The Second Half (17 page)

I brought in Stern John before the transfer deadline, from Coventry City. He was one of my best signings ever.

I was at home on a Monday night, watching Coventry away to Plymouth. It was pissing down, and it looked like a shocking game. But every time the ball went to Stern John, it stuck – it stuck with him. He couldn’t run, but we just needed someone who could get hold of the ball. Dave Connolly and Daryl Murphy were about getting into the box and scoring, but there’s a saying in football, ‘When it goes up to him, it sticks’; when the ball went up to Stern, it stuck. Brian Clough used to say to his son, Nigel, ‘Fuckin’ stick – make it stick.’ The ball was protected, and we
could get up the pitch, or have a breather, or win a free-kick – you had options.

The next day, I went and spoke to my staff.

‘I’ve seen a player – Stern John. We’ve got to get him. He’ll give us something different.’

One of the staff said, ‘His knees are gone.’

I said, ‘Look at his record.’

He rarely missed a game; he played forty games a year.

He failed his medical, but I said to Peter Walker, ‘Do the deal.’

I’d looked at Stern’s playing record, and the fee we were paying for him was small; it wasn’t a massive investment. And who was going to question me? We were winning matches; everything was going well. We signed him.

I knew he’d be a man, and he was one of the best men I’ve come across. I knew he could deal with coming up to Sunderland. I knew he wouldn’t be coming into my office with, ‘Can I have a day off next week ’cos my wife needs a scan?’ I knew I wouldn’t have to baby-sit him.

A year or so later I was after Kenwyne Jones, and I told Stern, ‘I don’t want to sell you, but I’m trying to get Kenwyne Jones in and Southampton want you as part of the deal.’

He said, ‘Okay, I’ll go for it.’

He stood up and shook my hand.

‘Thanks for everything.’

And I went, ‘That’s why I signed you.’

A man.

He was brilliant.

Danny Simpson came in, on loan from United. A right-back – he helped us get promoted. He got us up the pitch. Himself and Carlos played on the right, too, and they struck up a good relationship. We now had plenty of strength and pace down that
side. Danny was a likeable lad and he brought United qualities with him; but he was no angel – he had an edge to him.

We had a good mix of players. We’d Yorkie, Carlos and Stern, from Trinidad; we’d the Irish lads; we’d a couple of local lads – Grant Leadbitter and a few other young lads in the background coming up, Jordan Henderson, Martyn Waghorn, Jack Colback. It was a really good mix – lads who got on well together. It helped that we were winning football matches; everything seems great when you’re winning.

Our next game was a 0–0 draw, at home to Crystal Palace. We didn’t win but we kept a clean sheet. I was happy with that, and I let the players know it.

I’d made Dean Whitehead our new captain. The previous captain, Stephen Caldwell, moved on to Burnley just before the transfer deadline. Dean’s fitness levels were very good; he was never injured and I could rely on him – I liked him. He was captain of the team but possibly Yorkie was the unofficial leader.

We beat Coventry at home, 2–0; Yorkie and Carlos scored. Then the same score away to Plymouth; Dave and Stokesy.

Ian Holloway was managing Plymouth. I didn’t get a real chance to celebrate the victory because Ian pulled me into a meeting to tell me all about the problems he was having getting training facilities. I was thinking, ‘I don’t give a shit about your training facilities. I just won a game of football.’

We beat Southend United 4–0, at home – Dave, Tobias Hysén, and Stern got two. When I look back at it now, I think the signings I made that season are even better than I thought at the time.

The crowds were unbelievable. It made me feel I’d definitely made the right decision, coming to Sunderland. We were winning, and the crowds were steadily getting bigger. We’d gone from 14,000 to, eventually, 42,000. Where did the twenty-seven
extra thousand come from? I don’t think we were doing anything amazing; we were winning.

We were up to sixth.

The Championship is relentless. You don’t get a breather. But I’d like to think there was fun. It’s horrible, I suppose, but when you win you think, ‘We’ll have to win next week’, or in a few days, if there’s a midweek game. And if you lose, you go, ‘It’s going to be a long week.’

I’ve spoken to experienced managers. Some of them enjoy Monday to Friday, but dread Saturday. I was the opposite. I wasn’t mad about Monday to Friday, but I loved Saturday. I felt a bit like a boxer; the sparring is all well and good, but it’s all about the fights. But a good boxer has to spar, and a good team has to train properly. I didn’t like it if we got beaten – ‘There’s pain coming today’ – or if we had injuries, but I thought that that was where I’d be judged, on the pitch, on match day.

I enjoyed watching reserve games during the week, or DVDs of the opposition, but I found some of the duties, like writing programme notes for the next home match, a bit mundane, a bit of a nuisance. I couldn’t wait for the next game. That changed later on – football will always kick you in the bollocks. But, with this group of players, I knew what I was going to get.

We’d have debriefings on Monday mornings, and plenty of banter. Do you know what? – we
did
have a lot of fun. This was on the back of winning matches. We socialised a lot, three or four of us going into Durham for a bite to eat. The staff and myself were quite competitive, so we’d do a lot of gym work together – or go-karting. There’s an outdoor circuit near Sunderland. It’s brilliant. I think the go-karting was the highlight of the week for some of the staff, not what happened on Saturday.

We were going well but there were always issues; things were
never too rosy. Tobias Hysén told me that he was homesick; he wanted to go back to Sweden. And there were things I was still trying to get used to – not dramatic moments, just aspects of the job. We were trying to move some players. We had too many that we didn’t need. I’d be praying for a phone call from another club. I found that frustrating – the waiting. Staff would come to me, asking, say, for time off because of marital difficulties, or problems with their children. I think that was one of my strengths; I think I had a kindness to me. But there was never a day when I’d go into work and come out later in the same mood; there’d always be something going on.

I’d get letters now and again from supporters telling me that some of the players had been out drinking – the standard stuff. It was always the Irish lads – always. I never got a letter about the English lads out drinking late.

Graham Kavanagh and Stokesy got into trouble one night; there’d been a fight.

I think it was Stokesy who said, ‘Gaffer, it wasn’t me. I was only backing him up.’

I think Kav had head-butted someone.

I’d say, ‘Now, lads, watch yourselves.’

I wasn’t their parent. I think some managers go too far, trying to be the father figure. When the players came into my office, I didn’t come down on them, all the big I am.

I’d go, ‘Lads, what are you doing? Just be careful.’

I’d try to be more like a friend – maybe a big brother. Because I had been there myself, and people
will
want to get you into trouble. Ferguson used to call me in and say, ‘I found out you were in a bar last week.’

And I’d say, ‘Yeah, I was – I was.’

‘You left at half two in the morning.’

‘Yeah? Was it half two?’

I would go out on a Sunday night, even if we played on a Wednesday, or I’d drink on Wednesday night with a game the following Saturday. But I’d never drink two nights before a game, whatever day the game might fall on. It’s not ideal to be drinking even three days before a game but, at the time, I felt I could manage it. It was a standard clause in the contract that you couldn’t go out two nights before a game, so I wasn’t breaking any rules.

‘You got a taxi at half past two this morning, in Sale.’

‘Yeah.’

‘What were you doing there?’

‘I was drinking.’

We were sixth, in a play-off position. But I wasn’t going overboard. I stayed in the role, kept up the moody image. I didn’t want the players thinking we could relax or settle for a place in the play-offs. And we had three games coming up, in the space of eleven days, against teams that were above us. These were going to be massive games for us.

The first was against Birmingham, managed by my old friend Steve Bruce. We drew 1–1; Carlos Edwards scored the goal, lashed it in with his left foot – almost a trademark Carlos goal. He was scoring some great goals. Birmingham were ahead of us in the table, so I was happy enough with the result.

I’ve always had good battles against Brucie, when he was with Birmingham and, later, Wigan. He’s a good key to learning how to manage upwards – how to manage the owners and chief executives. He was at Birmingham when Gold and Sullivan were the owners, and he got on well with them. Brucie always had a nice way about him, whoever was in his office. He got on well with Dave Whelan when he was managing at Wigan. Now he’s at Hull, with the owner who wants to change the name to
‘Hull Tigers’, and Brucie defends his point of view. He seems to work with difficult people, but he manages it well. During my Pro Licence, one of the things I was told was that the key to managerial longevity wasn’t managing downwards, but managing the people above you. I admire the way Brucie has done it.

Next, we had Derby, at home. At the press conference the day before the game I said that, mentally, some teams at the top of the table would lose the plot. I was playing games. That’s what you do, especially against the teams ahead of you. We were in a good position, nowhere near the top yet. It was like a horse race: don’t get to the front too early. We were coming up slowly, and the teams higher up the table had been watching us for months. Now we were coming up against the Derbys and the Birminghams, managers like Billy Davies and Brucie, men with huge experience. Sometimes I had to throw a couple of hand grenades. If we were beaten, nobody would think much of my quote, or even remember it. If we won – ‘Oh, the mind games.’

And we won – Liam Miller’s header. The smallest man on the pitch. That was when the crowd really took off. The staff were jumping around, the subs were out on the pitch. And I thought, ‘There’s something happening here.’

I won Manager of the Month. But I wasn’t sure about the point of these awards, and I’ve always felt that way. I won awards as a player – the Sports Writers’ Player of the Year, the PFA Player of the Year, Player of the Year in Ireland. I was at the award ceremonies, and I’d be praying that I wouldn’t win. I hated putting myself out there, in that way – going up to collect it. There was a shyness involved in it. I didn’t want to go up. But I loved football as a team game, and it gets my back up when I see players, and even managers, being presented as more important than they actually are. A lot of the awards are about publicity for the sponsors. I won Manager of the Month in February 2007.
What good was it to me a few years later? Don’t get too carried away, because you’re up for a fall. I said at the time that I’d put the award in the garage – and I did.

We beat West Brom, 2–1, away. Yorkie and Stern scored; they were brilliant. It was a great result for us. But afterwards there was a bit of trouble in the dressing room.

Near the end of the game, only a few minutes to go, Stokesy had gone through; he gave a bad ball away and West Brom broke on us. They didn’t score, but a lot of the players were still angry with Stokesy and having a proper go at him when I went into the dressing room.

I went berserk. Defending him. Defending a young player who was being bullied. We’d won the game and he’d made a mistake. When I’d lost my temper after the Sheffield Wednesday game, it had been a football matter; we’d nearly thrown the game away. But this time was different. He was eighteen or nineteen – a kid. They were all shouting at him aggressively. Senior players.

I think my exact words were ‘Give him a fuckin’ break!’

Then I found out that Tony Mowbray, the West Brom manager, had been talking crap after the game, as managers do. He was going, ‘We were the better team and if we keep playing like that we’ll be all right. We played better than Sunderland.’

I felt he was quite dismissive of us, and me. I was annoyed about that, because we’d deserved the win; we’d played well.

Those three results in a row, the draw against Birmingham and the wins against Derby and West Brom – we were taking off. I remember thinking, ‘My God, we might actually go up.’

The next game was away to Barnsley. And three players missed the bus – Stokesy, Tobias Hysén and Márton Fülöp. We’d waited for them at the station in Middlesbrough, where we’d arranged for all the players to meet us.

They rang us: ‘We’re stuck in traffic.’

I said, ‘Well, we can’t wait any longer. We’re off.’

I left them behind.

‘We’ll get another few players down.’

I didn’t shout down the phone or anything. I understood: they were stuck in traffic. But that was no good to us. So we left without them.

That was another message I was sending out. Lateness was an issue at the club – bad habits. Football is about good habits. It’s not about always doing something extraordinary; it’s about doing the ordinary things well.

We went to Barnsley and we won, 2–0; Dave Connolly and Grant Leadbitter. It was another massive game. We took 8,000 fans with us, and the place was rocking, absolutely brilliant. The news about the players we’d left behind was going around the fans. And Niall was on the radio – ‘We’ll stand for no nonsense.’ It was a bit hard on the players. I didn’t want them to be scapegoated, but it was almost natural that they would be. They’d been late, but a good bit late. We’d waited; I’d given them a chance.

After the game, at the press conference, I said that I was trying to change the mentality at Sunderland, the idea that it was a yo-yo club, that it was acceptable to be late for training or that you didn’t have to train hard all the time, or that you could get two or three weeks out of a week-long injury. That was a message for everybody – the players, the staff, the fans, Niall, the board. Everybody. It was nice to be able to deliver these good messages on the back of victories.