How NOT to be a Football Millionaire - Keith Gillespie My Autobiography (17 page)

I was genuinely upset, and when I learned who the club had quickly drafted in as his replacement, I was even more upset. Mum actually heard it on the news, and called with information that made my heart sink. They’d appointed Blackwell.

He had served as Warnock’s assistant before setting off for Leeds, and the board obviously remembered him fondly. All I could think about was his lack of respect when I didn’t have a club. I’d talked with a few people in football about him after that, and the stories weren’t very encouraging. Warnock had fallen out with Blackwell after finding out in the papers that he was leaving for Leeds, and we’d discussed our mutual dislike for him. Funnily enough, I bumped into Warnock shortly afterwards and he confirmed the ominous feeling that I had about my future.

“Fucking hell,” he said, “When I heard he got the job, the first thing I thought about was you.”

He knew it meant trouble. This wasn’t going to end well.

24

Lighting The Fuse

Many drinks had been taken when I first lifted my phone to send an anonymous, abusive text message to Kevin Blackwell. I kept it simple.

“How’s the small man syndrome going?”

It felt damn good, when it delivered. And, even though there was no reply, I decided it wouldn’t be the last time that I punched his number in at an uncivilised hour.

Childish? Definitely. But I have so little respect for the man that I can’t say that I regret it. My Sheffield United career was over when I sunk to those depths. Truth be told, it was effectively finished when he walked in the door. He picked a striker, Jon Stead, on the right wing for his first match, and directed me to the stands. I didn’t start another competitive game for the club.

Of course, I was never going to like a man that clearly didn’t rate me. But it’s not the rejection that makes Blackwell the worst boss I’ve ever worked under. It was his style of management, that at times I felt just amounted to abusing and belittling people. I sent him that message because to me he was a living version of that character in the Harry Enfield sketch show, the short man always looking to pick a fight because he’s insecure about his size. Maybe that’s unfair. Blackwell’s paranoia might have just come from his lack of standing in the game. He was a low-grade player who had done well to manage at this level but, from what I could see, his people skills were deplorable.

Put simply, I saw him as a bully. Like most people who have that label attached, he picked his battles. Certain senior respected players like Gary Speed and James Beattie never felt his wrath. The younger lads seemed fair game. We had a guy called David Cotterill on loan from Wigan, a talented lad who Robbo had brought in to compete with me on the right side. He was treated disgracefully. Blackwell seemed to spend every minute roaring abuse at Cotts, be it on the training ground or in a match. One time, a defender smashed a clearance straight at Cotts, who was completely blameless, but Blackwell tore into him. Cotts just stood there, shaking his head, asking “How is it my fault?”

My longest appearance under Blackwell was at Southampton on the final day of the season, when he was caning Cotts from the outset and lost the plot so much that he took him off before half-time and sent me on. The long walk to the sideline when you’ve been subbed that early in a game is the ultimate humiliation for a footballer, but Cotts still chose to make his deal permanent in the summer. I could never understand that.

Billy Sharp was another to get it in the neck. When there was a problem with the front line, Billy was singled out, even when Beattie was contributing nothing. Ugo Ehiogu, a defender who’d been around the block, could see through it. We shared the same view. Blackwell behaved like he was intimidated by the big-name players, perhaps even threatened by them. It was easier to have a go at Billy. When I did sit on the bench, I couldn’t believe the extent of it. Andy Leaning, the goalkeeping coach, would look at me and roll his eyes.

Andy was a good guy to be around, unlike some other members of the backroom staff, the ‘yes’ men who were appointed to back up the weak general. Blackwell brought Sam Ellis from Leeds as assistant, the same man who’d been in my ear at Cheltenham two years previously saying what a mistake it was not to offer me a contract. When the shit was hitting the fan in the manager’s office one day, I brought that up, and Sam denied it point blank, probably in an attempt to cover himself. That just about summed Sam up.

I never trusted him. Sam’s main role at the club seemed to be policing a fines system at our training ground, Shirecliffe, that developed from a bit of fun into a pain in the arse. He was a timekeeper, standing by the dressing room door, giving a running commentary on everyone’s arrival. ‘Oh, you’re lucky, you’ve just made it’ or ‘Oh, you’re late, that’s a £5 fine’. He’d be lurking around the showers. ‘Have you got flip flops on? No. That’s another £2’. ‘Whose loose top is this? Number 22? Is that you? Well that’s a fiver.’ I’d be thinking, ‘You’re fucking assistant manager, have you nothing else better to do?’

Mark Smith, the reserve team manager, reminded me of Blackwell. His sessions mostly consisted of the same repetitive drill. There wasn’t much encouragement on offer and the atmosphere was dreadful. Dean Riddle, the fitness coach, was an okay bloke but, like Smith, he had an inflated sense of his own authority. Blackwell even supported me in a row with Riddle once, when he approached myself and Dave Carney – an Aussie who was also out of favour – towards the end of training and told us if we did a quick running session with him, we could have the afternoon off. The senior pros were never in after lunch, so I told him where to go. It kicked off, and Blackwell had to intervene to invite me to his office. “I’ve told Dean under no circumstances will you ever be training again in the afternoon,” he said. He told Smith the same thing when he tried a similar stunt.

That was a rare instance where I wondered if I was too harsh on Blackwell. Another came towards the end of that season where he took over, he turned around in the dying stages of a game against Leicester. “Are you on appearance money?” he asked. “Yes, I am gaffer.” A couple of minutes later, I was running on to earn an easy £3,000. I didn’t think he was such a bad bloke that night, and considered the possibility that I was just bitter because I couldn’t get near the team. I was also on a decent contract and didn’t want to go anywhere, so I went through a phase of thinking I should give him a chance. By the time I’d spent a summer with the man, however, our relationship was a ticking time-bomb.

A pre-season tour in Hungary was the tipping point. Sheffield United had built a relationship with their top club, Ferencvaros, through our chairman Kevin McCabe’s business interests, so we travelled there to continue preparations. I could already see how the squad was shaping up, and became increasingly certain that I wouldn’t be in contention for a starting place whatever happened. Blackwell was unbearable, really getting under my skin. Even when he tried to be one of the lads, it was annoying. I didn’t see the point in being civil to him any more.

His idea of injecting fun into a session was introducing forfeits. We played piggy in the middle, with two lads in the centre of a circle trying to block passes from the group, and the worst pair were to be punished. I was in there with Stephen Quinn, a young lad from Dublin, and when the lads called for handball when I’d stopped a pass with my chest, Blackwell sided with them. “Right, let’s continue from where we were,” he said. “25 passes so far.” It was only five or six. Nobody laughed. “Hang on,” I shouted. “Can we just stop for a minute and laugh at the manager who thinks he’s so fucking funny.” Gary Speed was in stitches, and that embarrassed Blackwell. He didn’t like being undermined – especially in front of Speedo.

A few days later, he split us into twos, saying that if neither one of a duo could chip the ball onto the crossbar from a certain distance, the penalty would be running for the rest of training. “C’mon Bestie, join in,” he said. I was sure he wanted the pleasure of seeing me do laps. So, with Quinny as my partner again, I jogged up and struck the bar perfectly with my first attempt, celebrating with a fist pumping fuck-you salute in Blackwell’s direction that didn’t go down well.

We had passed the point of no return. The niggling continued, a smart comment here and there, so the season kicked off as I expected. I would report for an away trip, count the number of other lads on the bus, and realise before the key turned in the ignition that I’d be lucky to make the bench. I would more than likely spend the game in the stands. Blackwell would have been better off taking young lads for experience, but I suspected that he quite liked bringing me around the country for nowt. The best I could hope for was a few minutes as sub, a happy alternative to doing shuttle runs on the pitch after the match with nobody but the cleaners there to watch you. Other bosses would at least allow the outcasts and reserves to do their exercise beforehand but this was a regime that placed little value on player satisfaction.

The inevitable blow up came in September, when I was brought to Norwich and stuck on the bench. Already, I was in bad enough form after they’d rushed me back from international duty for training a week earlier only to tell me I could do 15 minutes on the bike and go home. So, I finally flipped when, with six minutes left and the game scoreless, Blackwell took off Cotts and replaced him with our teenage full-back, Kyle Naughton. He was putting a 19-year-old defender in my position instead of me.

“Fucking wanker,” I screamed. The lads on the bench looked to see who I was addressing.

I pointed at Blackwell.

He turned around and put a finger to his lip and shushed me.

“NO, YOU BE FUCKING QUIET, YOU FUCKING WANKER.”

Norwich scored a last-minute winner. I stormed down the tunnel ready to have it out, and marched into the dressing room where I swiped a plate of sandwiches off the bench. It smashed into pieces. Blackwell walked in. Most of the players were still on the pitch.

“Fucking grow up,” he shouted.

“Grow up? I’ve had bigger and better managers than you, and they haven’t treated me like this.”

“You had a big-name manager last year and look what happened.”

I didn’t appreciate the dig at Robbo. By now, he was right in my face, so I stood up and went head-to-head, egging him on to hit me. He was always telling this story about how he’d knocked out Stan Ternent in a row years earlier.

“Go on, tell us the Stan Ternent story again,” I said. By now, the majority of the others were present. Speedo came in and pulled us apart. Blackwell was shaking with rage. It got silly.

“That cunt over there,” he said, pointing at me.

“Fuck off you cunt.”

“You’re a fucking cunt.”

“You fucking egg.”

“You’re a fucking egg.”

Speedo looked in my direction. “Fucking shut up”. The manager kept shouting, so Speedo turned to him. “You can fucking shut up too.” Blackwell did what he was told. He wasn’t going to take on the real authority of the dressing room.

I was punished with a two-week fine for my outburst and indefinitely sent to the reserves. Anyone who associated with me was in trouble. I felt particularly sorry for Ben Rome, one of the masseurs who had the misfortune to live beside me in Harrogate. This became a problem for Ben when my fast driving landed me in the dock. I’d spent six months off the road when I was at Blackburn for reaching 12 penalty points, and didn’t learn the lesson. My £120,000 Aston Martin always seemed to be going quicker than I realised. I hit 12 points again, and another six-month ban was the punishment. Ben heard and kindly offered me a daily lift into training. Strangely, management started demanding that he report for work at 9am while the other members of staff swanned in afterwards. Blackwell and Ellis would tear strips off Ben if he was late, and it had a big effect on him; he’d be a nervous wreck in his car, fidgeting and constantly looking at his watch if there was a delay, fearing he’d get the sack. The players didn’t arrive until 9.30am or 10am, so having a masseur in earlier didn’t make any sense. He was put under undue stress for his generosity, and that made me angrier. I was hating every minute around the place and, after a blazing argument with Ellis, they suspended me for a week. Ellis notified me by letter, claiming that they were trying to do me a favour.

“It is quite clear there is still resentment towards our relationship,” he wrote. “We have no wish to keep taking your wages, so we have decided to suspend you for one week starting Monday September 29th. After this week there is a two-week international break... we hope that your attitude has changed when you report back to training at 11am on Monday, October 20th, 2008.”

Nothing was going to change though. November provided a temporary escape. I was sitting at home one afternoon when the new Charlton boss Phil Parkinson rang to say they wanted me on loan; I’d come up in discussion after the game and they’d enquired about my whereabouts.

The chance to get away for a month was a no-brainer, and I enjoyed my time there. I looked forward to getting out of bed in the morning again and, football wise, it went okay, without being spectacular. I set my heart on a full-time move somewhere in January. Sheffield United recalled me at the beginning of the month, saying they were short of bodies for an FA Cup tie at Leyton Orient. Another wasted journey. Typical.

I sunk into the background again, all the time asking Phil if there was anything he could do. But I did have one worry, an ongoing back problem that might have been an obstacle to a move. I played a practice match at the start of the week before the window shut, and the pain was still there. Sam approached me after.

“You’re playing for the reserves tomorrow night,” he said.

“No, I’m not. It’s the last week of the transfer window and I’m not going out to play in a game where I might do myself no favours.”

“Right, you’re in this afternoon then.”

I explained that Dennis Pettitt, the physio, was managing the problem. Dennis was an ex-RAF serviceman who was retiring at the end of the season. He knew his stuff, and also didn’t seem to enjoy working with Blackwell. Some bosses recognise their limits when it comes to the medical side of things, but our gaffer was the interfering type. Dennis might recommend one course of recovery for a player, and then Blackwell would step in and dictate another plan. So, clearly, anything Dennis had to say about my back was going to be ignored by management. He was telling me to be careful, and advised against sticking around for the afternoon in case I overdid it. I showered, changed and was ready for home when Sam, as busy as ever, appeared over my shoulder in the dressing room.

“Just go down and get yourself a bit of lunch and come up and get a bit of treatment,” he chirped.

He wasn’t listening to a word I was saying. I flipped, and looked for something to kick. The bin was all I could see, so I sprinted across the room and volleyed it against the wall.

“Will you fucking leave me alone?” I screamed.

I grabbed my bag, and headed for the door with Dave Carney who was giving me a lift to the train station. Sam had little to say. “Just have a word with him, Dave,” he muttered. I shot back. “I’m fucking not injured, I’m not training, I’m going home.” And that was that.