Be Careful What You Wish For (29 page)

Talking of Hansen, he now had a sea change of view, claiming Palace were now worthy of their place in the Premier League and would more than likely stay up.

Thankfully for Hansen he is not on a prediction-related bonus for the BBC.

Next up was Manchester United in the Carling Cup at Old Trafford.

Naturally I looked forward to the game but I wasn’t overawed or impressed by the opposition. It was just another game I wanted my team to win.

I wish I could say the same for everyone else at Palace. When I arrived at United it was as if someone had picked up our entire
boardroom
and dropped it in the VIP area. To a certain extent I could understand why everyone wanted to go but it didn’t reflect my outlook and I was slightly embarrassed.

I had a similar attitude whenever Palace scored. My celebrations were very tempered and never over-elaborate: I always assumed we would score and felt over-celebrating was a sign of weakness. In the battle of the directors’ box, over-elaborate celebrations merely made your opponents feel more important than they actually were.

After I politely declined an invitation into United’s boardroom from Sir Bobby Charlton, Phil Alexander didn’t need to be asked twice to take my place and predictably swooned over it like he stumbled across Aladdin’s Cave.

Needless to say on a scale of one to ten the result wasn’t important. We lost 2–0 but league points were far more important than historic scalps in the Carling Cup.

Around this time I had started to date Alex, George Best’s ex-wife, and we both promptly turned up at Liverpool for our next league game.

It was bedlam. Having avoided entering Liverpool’s unfriendly boardroom, we took to our seats and were confronted by a mass of photographers, snapping pictures of myself and Alex.

At the start of the season I had taken on Max Clifford to handle my PR and one of the objectives was to protect me against press intrusion in my private life. The reason for employing Max seemed logical. I felt there would be significant interest in my professional and private life especially as I was young and outspoken. As a single man in London I felt it was appropriate for someone to manage that.

Max had immense power in the tabloid market, so in a way it was like taking out an insurance policy. I was to use it on a number of occasions on behalf of some of my errant employees who got
themselves
in various scrapes with the media and needed my help and that of Max to spare their blushes.

Around this time an article was written by one of the tabloid newspapers which showed the irresponsible and potentially damaging effects of bad and inaccurate journalism. This particular article was about the rifeness of cocaine, raucous behaviour and sexual impropriety by Premier League players. Some of it was true, but they illustrated the article with a picture of Andrew Johnson falling out of a taxi.

This young man was the most committed footballer I had ever met. He barely drank, certainly did not do drugs, was in a good relationship and was now an England player. The picture was taken as he was chased down the road by paparazzi and he fell into a cab not out of one. Andrew was horrified and so was I; there was no mention of him in their article except this bloody picture which made him guilty by association. I sued them on Andrew’s behalf. We got a retraction and an apology, also a significant amount for damages, which Andrew and myself gave to a children’s hospice that Max Clifford had introduced me to. So at least some good came out of it.

The following home game against Newcastle was a real eye opener for me. It wasn’t so much the 2–0 defeat that concerned me but the manner in which we lost the game that set alarm bells ringing. The scoreline flattered us. A team with no real expectations of accomplishing anything significant had comprehensively outplayed us. It was embarrassing and it dawned on me that we had a real fight on our hands to survive at this level.

Worse was to follow when Max Clifford set up an interview for me with the
Sunday Times
. It proved to be the most controversial I had done to date and would be published the day of the London derby against Charlton.

I was asked very leading questions and gave strident views in response. When I read the article that Sunday morning I regretted the way my views had been crafted into what was an explosive article. I appeared to be disparaging about major clubs, aspects of football and other chairmen, when in fact I had been extreme in my views, but had balanced them out. The balancing parts were conveniently left out and the acticle didn’t reflect the true nature of what I said.

I was asked whether I had a reputation for not getting on with other chairmen and my throwaway response was: ‘It’s fair to say I think a lot of football club chairmen are tossers but I suspect they may well think the same thing about me.’

Of course the piece only reported the controversial first half of my answer and not the balance in the second. And perhaps I should have used a better word than ‘tossers’.

Given my attitude of not feeling privileged to be in the Premier League I was asked a pointed question. Was I an admirer and respecter of the traditions and achievements of the leading clubs?

My response was that I was not a great respecter of traditions and values and felt there was a lot of bullshit in football. And a lot of bullshit in and around clubs like Manchester United and Arsenal.

What I also went on to say, which again didn’t appear in the article, was that the achievements of these clubs were to be respected but they included certain factions that were full of self-serving bullshit.

The fallout, aside from unwanted back-page headlines, criticism on TV and radio stations, was that I got a phone call from Freddy Shepherd at Newcastle to say ‘Hello, just one of the tossers here.’ I acknowledged the fact I had earned that jibe.

It’s one thing being strident but another thing allowing yourself stupidly to be taken out of context.

In the article I had launched an extreme tirade against agents, which was the only part of the piece I had no regrets about!

I had done many articles prior to this where I had been strident in my views but in this case my views had been taken out of context and they had crossed the line. I felt I had to get in front of this, so driving towards the ground I called Sky and asked them to allow me time to address the issues in the article, which they agreed to begrudgingly, given that I had hardly given them any time in the last twelve months.

After the damage limitation with Sky I went up to the boardroom and bumped into Richard Murray, the chairman of Charlton, and assured him that in no way the comments I had reportedly made were directed at him.

Murray smiled and said: ‘I understand, we all get misquoted.’

It’s funny how that attitude changed some five months later.

Anyway, to top off an unproductive day, we lost against Charlton, conceding a last-minute goal, which was becoming a regular feature of our season.

No sooner had the repercussions from the article died down than I had to travel to Manchester United, where I faced some disapproving looks and a few disparaging comments from certain directors of theirs.

I’d done the article and addressed it so if people wanted to go on about it I didn’t really care. It was done and I’d drawn a line under it. I was far more concerned about the team’s slide down into the relegation zone than the opinions of the Manchester United officials. I suppose the fact we got thrashed 5–2 would have been viewed as retribution.

Between the Manchester United game and the opening of the transfer window we dipped in and out of the bottom three with ever helpful reminders from the press that any team in the bottom three at Christmas always got relegated.

Around this time my old school Purley Boys had asked me to
come
and address the pupils as they considered me to be one of – if not the most – successful ex-pupils.

Ironic, seeing they had expelled me!

Initially I said I was reluctant to do it, so jokingly they blackmailed me and threatened to release my old school report to the press. That was it: I had no choice, I had to do it.

I took along Andy Johnson for the star factor as he was now an England player. I gave a speech to the young students, who were sitting where I had sat twenty years earlier. Afterwards I got to listen to some of my old teachers who were still at the school and some who had loathed me claimed that they always knew I would be a success. Oh, really?!

On the field, results were poor and following the 1–0 home defeat against Portsmouth on Boxing Day we dropped into the bottom three. A credible point at Spurs briefly took us out on goal difference but on the opening day of 2005 we lost 3–1 at Fulham and slipped straight back into the relegation zone.

The opening of the transfer window was a timely reminder of what managers seek to excel at: trying to spend your money.

I made significant funds available to Iain Dowie, who identified two targets, Michael Carrick at West Ham, and Dean Ashton at Crewe. West Ham accepted my offer of £3.5 million for Carrick, but he refused to even speak to Dowie and ignored his calls.

We offered Crewe £2.75 million for Dean Ashton. Norwich were also in the market for the striker so I called them and said, ‘Let’s agree the same fee to prevent a Dutch auction and let the player decide between us.’ So what do they do? Offer £3 million and promptly sign him. Was I naïve? Perhaps. I was later to find out that Dario Gradi, the Crewe manager, had a dislike of me and was probably instrumental in the player not coming to Palace.

As the Dowie brothers had identified no other targets, the window closed without any new additions to the squad. For my trouble I got to read in the papers another public broadside from Dowie, claiming I hadn’t supported him financially in the transfer market. He conveniently forgot a private discussion we had when he admitted his brother Bob had failed to do his homework in the market. Or that we had done our best to get the only two players he wanted and he was in fact comfortable going forward and believed, like me, we would stay up regardless.

Irrespective of failing to acquire players, in the last game of January we crushed Tottenham 3–0 at home and were three points clear of the relegation zone.

February brought a further four points and by the close of the month we were four clear of relegation. The Valentine’s Day Massacre at Arsenal, where we lost 5–1, was rather humiliating but my spirits were lifted two days before the end of the month when we got to administer more pain on my mates at Birmingham. Andrew Johnson, who I had taken for nothing and been a makeweight in the Clinton Morrison deal, scored both goals. According to the pundits we were the team most likely to stay up this season.

So as we approached the last quarter of the season in reasonable fettle, it never really occurred to me that we would get relegated. I had fleeting thoughts that we might but I banished them from my head as soon as they popped in. Not from a state of denial but, as Nietzsche said: if you look into the abyss the abyss looks back at you. I wanted to look into the sun and being in the Premier League was Vitamin D in abundance.

My relationship with Dowie remained difficult but despite a few fractious moments where he had spoken out of turn in the media, or just been plain difficult, we had an accord of sorts. Maybe it was due to his brother Bob acting as a conduit between us, maybe
it
was because I had learned to tolerate Iain, or maybe Iain and I attached so much importance to staying in the Premier League that it overrode our personal differences.

Iain believed we would stay up. He believed in himself and the team. I found his positive outlook and leadership uplifting and appreciated his determination.

In March we only had two games. Relatively ‘easy’ fixtures against Manchester United, who were second, at home and the leaders Chelsea away.

Selhurst Park was buzzing for the visit of Manchester United. It was the first time we had played them at home since April 1998, on the cusp of the doomed Mark Goldberg takeover. That team was managed by Attilio Lombardo and got smashed to pieces 3–0. I watched the game that night from the Holmesdale stand. But this was a different Palace now, a supercharged one led by Iain Dowie that matched Manchester blow for blow and came out with a 0–0 draw against one of the finest teams in the world.

Talking of the finest teams, we played Chelsea next on a bright March afternoon. A group of friends and I walked down the New King’s Road. It never concerned me what rival fans may or may not do. But it was fun, as I think the Chelsea fans were somewhat stunned to see me. We stopped off for a drink in one of the pubs and by that time the Chelsea fans had gained their voice and the abuse followed. It was all in good spirit though, as they knew I was a London lad like them and ‘had done good’. Unfortunately, the result was predictable, a comprehensive defeat, although we did go in at half-time 1–1. We might have stood a better chance if our goalkeeper could have caught more than a cold that afternoon. We ended up losing 4–1 and our defence was as conspicuous in its absence as Roman Abramovich was in the directors’ box.

Around this time something sinister happened in my personal
life
. As I had given Ms Best a straight red card, I was often out in the high-octane London nightlife. In March 2005 I met a girl with whom I had a brief interlude. She has subsequently stalked me for six years, despite being arrested, put in prison, put on community service and given several restraining orders.

I tried to make light of it, saying what self-respecting single multi-millionaire does not have his own stalker? But having your family threatened, having hundreds of texts and phone calls a day for months on end, having lewd photographs sent to your hotel, stores phoning you up to pay for things she had ordered with your details, as well as strangers calling you up and abusing you whilst drunk with her, was not fun.

Back to football. After a great performance against Manchester United and a good effort at Chelsea, the next four matches were a disappointment as we took only one point in a draw at home to fellow strugglers Norwich.