in our meeting room and had a cup of tea with Andy Gray, but I don’t remember doing anything for the cameras. Yes, I was direct in my approach at times, but it was Billy who asked for my help. Once I had accepted that invitation I wasn’t in the business of being relegated. I was at West Ham to have a proper go. I still do not understand why Bill would take that personally. It was as if he wanted me to do a job, and then when I did that job and it got noticed, he didn’t like it. The headline in the
Sun
from that time said I stabbed him in the back, but there is not a chance I would do that, not a prayer.

Bill has made his feelings clear, and that is up to him. I am loath to revisit the subject even now, because I don’t want to kick
up another war of words, but anyone who knows him will confirm he is not always the easiest guy to deal with. His family is what he loves and he doesn’t seek much contact with anybody else. If the owners felt that Bill didn’t want to be the manager that is merely because it was the vibe he gave off at times. He was much more comfortable playing than dealing with managerial issues. Yet West Ham was Terry Brown’s business, so he probably looked at that and thought Bill would be better off in the directors’ box and I would be more use on the training field. It was handled badly, obviously, but I can’t blame them for reaching that conclusion. They tried to look after Bill and, in different circumstances, I don’t think he would have been too upset with the offer; it just unfolded awkwardly for all of us.

I’ve heard all sorts of stories since. Some people even say that the fall-out with Billy cost me the England job, because Sir Trevor Brooking has never forgiven me over it – but I can’t see that. Trevor wasn’t around West Ham at that time, and I would be surprised if he had harboured a grudge all these years without confronting me about it. I was one of a handful of footballers that were invited to, and attended, Trevor’s wedding. He has come to family occasions of mine. I don’t see him as the spiteful sort. Yet though twenty years have passed since Bill and I spoke, the break-up of our friendship still hurts. Not the rumours, not the innuendo, not the gossip from people who were not there and wouldn’t have a clue what went on behind the scenes. All that gets distorted by those who want to cause problems for you. What pains me is the fact that I no longer have Bill as a friend, because I loved him to bits and there is no way on earth I would have hurt him. I would give anything today to see him and just have a cup of tea together.

Back then, though, my only choice was to get on with it, and it wasn’t an easy job at all. My first decision was to bring Frank Lampard Senior with me. Frank was my brother-in-law and an old friend, but he knew the club – he knew football, and for years he had been coaching the kids at West Ham on a Tuesday and Thursday night for free. Frank was ideal. He talks nothing but common sense about football, and I resented the criticism that it was an old pals’ act. If that was my priority, I would have kept Ronnie Boyce on the staff. Ronnie was at West Ham when I arrived as a teenager, and was still there when I returned a second time. He had been a member of the coaching staff since 1973 and in 1991 he was made chief scout. I liked Ronnie but he seemed too much a part of the furniture, a long-standing member of the cosy little club that was the worst of West Ham. ‘He’ll be there when you’ve gone,’ Bobby Moore had said to me. ‘What does he give you?’ He had a point.