The Second Half (28 page)

He met my family; he was always dead nice to them.

There was once, he took me to a charity do. He needed a player to go to the gig, and he dragged me along with him. I was very young, and single – a lot of the other lads had families. At the end of the night, he gave me fifty pounds – a fifty-pound note; I’m not sure I’d seen one before in my life. It was like one of your uncles giving you a few bob when he came to the house.

There was something underneath it; I could identify a lot with him. He was hard on me. He hit me once, and I thought, ‘I know why you punched me.’

I got him – I just got him.

He kept things simple – for everybody. I think there’s a warmth in that, and a cleverness. There’s a genius to keeping it simple.

I worked under two great managers, and I put Brian Clough ahead of Alex Ferguson for a simple reason. What was the most
important thing in my football career? Brian Clough signing me. That kick-started everything.

Different managers, both brilliant.

I think Brian Clough’s warmth was genuine. I think with Alex Ferguson it was pure business – everything was business. If he was being nice, I thought, ‘It’s business, this.’ He was driven, and ruthless. That lack of warmth was his strength. United was a much bigger club than Forest, and his coldness made him successful.

He had a different personality from Brian Clough, but his message was the same. I was never once confused by one of his team talks or his tactics, or training sessions. I never once, in all my years at United, thought, ‘I don’t know where you’re going with that one.’

His management, and his message to the players before matches, was always fresh. I must have heard him talk before a match close to five hundred times, and I always thought, ‘Yeah – that was good.’

I think that’s amazing.

I know Clough’s warmth was business, too. Forest were good to me, but they’d got me for fifty grand – and I was younger. I was older at United, and I could see that it was a bigger business and that the game was changing, and that Ferguson was driven. He had to be. We had massive success together. It was enjoyable, and it was great.

As a manager I’d like to take Clough’s warmth and Ferguson’s ruthlessness, and put them in the mix – but also add my own traits.

After the Turkey match in May, Martin had to go and face the media. I didn’t. I sat in the dressing room with the players, eating chicken curry and rice, going, ‘We’ll get it right, lads.’

When I was a player, I shut doors on myself. Now, I don’t have to.

When you’re working, you’re visible. People see that you’re working, in a tracksuit, on the grass, and working with players.

‘Maybe he’s not the psycho.’

Football’s a small world. Whether good or bad, people talk. Players go back to their clubs. And Martin’s an intelligent man, yet he brought me on board.

‘He can’t be that big a head case.’

The opportunity came to go to Aston Villa, to work with Paul Lambert. At Villa, I’m the number two – and it suits me at the moment. I can keep the Ireland job; Martin and Paul, the FAI and Villa, are happy with that. My family doesn’t have to move. It’s back in the Premiership, with a club that I have a soft spot for. And I like the prospect of working with Paul Lambert. To be a good coach you need to get your hours in. Working alongside Paul, day-to-day, watching games at close hand, can only help me; it will make me a better, more experienced coach. And I can bring that experience, and what I’m seeing every day, to the Ireland job.

What will be will be. I think the Ipswich experience will stand me in better stead than anything else – all the lessons I learnt. The ‘nearly there’. Just remember, it’s hard to win football matches.

A big part of the Ireland job is going to matches, to see the Irish players. Martin will ring me, or I’ll ring him.

I’ll go, ‘There’s a game coming up next weekend, on Sunday. I’ll cover it, is that okay?’, and he’ll go, ‘Right, you go to that one.’

Everton, Stoke, Hull – where a lot of the Irish lads are playing.

It can be a bit of a gamble. I went to West Brom and Norwich last season, and Shane Long – this was before he moved to Hull – and Wes Hoolahan, the men I’d gone to see, were both on the bench. But the time is never wasted. I went to another game,
at Hull. Again, most of the Irish lads were on the bench. Paul McShane, who’s also with Hull, made the point: ‘Well, I hope you watched the warm-up.’ And I fuckin’ did. I watch the players’ body language and humour, the way they warm up before the game, or when they’re on the bench. Then I’m looking at the team out on the pitch, and I’m thinking, ‘Why aren’t you in that team?’

If they’re on the bench, do they get warmed up as if they want to go on? You can tell with some subs, they just don’t want to go on. They should be chomping at the bit.

I try to watch the players in different surroundings. Home and away – or against a team where you think they’re likely to get beaten, to see how they carry themselves, and if they keep going.

James McCarthy and Seamus Coleman have been doing really well at Everton. I saw them play, at home to Stoke. A very comfortable 4–0 victory; the two of them strolled through the game. A couple of days later, they were at United. And I thought, ‘Now I’ll watch them.’ So I went to Old Trafford – big setting, difficult fixture – and the two of them were excellent.

I think it’s important that when the squads for international matches are named all the players, whether they’re in or out, will be able to say, ‘Well, they have watched me.’ They might be disappointed but at least they’ll know we saw them play. We’ll be keeping an eye on them all the time.

I’m not one for writing many notes about players. I’ll have a team sheet and I might jot down a word or two. But I don’t do a match report or a scouting report. I’d end up missing the match! I’m there to look at one or two of the players. I’m not examining set pieces or team shape.

I’m learning a lot more about the football clubs. And I’m finding out the clubs I really like. When I was a player, I was very robotic. I’d go in and just do my business; I didn’t care what club
it was. But I’m looking around now, and I’m thinking, ‘What good clubs.’

The more I go back to a club, I begin to develop a routine. Getting to Everton’s quite easy, and Stoke; and Wigan’s a doddle. For other games, I tend to leave the house earlier; I don’t want to be turning up ten minutes after kick-off. I need to be professional. I have to get a suit on. I have a role while I’m there. I’m the assistant manager of Ireland; I don’t want to be turning up like I slept in a ditch. I generally travel alone, although it’s nice to have a bit of company sometimes. Especially at half-time. Because when I’m on my own, I can see some people thinking, ‘Ah – I’ve got an open invite.’ Most people who come up couldn’t be nicer. But sometimes people seem to think they’re on a mission.

‘Who are you here to watch?’

‘Have a guess,’ I say to myself.

‘Some of the Irish lads,’ I answer.

I’ve always been a bit wary. Always ready for the bit of abuse. But it never happens. The smart comment, or something sarcastic – never. I had abuse thrown at me when I was a player and a manager, but that was from thousands of people, the opposition fans. It’s part of the game. But not from individuals; no one going, ‘Hey – you wanker’, or anything like that. But I’m ready for it. And I hate that about myself.

In all the years I’ve been in football, and whatever I’ve done, people have shown me massive respect. They mightn’t like me, or like the way I played – opposition fans, anyway – but I never had anyone come up to me and go, ‘Oh, you – you—’ whatever.

I just wish I was a bit more relaxed, although I still think I have to be on my guard. In the past, when I have relaxed and let people into my space, they let me down – I’ve had that experience. So I think I have to keep that guard up, a little bit. But not to the extent that I have in the past.

I went to Everton last season. They were playing Norwich. The lad beside me was chatting to me, and he was talking quite cleverly about the game. I was enjoying the conversation, and I thought, ‘I’ll ask him who he works for’, because he was talking about players and the game; he knew his stuff.

So I went, ‘Who do you work for – what club are you involved in?’

‘I’m Roy Hodgson’s driver.’

I was laughing at myself; I’m glad I dropped my guard because I enjoyed his company. I think there’s ego involved, too, when I go, ‘I’ll keep myself to myself.’ He was a nice bloke and, being Roy’s driver, he probably saw more games than I did.

Everton’s another top club. The day Aiden McGeady signed for them from Spartak Moscow, I was thinking, ‘Great move for you, Aiden. Another Irish lad going to Everton – brilliant.’ It’s good for Ireland. He’s got other Irish lads around him and they’ve got a good manager. They can get into the Champions League in the next year or two, which can only be good for Ireland. Because the problem for Ireland is that most of the lads aren’t playing at the top level.

When I was a young player, the ambition was to play for one of the big teams. You wanted to get to the very top – the trophies and the financial rewards. Today, a lot of players can become very wealthy without reaching the very top. They might play for a mid-table club, or a club in the lower half of the Premiership, or even a Championship team, and still become multi-millionaires. I don’t know if that drive, that hunger, is there to get to the very top.

There’s never been a time when loads of young Irish players have come through. It’s always been one or two, every couple of years. I just hope they still come through. Seamus Coleman and James McCarthy, at Everton, are young, but they’re not teenagers
– they’ve already been found. And they’re the type of players we’ll be hanging our hats on. Jeff Hendrick, at Derby – I like the look of him. But senior players will always play a massive role. We’re always looking for players but we’re not going to unearth seven or eight diamonds. And I think we can take encouragement from the fact that smaller countries did quite well in Brazil, in the World Cup. Uruguay has a population of three and a half million – smaller than Ireland’s. But if we start calling ourselves a small country, we might be beaten before we start. We can look at our own football history; we’ve done it before. We have a nucleus of good young players.

I’ve never been against players who weren’t born in Ireland playing for the country. If they want to come on board and they qualify, then great, as long as they’ve a feel for it. I think, in the past, there were one or two players who probably declared for Ireland as a career move – and I can understand that, too. They did well for the country, but I look at some of them now and I wonder if they’ve been back to Ireland since. So I think the attitude should be, ‘Listen, if you’re going to come on board, get a feel for it – have a warmth for the country. But don’t just do it as a pure career move.’

But, then again, who am I to say? Love of country is a hard thing to measure. But if you see a player on the TV who played for Ireland, singing ‘God Save the Queen’ in a play-off final, you might just say, ‘Oh, right. Maybe he’s not really all that Irish.’ Matty Holland would be an example. For me, Matty is as English as David Beckham. He played for Ireland and he obviously has the roots. But he played for Ipswich in a play-off final, in 2000, and he was singing ‘God Save the Queen’ at the top of his voice. I don’t think he could have sung it any louder. Some of the other Irish lads saw him, too, so at the next couple of international matches we were going, ‘Turn that rebel music up a bit.’

I think it’s important that lads plug into Ireland a little bit – and the ways of the country. And I think, generally speaking, they do. They don’t have a choice, I suppose. I was at an FAI dinner recently, and John Aldridge was the guest speaker. Aldo would be an example of a player born in England who gave as much to Ireland as any Irish-born player. There has to be that feeling, and a warmth for the country.

Often a manager gets the job and his first game is the next day. But our first Euro qualifier came almost a year after we were appointed. The friendly matches were important and we wanted to build a bit of momentum and get to know the players, but I was dying to get at the qualifiers – and to qualify. And justify my role. Try to win people’s respect. Work with the younger players. Let them go out and enjoy it, and express themselves.

I got a call: would I go and have a chat with Dermot Desmond, Celtic’s majority shareholder? I’d met him once before, in 2005, when I was signing to play for Celtic.

I met him for a cup of tea. It was in the middle of an international week, in Dublin.

At the end of the chat, he said, ‘The job is yours.’

It was all pretty straightforward. There’d be one or two restrictions, about staff. They’d already picked the man who’d be my assistant, and they were insisting on him.

It didn’t scare me off, although it did get me thinking. It wasn’t an ideal start. Were they doubting me already?

I came back to the team hotel and spoke to Martin. I told him I’d have a think about it.

We had a game against Italy, at Craven Cottage, in London, on the following Saturday. We were busy, travelling to London from Dublin, getting the team ready. The fact that I’d spoken to Dermot Desmond had become public knowledge. It had to,
because Martin had a press conference, and a few things had been leaked – as usual. It didn’t worry me too much. It was a friendly match; I didn’t think it was going to upset the camp, although – again – it wasn’t ideal.

But I was delighted. It was a massive compliment. Over the years, when chatting with people about football and Celtic, I’d always said, ‘If you’re offered the Celtic job, you don’t turn it down.’

So I was now in a predicament – with myself, in a sense. And my gut feeling was getting back to me – ‘You’re on your own with this one.’

I asked Paul Gilroy, the League Managers’ Association lawyer, to speak to Celtic, to discuss terms. Money hadn’t been mentioned yet. I got in touch with Celtic’s chief executive, Peter Lawwell, and asked him to give me a ballpark figure, before negotiations got going.