Always Managing: My Autobiography (31 page)

Jim was a blunt speaker, no messing. He certainly wasn’t a yes man. We had Jason Roberts on loan in our first season in the Premier League, and he was going through a rough time. ‘Is his real name Unlucky Jase?’ Jim asked.

I look at him quizzically.

‘I’m only thinking,’ he said, ‘because whenever he plays all I hear you say is, “Unlucky Jase, unlucky Jase …” unlucky fucking Jase.’ Jim claimed he had an idea to build up Jason’s confidence. ‘I’ve done it before,’ he said. ‘Shooting practice, but without a goalkeeper.’ He took Jason, and Teddy Sheringham, so it didn’t look as if Jason was being singled out as a duffer, and a big net of balls. He got one of the young lads to just clip crosses in from wide, and the strikers would finish into a gaping empty net. It was painful to watch. Teddy was scoring as easy as shelling peas, but Jason – the ball went through his legs, off the top of his head, over the bar, wide of the post. It turned out it wasn’t the goalkeeper that was stopping Jason from scoring. He was managing that quite nicely on his own. ‘Thanks for that, Jim,’ I said after the session. ‘You’ve ruined him.’ Roberts has been around a few clubs since and done well. He’s a handful, holds the ball up and looks the part, but for some reason that wasn’t the case with us. I can remember one good game, his last, against Aston Villa, before we shipped him out to Wigan.

Jim was at his best on the Friday night before matches. We’d go out and have a meal: Jim, me, Kevin, Milan and maybe Terry Brady – find a good little Italian and a couple of bottles of Amarone later, have a row. Jim would usually start it, but it didn’t take too much for me to join in. Kevin was always the quiet one. I don’t think I’ve ever had a better time as a manager than those Friday nights.
It always ended in a ruck, but nothing was carried on the next day. Milan would say something, and I’d jump on it. ‘What are you talking about, you haven’t got a fucking clue.’ And then Jim would join in, and Milan would say that he used to work with George Best and he knew more than fucking any of us, and it would go from there. I loved that company.

We’d argue about all sorts – league positions for one. Milan would go around the table asking for predictions of where we might finish.

One end of the table would be saying, ‘all we need to do is stay up’. Then somebody else would wade in with, ‘top half, easy’.

I would go nuts. ‘What do you fucking know? We’re going to finish ninth? Fucking hell!’ The balloon would go up and there would be no stopping us. I remember when Joe Jordan first joined us on a Friday night. He just sat there, unable to believe his eyes, or ears. He thought he had signed up to work with a bunch of nutters. Maybe he had. But next day we were all mates again.

The biggest row I remember was over Papa Bouba Diop, a Senegalese midfield player we were trying to buy from the French club, Lens. He was known as the Wardrobe because he was so big, but Willie McKay was his agent and was touting him around for just £1 million. He had been down with us all week training and looked absolutely magnificent. On the first day he outjumped Arjan de Zeeuw to score from a cross, and that was enough for me. Nobody got the better of Arjan in the air like that. I was keen from the start, but now the deal was dragging on. I left the deal in the hands of the club and set off for the West Country, where we were staying for five days and playing a pre-season game. Milan phoned en route. ‘Are we going out for dinner, Harry?’

‘Absolutely, Milan. How many should I make it for? There’s me and Jim here.’

‘And I’m with Peter,’ Milan said.

‘Peter? What’s Peter there for?’ I asked. ‘He’s doing the deal for Diop.’

‘He’s left him in the hotel,’ Milan explained. ‘They’re going to finish it Monday.’

‘He won’t be there Monday,’ I said, agitated. ‘The word’s out about him. I know Willie – he’ll take him elsewhere. We’ll lose him.’ I was furious. Peter and I had a big row. Sure enough, halfway through dinner, I got a call: Diop’s at Fulham. By now I was raging at Peter. ‘We could have doubled our money,’ I told him. ‘You’ve cost us millions – and a fantastic player.’ Finally, Peter stormed out.

Milan, who had been laughing and ordering more wine, got straight on to Willie McKay to offer him more. Willie agreed, but I decided I wasn’t being held to ransom. I grabbed the phone and called Willie every name under the sun. ‘If you give him a penny more, you get a new manager,’ I warned Milan. ‘Willie don’t ever bring another fucking player here again.’ It was another lively dinner date for the Portsmouth fraternity and, sure enough, Diop was fantastic for Fulham. We had to wait another three years to get him, by which time my animosity towards Willie had cooled, although we didn’t speak for eighteen months. Peter later told me that it was in fact Milan who had not wanted to buy Diop, but at the time Milan wouldn’t allow Peter to tell me this as he was worried about the two of us falling out so close to the start of the season.

Yet whatever people think of Milan, I loved being with him. Deep down, he was just one of the guys. Plus, he had an aura
about him, a bit of class. He had forty thousand employees and was the biggest name in American soccer when was he was only in his thirties. We genuinely liked each other, that was our secret. We had our fall-outs, but I’ve always maintained he was on my side.

I don’t think Milan was ever sure about Jim, though. In October of our promotion season we were playing Preston North End at home and I was taken ill. I was driving to the training ground, suddenly went giddy and the next minute I was sick, all over the car, without any warning. I felt really rough. I managed to get home, but went straight to bed. There was no way I could be on the touchline for the match that night; Jim would take charge. I remember lying in bed, with the radio on, listening. We went 1–0 down, got it back to 1–1, 2–1 up, 3–1 up; Preston came back to 3–2 but we held on. ‘Great game tonight at Fratton Park, great excitement,’ said the commentator, and I went to sleep happy.

Jim went upstairs to see the directors after the game, thinking Milan would be delighted, but instead he appeared in a foul mood. ‘What was that rubbish?’ he stormed. ‘That was the football we played last year. It wasn’t like it is now. The quicker Harry gets back the better.’ For once, Jim didn’t know what to say. I could think of a few choice replies, but I don’t think Jim wanted to make trouble for me. I thought it was very unfair on him, though. And the more popular Jim got with the fans, the more Milan seemed to resent it.

Those problems were in the future, though. As it was, the 2002–03 season simply could not have gone better for any of us at Portsmouth. We had the time of our lives, which I didn’t see coming. Usually you can tell. The day I walked into Tottenham as manager I knew we would be all right, and I had pretty much
the opposite feeling after a week or so at Queens Park Rangers. Portsmouth, I failed to predict. Yes, we had some stars, but we also had lads like Richard Hughes, whom I had signed for £50,000 from Bournemouth. How would he fare, jumping up two divisions? It was a hotchpotch team, really. We did some great deals, but it wasn’t as if Milan was just throwing money about. He ran a very tight ship. We took good players, but often they were guys other clubs wanted out. There were no massive wages at Portsmouth then, either. We had Linvoy Primus, from Barnet, next to Gianluca Festa, who was a defender Middlesbrough had bought from Inter Milan, but had fallen out of favour with the club. Another bargain. They paid the bulk of his wages, we gave him £6,000. Middlesbrough just wanted him out of the building, but he suited us. It was that sort of team.

In fact, I cost a friend of mine a small fortune, by putting him off having a bet. He said we were 33-1 to win the league. ‘Don’t waste your money, Alan,’ I told him. ‘If we get top half, it’ll be a miracle.’ Shows you what I know.

There were some strong teams in the league that year – I particularly fancied Wolverhampton Wanderers and Sheffield United, and Leicester City who came up with us – but the fans just got behind the team and we took off. Our first game of the season was at home to Nottingham Forest: we won that and never looked back. We were top by the end of August and stayed there all the way through to May. Having been near the bottom for the last three seasons, the fans really responded. In November, we went to Wolves with no fit central defenders. They were a good team – Denis Irwin at left-back, Joleon Lescott in defence, Paul Ince running the midfield – and I ended up playing two lads
that had never been in that position before and we drew 1–1. That was when I knew we were going to be all right. We led from the front all year.

The last game of the season was at Bradford City. We won 5–0. There was nothing on the game, we were already up as champions, and all the lads wore white boots, which was Festa’s trademark. It must have inspired him because he scored the first goal, and we coasted. I decided to bring our Japanese heart-throb Yoshi on at half-time. He was such a nice guy, no trouble at all, despite not really being involved since having a nightmare against Leyton Orient in the FA Cup the previous season. I could sense the lads didn’t think this was my best idea. It turns out they really fancied us to win and a little group had put money on a Portsmouth win. They needn’t have worried. Todorov scored a hat-trick in the second half and we were never in danger.

I think it was probably the best season for Milan at the club. He must have been the most popular chairman in the country, and absolutely revelled in the attention. He only ever wanted to be loved. I remember during my time as director of football, we were playing at home to Crystal Palace, and Milan came into the boardroom very excited. ‘Harry,’ he said, ‘there is a horse running in a big race today called Milan. Is it owned by a Portsmouth fan? Do you think they have named it after me?’

‘No, Milan,’ I told him. ‘It belongs to a friend of mine, Michael Tabor. It’s running in the St Leger at Doncaster. But it’s a good horse.’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘put £60 on it for me.’ He gave me the money, but I decided to lay the bet myself. I fancied something else in the race. Sure enough, Milan won and I was out ninety quid. Our
Milan was delighted. We were beating Palace comfortably, which helped his mood, and he’d had it off on the St Leger. We were sitting together for the second half and our fans started singing, ‘Milan, there’s only one Milan …’

‘Are you jealous of that, Harry?’ he asked. ‘Do you hear them all singing to me?’

‘They’re not singing to you, Milan,’ I told him. ‘They’ve all had a few quid on that horse.’

He looked very crestfallen. ‘Do you think so, Harry?’ he said.

We didn’t set the Premier League alight in our first season, but we stayed up, which was more than a lot of people expected. We weren’t the size of Wolves or Leicester, but they both went straight back down again and we survived. I had doubts about some of the players, obviously. I wondered if guys like Linvoy Primus or Arjan de Zeeuw could handle the Premier League, but they were fantastic. The group that got us promoted kept going, and I added a bit of class with Teddy Sheringham and Tim Sherwood. Some people have found Teddy a bit aloof, but he was fine with me. He was a good pro, a good trainer and in top nick for his age. Milan had finally agreed to do the drainage at our training ground – the university had abandoned the cricket by then so we could get a proper pitch in – but he wouldn’t make a commitment until promotion was guaranteed. So the work started late and by the time pre-season arrived we had nowhere to train. We ended up in the in the park over the road. It was like the old Bournemouth days, scuttling through the traffic and starting the session by clearing up dog’s mess, but Teddy mucked in with it all. He had scored in a Champions League final four years earlier, but he didn’t care. All the players just got on with it. Nobody moaned.

I don’t think Milan was too sure about Teddy at first, but after he scored a hat-trick against Bolton Wanderers in August, he changed his mind. Not that it was all plain sailing. We had dropped into the bottom three by March, and there was a real fear of relegation, but a 1–0 win against our great rivals Southampton on 21 March turned our season around and we lost only one game between there and the end of the season. We finished 13th.

Yet, for some reason, all was not well. Milan had never taken to Jim Smith, and now he was angling to get rid of him. He hated that the fans sang ‘Harry and Jim’. He was always going on about it. ‘Why do they sing Harry and Jim?’ he would ask me, thinking I would get wound up about it. ‘Milan, I don’t care if they sing Jim and Harry,’ I would say, but he wouldn’t let it drop. I don’t even think he wanted them to sing Harry and Milan. It was more that he was protective of me, and thought I wasn’t getting my due. Milan would say that I built the team and should be getting all the credit. ‘They should sing Harry and Harry,’ he said. He never understood that it didn’t matter to me. What difference does it make what they sing? What’s the problem? Yet it seemed to fuel his anger against Jim.

It was at the end of our first season in the Premier League that matters came to a head. Milan moved to sack Jim – and even went on radio claiming the whole plan was my idea. I was livid. I said if Jim went, so would I, Milan retreated, and that smoothed things over – but not for long. Milan was still scheming to move Jim out and in November of our second season in the Premier League, the row blew up again. There were just too many bust-ups now, and they were always over Jim. This time the pair of us went to see Milan and Peter Storrie. We had a huge row, which must have
lasted a couple of hours. Jim didn’t say a lot this time, I think he was just embarrassed to be the cause of so much trouble, but it certainly wasn’t his fault. Milan had just taken against him. He wanted to bring another coach in, and Jim didn’t fit the profile. Milan wanted a young, foreign coach, but I argued against having to work with someone we didn’t know. How could we know the new man would fit in? What if we didn’t agree on football? I thought I had got Milan to see sense. I left the meeting thinking we were all moving on. Jim had been great for me, and I was determined he was going to remain part of my staff. Yet as I drove home with, I thought, the situation resolved, I began to get some strange phone calls from newspaper men. ‘Hello, Harry, I hear you’re getting a new director of football …’