Be Careful What You Wish For (13 page)

Blackburn as expected beat us quite comfortably 2–0, but it was bloody better than what I had seen to date.

After the game Graeme Souness, who I came to like very much, popped into the boardroom and made a point of saying hello. ‘Welcome to the madhouse,’ he joked.

‘Well, if it’s a madhouse, I should fit in nicely,’ I replied.

I left quickly after the game, scowling at Phil Alexander for being such a flake and heading back to London.

Our opening home game of the season was the live televised game against QPR and so there was a fair degree of excitement. My friends from Rhode Island, USA, Walter and George, came over. It was also a busy media week. I did a big interview on Sky, and a radio phone-in with the late great Brian Moore, in which I was very verbose, stating I intended to put Palace back in the Premier League in five years. I even went as far as to say that in potential terms Palace were the fourth biggest club in London, which endeared me no end to the Premier League Charlton supporters.

On the day of the game I was walking my two pals George and Walter around the stadium. I had a message put up on the electronic scoreboard and drew their attention to it. ‘To Walt and George …’ They started to take pictures of the scoreboard before the message finished ‘… a right pair of wankers’. Well, if you own a football club and you can take the piss out of your mates, why wouldn’t you?

We drew the game 1–1. After nearly six weeks, I had seen my team not get beaten – progress at last.

I had brought in two very important additions to support me. The first was my brother Dominic, initially as operations director, to look after all the logistics, starting with stadium maintenance and getting on with the remedial work, which it desperately needed.
Dominic’s
work became far-reaching as we uncovered so much abuse in every facet of the business – the culture was just rotten. We were being ripped off in every conceivable way: programme sellers pocketing monies; stewards signing one and another in for games when they were not there; merchandise being stolen by staff or given away; turnstile operators letting hundreds of their mates in per game for free. All of this – and more – cost us thousands of pounds.

I then brought in Kevin Watts, my human resources manager from PPS, as I knew that I would have to go through the staff with a dose of salts and would need a good HR guy.

On the commercial side, people’s standards were low, their discipline was poor, they were generally quite sloppy and after about six weeks of being in there I set about changing things.

First thing every Monday morning at 7 a.m., which was a shock to their systems, we had a management meeting consisting of all the department heads. These management meetings were for them to put forward ideas on how to improve the business and they were told that if they didn’t have any ideas, not to bother to come and work out how much longer they would be department heads for.

As if I was not having enough fun it wasn’t long until I experienced my first example of football’s internal bullshit and the nonsense that goes on inside this self-serving, make-the-rules-up-as-you-go-along industry. The club was being taken to the football tribunal by a player, Craig Foster, an Australian who hadn’t got his work permit renewed due to failing to meet the necessary criteria. Nevertheless, he was expecting to be paid up for the rest of his contract, which was for another two years.

Every year Foster was required to have his work permit renewed. To do this he had to have been a key member of the team for the club he played for and also play in over 60 per cent of the available international games for his country. Foster qualified on neither front, and without a work permit he couldn’t legally play professional football in this country.

At tribunal the case advanced by the PFA, the players’ union, and his lawyers was that even though he was not able to work or be paid legally under the laws of the land in this country, he should still be paid two years’ money – around £600,000 – for doing
nothing
according to the ‘laws of football’. Foster’s interest level was so great he couldn’t even be bothered to come back for his work permit hearing, let alone attend this kangaroo court. He just wanted to be paid.

The tribunal was made up of my first experience of so-called ‘football people’. You had a Football League representative, an FA council member, an ex-manager, Frank Clark the former Nottingham Forest boss, and you had a chairman who was a QC. And guess who got to pay for them attending? Muggins.

It was a complete try-on. It was the football establishment closing ranks around a newcomer, which believe it or not is how football really works, self-interest at all times.

Before Coppell left, the subject of Foster had come up and he had said in no uncertain terms that he didn’t rate the player and he would rather not have him back, preferring to use the money on someone better. So it came as a surprise to see Coppell as one of his key witnesses, and I was outraged when he got on the stand and told the tribunal that Foster was a major player and part of his squad plans if he had remained in charge. I nearly choked.

It was clear that the tribunal wanted to make Crystal Palace, or more pertinently me, pay Foster, even though the law of the land said differently. When I went on the stand I launched into a diatribe. I said that I didn’t recognise the authority of this tribunal, and pointed out that if they awarded the player this money they would be breaking the law and I would take this into the public domain. I also launched a scathing attack on Coppell, quoting exactly what he had told me. All of which I am sure endeared me to the establishment no end.

In one of the breaks I bumped into Frank Clark, who had the damn audacity to tell me this is how football was, I should
accept
this and just pay it. I erupted with fury and we had to be separated.

My legal team really cranked up the legality of it all. Despite their best endeavours the tribunal knew they couldn’t find a basis that wouldn’t be challenged outside of the football world, although they bloody tried.

Most people accepted the internal self-regulation of football. From the get-go that was not me and I put the football establishment on notice very early of that.

The decision was begrudgingly given: we didn’t have to pay Foster’s wages but had to pay his signing-on fees of £100,000, which they argued could have been paid at the start of his contract. This enraged me. I had to pay £100 grand to a player I had never even seen, as well as £10,000 worth of costs for the comic tribunal. Taking the damn thing to the High Court would have been uneconomical so I had to get on with it, but not before telling the tribunal exactly what I thought of them.

This was my first experience of how everybody else, bar the owners and funders of the clubs, seemed to be looked after. Everything appeared to be geared to the well-being of players, agents and managers and tough shit on the club owners – how can that be right?

Then, and over the years to come, I listened to what was, in my opinion, supercilious rot from Gordon Taylor, the head of the PFA, a man who ran the smallest union around but had the biggest salary of any union leader, who talked about players’ wages and how they have a short career. If you are earning £5,000, £10,000, £50,000 a week it can afford to be a short career.

Also players were insured for injuries, which most of the time was paid for by the club, so if their career finished then they would get a huge pay-out.

Managers had fixed-term contracts and if they were fired for doing a poor job, they got paid up to the end of their contract or part of it. In other words: paid to fail.

Despite our first point, the team had started poorly, winning only one of our first five games. Alan Smith was having trouble with certain players and struggling to get control over them. One particular player was getting up his nose, Jamie Fullerton, a Scottish international and a barrack-room lawyer. Every club had one, apparently, and Alan wanted rid of him. So I did it for him, which should have set off alarm bells for me as the manager should be able to deal with these things himself, but again I was learning the hard way.

I sent Fullerton a letter about his conduct and he ignored it. So I had Kevin Watts remove him from the training ground in front of all the players. Within hours I had his agent on the phone, demanding he was either reinstated or paid off. That call was quickly followed by one from the PFA. I told them all to go forth and multiply.

The next day he returned to training, and again I had him removed. I warned him I would call the police and have him arrested for trespassing. I knew I couldn’t but I wanted him to realise I was serious. We also served him with a dismissal notice. His agent and the PFA were up in arms demanding meetings; I refused.

At the time this was controversial behaviour. The PFA were powerful and used to getting their way, but not with me. Players were under the impression they could do and say as they pleased – perhaps they could in other clubs but not here. After a short war of attrition the penny dropped and Fullerton was moved out to Dundee on a free transfer.

I wanted to support Alan as much as I could, so as well as ridding him of troublesome players, I supported him with purchases. He wanted a goalkeeper and an attacking winger. The two players he identified were in the Latvian national team managed by Garry Johnson.

Allegedly we scouted both of them. I say ‘allegedly’ because at later times when I looked into the actual scouting and research behind buying players and multi-million-pound investments of my money there was not a lot, another thing I learnt the hard way and set about changing.

They both played for Skonto Riga in Latvia. I bet the club couldn’t believe their luck when we paid £650,000 for keeper Aleksandrs Kolinko and £1.5 million for winger Andrejs Rubins. I spoke to Gary Johnson whose words were: ‘You can stand on me on these two players’ and I can assure you there were many times later I wished I had stood on Johnson from a great height.

Their agent was Phil Graham. Physically he reminded me of a cross between Ming the Merciless and Dick Dastardly. He wanted a large commission for getting them to join the club, but I was not prepared to pay him a fee as he was working for the players negotiating their contracts.

An avaricious man, Graham said he would be able to reduce the players’ wages to a figure I was comfortable with if I paid him. This was the first example of how disingenuous agents were and how much they really cared about their clients, although the players would never believe it.

At the end of September we had played ten games, had the princely sum of eight points and were third from bottom of the league. This was despite having brought in nine players and spent over £5 million on transfer fees, as well as taking several highly paid Premier League players on loan. It was not quite the start I
had
envisaged. Coupled with the investment in the team, I was buying a new eight-acre training ground for £1 million. I was certainly putting my money where my mouth was, but getting scant return.

Alan decided that during the international break he wanted to take the players away on a five-day trip to a training camp in Jerez in southern Spain. This was supposed to boost morale and help the players bond.

So in the first week of October this bunch of ingrates were ferried off to a camp to train and get themselves together. I joined them at Alan’s request; the surroundings were absolutely first class. I watched a couple of training sessions and played some golf.

Over the first few months I had had little contact with the players, preferring as much as possible that the manager deal with them, but of course I knew who was who. I also got the impression they eyed me warily. One of our more talented young players was Clinton Morrison, who had a rather unfortunate attitude, so I had formed a dim view of the little rat bag. I later christened him the ‘Pest’, which was how I always referred to him. He was a belligerent little runt and on one afternoon in this luxury training ground in gorgeous Spain he sauntered past me with some of his teammates. I went to acknowledge them and was greeted by Morrison with a scowl and a kissing of his teeth. No, Clinton, not at me.

I called Morrison over and let him have both barrels. ‘Listen, you, I have had about enough of your shitty little attitude. Next time you kiss your teeth I am going to kick them down the back of your throat.’

This shocked him and his teammates: it was not how the chairman was supposed to speak to his players.

From that day forward I never had another problem with Clinton. He was a good lad underneath all his bluster and I became one of
his
major supporters, awarding him a new contract later that season. I had a very good relationship with both him and his mother, who was very important to him – just ask Rufus Brevett of West Ham, who had a scrap with Angela Morrison in a players’ lounge.

Whilst I was in Spain I found the atmosphere to be a little too carefree and easy. Certain players and management were going out at night to some local bar, which I soon found out doubled as a knocking shop.

The last day comes around and the players are having a drink in the hotel bar so I decide to join them. Sitting in the corner was Andy Linighan, last year’s player of the year. He was a brooding character and it was obvious that he had been drinking heavily; I made the mistake of trying to engage him in a conversation. He wasted precious time airing his grievances, claiming the trip was ‘shit’, questioning why he wasn’t in the team and demanding to know why Steve Coppell had been sacked, although apparently he had never liked Coppell anyway. Rather than quit whilst he was ahead, which incidentally he was not, he then turned his verbal attentions to me, being quite provocative and confrontational. I tried to calm the situation but Linighan was having none of it, finally overstepping the line by saying I knew ‘shit about football and should stick to selling mobile phones’. All of this was listened to by the other players.

I kept my temper through gritted teeth, said goodnight to the other players and left the room, raging. The assistant manager Houghton and the rest of the coaching staff were sitting at a table in another part of the hotel as I burst in. I gave them a rundown of the conversation I had just had with Linighan. ‘I want this drunken imbecile dealt with,’ I said.