Always Managing: My Autobiography (48 page)

Looking back, it all started from Dad. He lived for football. Loved football. If there was a game – even a kid’s game over the park – he would be there. He would go out on to the balcony of our old flats and stare over to the East London Stadium in Mile End, just waiting for the lights to come on. The minute they did, his face would light up too, like he had won the lottery – and that was it, coat on and off he’d go. He might ring me up later. ‘Saw a right good player today, Harry. Cor blimey. Good kid playing for East London.’ Half the kids I signed at West Ham already knew my dad from him standing in the rain on the touchline. I’d introduce him, and the lad would say, ‘Oh, I know you – you used to watch my team play on a Sunday.’ He never saw me win the FA Cup as a manager, but he saw Jamie play for England and captain Liverpool, and he absolutely loved that. His whole weekend was taken up watching Jamie play, and his week was taken up planning it. If Jamie was away at Newcastle at 4 p.m. on a Sunday, Dad would find a way of being there.

As for me, I think I’ll always at least watch football, no matter what. Even when I’ve retired, I’d go to see Bournemouth every Saturday, whatever division they are in. We’ll play them twice this coming season with Queens Park Rangers, and that will be a strange feeling. I’ve never played them in the league before, only in the FA Cup with West Ham. No matter what the future holds for me as a manager, I will always enjoy going to a match. I find it quite relaxing to watch a team that isn’t my own – I enjoyed my brief time as an adviser at Bournemouth. I had the best of both worlds – I was involved, without the pressure.

And QPR? Nothing would give me more pleasure now than to turn it around at that club. I spent all summer trying to remedy our problems, shifting certain players out, getting others with the right attitude in. As I suspected, it wasn’t easy. Clubs want to do everything through the loan system these days. Napoli wanted to take Júlio César, our Brazilian international goalkeeper, but only for a season. What use it that to us? They have him a year and then he returns to Rangers on the same astronomical wages. I wasn’t standing for that – particularly as Napoli had just received £55 million for Edinson Cavani. It wasn’t as if they were short of cash. They took Pepe Reina on loan instead – maybe Liverpool don’t need the money as Rangers do.

The close season was a frustrating time for me as I spent most of it on crutches following a knee operation. With perfect timing, Adel Taarabt promptly got up to his old tricks. He turned up late for our training camp in Devon, so we sent him home. There were the usual excuses, but we’re not standing for it any more. There has to be a different attitude if Rangers are to return to the Premier League. I know some of these players think they are better than this division, but I’ve been down there, and I know there are teams and players that will eat you alive if you are not fully committed. Our priority is to get rid of the troublemakers. Get rid of them, before they get rid of us. And we’re doing it, slowly but surely.

Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to get QPR back into the Premier League. I’ve had more rows with chairmen than any manager in history, but my current employers are genuinely nice people, and they deserve to have more fun with their football club than they’ve had so far. The fans have been great, too. The biggest challenge at Rangers is finding and building a united squad,
capable of winning promotion. I have enough faith in my ability to believe I can do that – and I’m realistic enough to acknowledge that if I do not, I probably won’t get another season at QPR. Now I am starting life in the Championship, people think I might be bitter about the way it ended at Tottenham, but life is too short to think like that. Last season, I became caught up in what was interpreted as a row with my successor at Tottenham, André Villas-Boas, but I can assure you I feel no antipathy towards him at all.

It was just before we played Chelsea on 2 January, and I was asked about Rafael Benítez’s prospects as interim manager at Stamford Bridge. ‘You’d have to be a real dope to mess it up with that group of players,’ I said. ‘He has walked into a squad of Champions League winners – you’ve got to say he’s got a chance.’ The next day, the newspapers interpreted this as a dig at Villas-Boas, who had been sacked as Chelsea manager the previous season. Nothing could have been further from my mind. I was talking about the potential at a club like Chelsea, versus that at QPR. If you take over Chelsea’s squad you’ve got a huge advantage – you would have to be pretty silly to get into trouble if you can call on Juan Mata, Eden Hazard and Frank Lampard. I wasn’t even thinking about André at the time – and when we played Tottenham I made sure he knew that. Why should I hold a grudge against Villas-Boas? Did I think Tottenham were not going to replace me? All managers can only work with what they’ve got – that was my point. Taking over Tottenham, bottom of the table, and taking over QPR in the same position were totally different jobs for me, because of the quality of the players. There were easy solutions at Tottenham – and a permanent struggle at Rangers. I would have thought that was easy to understand.

I’m 66 now. I was 36 when I got my first job at Bournemouth. Looking back, what would I tell that young man now? What would I do differently? Certainly, I would counsel against being so hot-headed with chairmen. When I think back to how I used to speak to the business people who owned football clubs, I wince. I never saw it from their point of view, never appreciated that they were making a commitment to the club, too. I viewed every argument in simple terms, black and white, right and wrong; those who knew football versus the amateurs. If the boss said something daft, I was on him, and that wasn’t helpful – to the club, or to me, really. Those guys have still got the power and will wait for the right moment to get their own back. Certainly at West Ham I was too confrontational, and it cost me in the end.

It’s an idea to think before speaking to the press, too. Not because I’ve been stitched up, but because a flippant aside or a one-liner can sometimes cause more trouble than it is worth. The number of times I’ve seen something in headlines the next day and thought, ‘Harry, son, what have you done?’ I like to have a laugh, I like to make a joke, but sometimes that means people think I am not as serious about the game as others. I listen to some managers talking bullshit, but because they keep a straight face, they have a reputation as serious football men. I couldn’t do that but maybe if I engaged the brain before speaking a few times, I wouldn’t have so many rows.

Thinking it over, my management style hasn’t really changed. I’ve had to adapt to deal with foreign players and different football cultures, but I’m the same person in the dressing room after a match. I wasn’t one to rant and rave when I started out at Bournemouth, and I’m not now. I booted some sandwiches over Don Hutchison
once, when I was West Ham manager, but that was about it. He didn’t run with the left-back in the last minute and Southampton scored. I kicked this plate off the table and they all landed on his head. John Moncur got up to pick one off for a laugh, and I went for him, too. I ranted at him for about a minute before he could get a word in. ‘Boss, what have I done?’ he said. ‘I was the sub. You didn’t even put me on.’ That’s why I try not to lose my temper too much – you end up making no sense. (He was funny, John. He used to sit on the bench, desperate to get on to earn his appearance money. We’d be winning 3–0 at home, and there would be this constant chatter behind me. ‘Come on, Harry. Put me on. I’m not earning the dough this lot are earning, am I? I need the money, come on, put me on.’ I’d finally relent with about five minutes to go and, first tackle, wallop, booked. I think he played nine matches in a row for us once and got booked ten times.)

Fighting with the players has never been part of my make-up, really. I can’t throw a decent punch, for a start, but screaming at them doesn’t work, either. Those days have gone. I know Tony Pulis at Stoke City had a few old fashioned tear-ups, but you can’t do it now. You’d lose the dressing room very quickly if you were too much that way. Jim Smith would tell me I was too laid back with the players, he thought I should lose my temper more. Compared to Jim, I’d say every manager is laid back. Some of the things he used to say to players came as a shock, even to me. He’d open with the C word and go from there – and you had to look lively or there would be a teacup on your nut.

There is a time for reading the riot act, but praise is important, too. Bobby Moore said something that stuck with me and has been a big help throughout my management career. We played a game
one night and he was unbelievably good, absolutely outstanding, never put a foot wrong. And I told him so. He seemed really grateful, really pleased to hear it. ‘Harry,’ he said. ‘You know in all the time I’ve been here, Ron Greenwood has never said, “Well done,” to me. Not once. We all need to hear that.’ He wasn’t knocking Ron – Ron was a great coach and a nice man – but Ron just thought that Bobby was such a brilliant player, and his ability was so obvious, that he didn’t need a pat on the back. He took him for granted because he was West Ham’s captain and England’s captain – but no matter who you are there is nothing like having someone put their arm around you and say, “Great job today.” I have never forgotten that conversation.

So, one last Joe Fagan story, this one seen with my own eyes. I was managing at Bournemouth, and we were trying to sign Roger Brown, a big centre-half, from Fulham. I travelled up with Stuart Morgan, my assistant, to watch him play against Liverpool in a League Cup replay. We were sitting in the directors’ box and Joe Fagan, the Liverpool manager, sat in front of us. I heard him tell people he didn’t like the view from the dug-out at Craven Cottage, and he could see more from up there. Suddenly, a voice says, ‘Hello, Joe,’ and he turns around to see another chap sitting there, about the same age. ‘Blimey! Hello, Billy!’ says Joe, and it transpires from their conversation that they were in the army together, obviously big pals back then, but haven’t met in years. They never stopped talking the whole game. ‘Do you ever see Charlie?’ ‘No, he’s dead. I saw Mickey last year, though.’ ‘Oh, how’s Mickey? Remember when …’ And out it all came, all these war stories. The sergeant did this, and this one did that, and in the meantime the game was going on with Gerry Peyton having to perform absolute heroics
in the Fulham goal. (Liverpool got through eventually, Graeme Souness scored in extra-time.) The half-time whistle blew and that was Joe’s queue to go to work. ‘Anyway, Billy, it’s been great to see you, keep in touch.’ ‘See you later, Joe, good luck with the game.’ And off he went.

Stuart Morgan looked at me. We were both naïve young coaches. ‘He hasn’t watched a minute of that,’ he said. ‘What’s he going to say to them?’

‘He’s the manager of Liverpool,’ I said. ‘Souness, Lawrenson, Hansen, Dalglish. He’ll just tell them to keep going.’

And that’s what I’ll do. Keep going. Joe Fagan knew the score. His players were in another world, so the rest of us would just have to work that little harder. And keep managing.

Me as a shy youngster at West Ham. We’d won the FA Youth Cup in 1962–63 when I was just 15.

Here I am at the beginning of the 1968–69 season, well established by that time in Ron Greenwood’s first team and looking a bit more cocky and sure of myself.

Happy Hammers – the West Ham youth team. The keeper Colin Mackleworth had come from the same Burdett Boys side as me.