The Second Half (20 page)

Michael Chopra came in. The fact that he was a Geordie was an issue for some, but not for me. He did a job – we got a good year out of him. We paid five and a half million, and he scored me seven goals. That’s the madness of Premiership football. A million a goal – but his goals kept us up. That was what we paid for. A player worth fifteen million, who might have got us more goals, wouldn’t have come to us in our first season up. We were learning that quickly. I’d say to players we wanted, ‘It’s not Australia.’ But Sunderland is pretty bleak. So is Newcastle, but they were in a position to pay a lot more than us. I’m a footballing man; I didn’t really care where I was. But others look at the whole package.

‘Will you come up to Sunderland?’

‘Yeah, yeah.’

‘The wages are decent but they’re not mega.’

‘Well, I’m not coming up.’

They wanted compensation for the cold and dark nights. We knew that the lads who
were
coming to us were doing it for the right reasons.

And Sunderland was the place to be. The crowds – 44,000
and more – the fans were brilliant. The club ran so smoothly at times I wonder if I’m remembering it accurately. We hear so much now about interference in team selection, and so on. But we had it perfect. Everyone knew their role. I was looking after the football, Niall was looking after the PR and the finances, the chief executive was getting deals done, the medical staff were on top of their job, the players were happy to be playing for Sunderland. Niall knew the game, and he just let me get on with it. There wasn’t just one owner – no one person claiming control. The fact that we’d got out of the Championship in my first season meant, I think, that I’d the real support of everybody – and I felt it.

We were beaten by Luton in the Carling Cup. It was a bit of a shock because we’d beaten them 5–0 only a few months before. I’d made a mistake – squad rotation. Squad rotation is fine if you’re replacing players with international players, like at United or Chelsea. But we weren’t doing that. Also, I overdid it – four or five changes instead of one or two. I thought, going to Luton, I could make the changes. But it only works if you win. And we didn’t. So it backfired on me. But I hadn’t learnt the lesson yet.

Luton didn’t just beat us; they hammered us, 3–0. Their manager, Kevin Blackwell, said that they’d been after revenge, which is fair enough. But that game decided a lot of players’ futures. I’d played some fringe players, to give them a chance. You realise that they’re fringe players because you don’t really trust or believe in them. Greg Halford didn’t exactly warm himself to me when he got sent off in the second half. I remember, after the game, I wanted to smash my fist against the dressing-room wall; I think it’s the only time I’d ever felt that.

Clive Clarke, one of our players who was out on loan to Leicester, suffered a heart attack that night. The news came through to us after the game. The madness of football: we’d
been beaten 3–0 by Luton, a shocking result, but at the press conference after the game I said that football results didn’t really matter and I mentioned that Clive Clarke had had a heart attack. And I had the evil thought, ‘I’m glad he had it tonight’, because it would deflect from our woeful performance. That was the world I was in.

A couple of months later I was asked about Clive’s heart attack and I said I was surprised they’d found a heart. It was a joke at a press conference but, on paper, without the context or the tone, it looked less like a joke. I sometimes forgot that I wasn’t the only person with parents and children. It was after Clive had said something critical of me – something about me kicking chairs. The lads who were most critical of me were the lads I moved on or the ones who never played.

When you’ve had a decent career as a player the hard part about going to Liverpool or Manchester United when you’re a manager is almost having to accept that you’re going to lose, 1–0 or 2–0, and go, ‘That’s not bad.’ It isn’t a hiding – five, six or seven–nil – which would have a big impact on your goal difference, especially if you’re near the bottom of the table. It’s hard accepting the thought, ‘It could have been worse.’ I struggled with it. It felt a bit like I was robbing our own fans.

We were taking on the big boys. But I don’t like that term ‘big boys’. It’s almost like you’re beaten before you start. We were in the same league as them. I think I was quite good at looking at my players’ strengths, not deficiencies. When we lost these games, I was disappointed but I never lost the rag. A manager’s biggest fear is feeling that his players aren’t trying for him. If you have that doubt, that is where your pride is hurt. The beauty of Sunderland was I never felt that. You want your team to play like you. As much as I thought we needed more players and we needed improvement, I never looked at the Sunderland lads and
thought they’d let me down. We lost 7–1 at Everton but I knew they’d tried. It was naivety on my part. We were 3–1 down, never going to win the game, and I kept saying, ‘Keep going’; we could get back into the game.

I didn’t enjoy going to Old Trafford, although I got a good reception from the United fans. But there was too much fuss. Craig Gordon played well. He was justifying his price tag. But Saha scored their goal, from a set piece.

You hear managers going, ‘I was particularly disappointed to see us conceding from a set piece’, almost as if it’s okay to concede a goal from general play. The thinking is you should be organised to set things up. But the opposition can upset that by doing something quickly. And, no matter how well organised you are, it’s all about the delivery. The opposition is putting the ball in the box, at pace, and they’ve players attacking it. At no other stage in the game do you have seven or eight players attacking the ball in the box. A huge proportion of goals are scored from set pieces. ‘You should never concede from a set piece’ – we’ve almost been brainwashed into thinking it and saying it.

After the game we went to Alex Ferguson’s office for a drink with his staff, but Ferguson never turned up. I thought that was out of order. He called me a few days later, to apologise. He said he’d had to rush off after the game, and he’d waited a long time for me. I told him he should have had a drink with me, like he would have with any other manager, and that he hadn’t shown me or my staff proper respect.

That was three league losses in a row – Wigan, Liverpool, United. You’re starting to wonder where the next victory is going to come from. You begin to see why clubs can go ten to fifteen games without a win. When you’re near the bottom it all makes sense. But I think I stayed quite calm. We’d just been promoted,
and I was still new to the job. I was still being given the benefit of the doubt – a bit of breathing space.

Reading came to us and we won, 2–1. A big result. Kenwyne and Ross scored for us. We drew at Middlesbrough. It was a good draw, because Liam Miller scored with the last kick of the game. We were still scoring late goals.

The defeat by Blackburn, 2–1, at the Stadium of Light, was a hard one to take. I was down in the dumps after it; it was one of the games I thought we should have won. Arsenal away – we were 2–0 down after ten minutes, and I was thinking it could end up being seven or eight. But we came back to 2–2, before losing 3–2.

We’d played Liverpool, United, and Arsenal. We’d put up good, fighting battles but we’d still lost the games. Even thinking we’d played well felt a bit of a cop-out.

We weren’t invited for a drink with Arsène Wenger after the Arsenal game. Apparently he’s not one for that tradition. But I went in anyway. I wanted to meet him. I look at some managers and think, ‘The experience they have.’ It comes out of their pores. So we walked in. He was surprised but dead nice. Arsenal have that bit of class.

West Ham was a big game for us. It was one we needed to win. The teams in the bottom half of the table – it’s like a league inside the league. You had to get your points from these teams; anything from the bigger teams was a bonus. Grant Leadbitter hit the bar; we’d have gone 2–1 up if he’d scored. Kenwyne had already scored for us. But we lost 3–1. One of their goals – Craig dived, the ball hit the post, came back, hit Craig and went in. The fine line between victory and defeat – that was another tough one to take.

We drew with Fulham, at home. Halford was sent off again. I was really warming to him now. Kenwyne scored again. That was late October. He scored again in December, then didn’t score
again till March. That was Kenwyne. It happens to strikers. We scored on average about a goal a game, so it was a battle every week. A striker in a struggling team needs to get you one or two goals a month. But if they’re not delivering you’re in trouble.

Manchester City, away, and Stephen Ireland scored for them – a volley – then pulled his shorts down. He was wearing Superman underpants. The 1–0 defeats hurt because you think you’re close to a point. You’d almost be happier losing 2–0.

We’d slipped below the point-a-game target. We had nine points from twelve matches and we were stuck in the bottom three. We’d almost got used to it, but we hadn’t gone into any sort of free fall. I worried, but I was confident we’d climb out of the bottom three. As a group, I think we felt we’d be all right. Self-belief – it’s a great trait to have.

Newcastle came to us in November. It was my first derby and it was brilliant – the atmosphere, the relief that we weren’t beaten. Our record against Newcastle wasn’t great. But we should have won it. We were 1–0 up – Danny Higginbotham got us a goal. But they got one back. James Milner’s cross went in off the far post. Chopra headed against the bar near the end of the game. You come away from a game like that thinking, ‘We could have won it’, and then we got hammered the following week.

I wasn’t a great one for motivational videos or talks but, before we got off the bus at Goodison Park we showed the team a clip from
Any Given Sunday
, Al Pacino’s speech at the end. He’s an American football coach. His speech was about endurance, keeping at it – ‘On this team we fight for that inch.’ So we went out and lost 7–1.

Nothing like it had happened to me before. Everton slaughtered us. David Moyes was very good after the match. There was no small talk. It was just me and him. I think he brought me to
a private room; he must have known I’d be in a bad way. He was saying, ‘Stick at it.’ He showed real humanity towards me that day.

The defeat hit me badly. I went home, to Manchester. I hardly left the bed for forty-eight hours. You’re advised to move on quickly, but I couldn’t. I don’t think I even showered for two or three days. I was punishing myself. I hadn’t even had the cop-on to take our loss, when we were three or four down; we kept going for it. Take your beating; don’t make it even worse. But, no – ‘Keep going.’ A part of me felt I’d let the players down. I took full responsibility. Bizarrely, we’d had some good chances. Chops missed a great chance when it was 3–1; that would have made it 3–2.

Eventually, I knew I had to go back in to work, but I don’t think I went to the training ground till the following Friday.

Somehow – I think – I need that self-loathing. I don’t want to wake the next morning and say, ‘Ah, well – it’s gone now.’

The only time we’d try to be clever tactically we’d play with a sitting midfielder, who, nine times out of ten, would be Dwight Yorke.

There are only three or four systems you can play. That’s not to say you can’t have an influence. You tweak things, you change things, you make substitutions at the right time. Brian Clough and Alex Ferguson kept it simple. When I managed, I kept it very simple. It’s a simple game. Pass it, then move; try and score more goals than them. Win your tackles.

Yorkie had played in that role for his country, Trinidad, towards the end of his career. We’d played him in midfield in our promotion season but, in the Premiership, we sometimes played him with two in front of him – in the Makelele position. We’d do this when we were trying to be a bit more defensive, against the better teams – Arsenal at home, United away, Chelsea – the bigger
teams, if we thought we were going to get overrun in midfield. We didn’t always do it, and when we didn’t it often backfired because we got overrun. I’d play 4–4–2, and say, ‘Come on – let’s get at them.’

I’d think completely differently now but, at the time, I thought that playing the sitting midfielder was almost like waving the white flag – which is ridiculous. A lot of the top teams do it. But I’d been brought up with the 4–4–2, and there’s nothing wrong with knowing your strengths – but we were being found out in a lot of the games. We only won two games away from home all season. That’s probably close to the average for a newly promoted team. I could have been more tactical, and gone for more draws, but it’s very hard to change your mindset. A newly promoted team at the start of the season – the sun, the new badge, the better hotels – they have a spring in their step. ‘Let’s go!’ The clever response is, ‘No – don’t let’s go – take your draw.’ And with a sitting midfielder, you’re not necessarily settling for a draw. You can still play on the counter-attack. But there’s no point in being too clever tactically if you don’t have the players. We were always going to be in a battle. And what we did have was a good dressing room.

I don’t remember the game, but we were up against a team who were playing three in the middle, and we only had two, because we were at home. The Sunderland fans weren’t mad about three in the middle – ‘Too much fannying about – get up and at ’em.’ Two strikers, two wingers. So, this time, we were outnumbered in the middle of the park. Yorkie was blowing a bit. He was thirty-four or thirty-five now, and he was up against three in the middle.

Someone was injured, so Yorkie ran across to me.

‘Gaffer – gaffer— You know – they’ve got an extra man. What shall we do?’

I went, ‘Yorkie, you need to run fuckin’ more.’

He went, ‘Right – right’, and he ran back out.

That was me at my tactical best. I’m sure he thought I was going to get a drawing board out and give him a master class on how to deal with the problem.

I think, today, I’d be a bit more cautious. It’s the problem of being a big club like Sunderland
and
also being newly promoted. It’s hard to be cautious. You tend to get carried by the emotions of the crowd. We played with our hearts more than our heads. ‘Here we go – take on the world.’ When, really, I should have been saying, ‘Here, listen – one step at a time. Let’s be hard to beat.’