The Second Half (7 page)

We beat Southampton, 2–1, at St Mary’s, in the last game of the season. They were relegated after that result, and West Brom stayed up – Bryan Robson, my old captain, was managing West Brom. I didn’t play; I was on the bench. I got into a bit of hassle after the game. When a game is over, players who were on the bench do some running and stretches after the lads who played have gone down to the dressing room. We were doing strides and stretching out on the pitch. There was a bit of tension, a few Southampton fans hanging around. I think they shouted, ‘You Irish fucker!’ – something like that.

I turned, and said something like, ‘Well, you’re going down anyway.’

There were only a few people there but they started kicking up a fuss. It seemed it was all right for them to abuse me but I wasn’t allowed to say anything back. A few security lads came over and asked us to get off the pitch. They ushered us off. It meant that we wouldn’t be able to do our running; some of the players were pleased with that. But I didn’t give Southampton’s relegation a thought. Although I’d experienced it myself as a young player, with Forest. It was dog eat dog.

The Glazers bought Man Utd around this time. There was a lot of hostility towards them, from fans. But from the players’ point of view, I don’t think it bothered us too much. I had a few shares in the club, as part of my contract. So the Glazers coming in was worth a few bob to me.

We played Arsenal in the FA Cup final. We hammered them that day. Rooney and Ronaldo were outstanding. We should have won. But Arsenal hung in there – it’s a great trait to have; I admired them for it. But we had so many chances. I had a shot blocked by Patrick Vieira near the end of the second half. It was still 0–0 after extra-time. I scored my penalty. But Paul Scholes missed his. Vieira took their last penalty. He scored. But that was Patrick’s last game for Arsenal. He went to Juventus during the summer.

I got a really bad knock in my private parts in the first few minutes of the game. I carried on, but I got a scan about two weeks later, after I’d played for Ireland in the Faroe Islands. I’d a torn groin. I’d never had an injury like it before. I slipped into a tackle, and Patrick literally kneed me – right in there. I was cut.

It was bad enough we’d lost the Cup final, but I was in agony as well. I couldn’t even sit down at the do that night. I had to go to bed at about ten o’clock. Aside from that, I was quite calm
after the match. I remember thinking, ‘We played well. We were brilliant.’ It was that Arsenal thing; we battered them but they beat us on penalties.

I understood sport. You could play well and still lose. You have to look at the man in the mirror, but there was no shame in losing, once you’d done your best. Garth Crooks was looking for an interview with me, for the BBC, as losing captain. I said, ‘Not today’, but I should have done it. Ronaldo and Rooney had been the two best players on the pitch. I should have said, ‘Watch those boys go. I’d rather be in our position than Arsenal’s’, even though they’d just won the Cup. They were hanging in there that day. It was another nine years before they won the Cup again. But I wouldn’t begrudge them it. I still have that admiration for Arsenal and Wenger.

I think the manager could have been a bit braver; he could have put Tim Howard on for Roy Carroll. We only used two of our substitutions. If he’d just done something a bit mad – changed the goalkeepers, they might have thought, ‘Fuckin’ hell, he must be good at saving penalties.’ Mind games. I’m not saying Tim would have been better than Roy, and I don’t think a goalkeeper had ever been substituted in that way, although I’ve heard that other managers had thought about doing it if the circumstances were right. Martin O’Neill told me that he was on the verge of doing it in a play-off when he was managing Leicester, but they scored in the last few minutes of extra time so he didn’t have to. And then, of course, van Gaal made the decision to put on Tim Krul for the penalty shootout when Holland played Costa Rica in the World Cup quarter final. But I think it crossed the manager’s mind. I remember seeing Tim Howard getting warmed up, and thinking afterwards that it would have been worth the gamble. It’s all hindsight.

The signs were good for us. I should have said it at the time
publicly. But it’s hard for a player to look at things in the long term. You’ve just played a hundred and twenty minutes, and lost. But if you looked at both teams that day, and wondered which of them was going to go on and win trophies, it was United.

FOUR

I’m walking up the stairs – we’re all walking up in our training kit, like a load of kids being called to the headmaster. I’m walking up and I’m thinking, ‘Here goes.’

The first real murmur that something was wrong came when I went back to pre-season training in July 2005. It seems so trivial now, but it was a pretty big argument. Because of a villa in Portugal.

We had a week’s pre-season training at a place called Vale do Lobo, in the Algarve. We brought the families with us. We’d never done it before, brought the families. It was almost unheard of. I’d already been there, in the Algarve, for a week with my family, very close to the training camp. The rest of the team were flying in on Sunday, and training would start on Monday. So we drove down there on Saturday, to move into our villa.

A lady there – she was a resort manager, I think – took me up to the town house that my family was to stay in. I looked around the place and I told her, ‘I’ve got five kids. This is too small.’

There were three bedrooms, and there was a plunge pool, which I thought was dangerous; we had five children, and the oldest was ten. I just wasn’t comfortable with it.

She told me that no one had mentioned to her that I had five kids. She understood what I meant, I think. She told me it hadn’t
been designed for families. She even pointed out the glass tables, the sharp corners. They probably have to go through that routine for insurance reasons. The place just wasn’t suitable. My wife is very placid and even she was saying, ‘We can’t stay here, it’s not designed for kids.’

The woman brought me to look at a second villa; my wife was waiting down at the first place with the kids. The second place was nicer but, in the meantime, I’d rung the people we’d just hired the previous villa from, where we’d been staying the week before, and I asked if we could stay there for another week. It was literally down the road from the training camp, five minutes in the car.

Carlos Queiroz, United’s assistant manager, arrived while I was at the second villa. Carlos is Portuguese – I think he was born in Mozambique – and there was some sort of a connection with the resort people; he had organised the camp for the team.

He came up and said, ‘Ah, it’s fine.’

And I said, ‘I’ve just got word that we can stay in the villa we were in last week. I’ll pay for it myself. I’d rather my family be comfortable while we’re training.’

But we had a disagreement. It wasn’t heated; it was just a disagreement. I knew I was there for pre-season training, but it was my wife and children’s holiday. But I think Carlos might have felt a bit put out; he wasn’t happy. And I knew that this would be going back to the manager.

Anyway, we moved back to the villa we’d stayed in the previous week. The rest of the players came in the next day, and so did the manager. He made a big fuss about what had happened, started ranting and raving in the dressing room after the first training session. The dressing room was empty but all the other players were right outside; they would have been able to hear everything that was going on.

‘What is the big deal?’ I said.

I just thought it was an overreaction.

‘I’m just staying down the road.’

The way the place was set up, there was a restaurant where all the players would eat at lunchtime and the families could gather and eat there in the evenings. Ironically, I was the only player who turned up every day with his family. We were never isolated. It was a big resort. Everyone was scattered around.

But something happened there. Whatever had gone on, whatever Carlos said – I don’t know. Maybe he felt embarrassed; he’d organised the camp for the club. Whether they felt I’d insulted the owner somehow, I don’t know.

I carried on training – we trained for the week. And it was brilliant. The mix – training, then the afternoons spent with the families – was perfect. Pre-season is about training, recovery, and bonding. Recovery just means relaxing after you’ve trained. Sitting, maybe watching TV or, if you’re in a place like the Algarve, sitting by the pool. There’s a discipline to that, which I probably wasn’t very good at – actually resting. So having my family there was great. And the facilities were fantastic.

One day the manager came on to the training pitch and said, ‘I need some senior players tonight.’ He was doing this not-talking-to-me routine. It happened regularly, if I went playing a friendly for Ireland or went too soon after an injury. He wouldn’t speak to me for a week or two. It was childish, but I’d probably have been the same; I’d have been annoyed with any player who I thought was risking his fitness. He didn’t talk to me, so I didn’t talk to him; we were both being childish. Anyway, he wanted some players to go for dinner or something with the owner of the resort. We were all there, stretching, and he was going, ‘Giggsy and—’, choosing his players, and ignoring me. I was the captain and the lads were looking at me, laughing. I was sitting right there in front of him
– such childish stuff. I think it was Giggsy and Gary Neville who had to go to dinner.

Back in Manchester, still in pre-season, I hurt my hamstring, training. I wasn’t doing anything too strenuous. We were just stretching, and I felt a tweak. A badly torn hamstring is torture but mine was just a slight tear. So I missed a couple of games, and the pre-season tour of Asia.

When you’re a first-team player coming back from injury, you train for a while with the younger players, the reserves, to get back up to speed. You ease your way back to fitness. The reserves wouldn’t be at the same level as the first team, so you don’t put any extra stresses on your body. There wouldn’t be the same intensity, so you can make your mistakes, get the rustiness out of you. Whereas when you go back with the first team there are no shortcuts; there’s no messing about. You’d have a game in mind, in a couple of weeks, say, and you’d have a discussion with the medical staff; you’d agree a target, a timetable. As an experienced player, I knew my own body. I was ready to come back – ‘I should be ready Monday week’ – but I was being told, ‘No, no, not yet.’ Carlos, for some reason, was reluctant to get me back into the first team. And when he eventually did, he treated me very badly.

There was often a practice match at the end of training, ten v. ten, or eight v. eight. This time, I ended up being the last man standing, the last player to be picked. Carlos looked at me, and I said, ‘Carlos, what—?’

He had a bib – and I’ll always remember this like it was yesterday, because I’m surprised I didn’t knock him out. He just threw it at me. The other players were looking at me and he went, ‘Oh, you just stand up front.’

I was a midfielder; I didn’t play centre-forward. It was like he was saying, ‘You stand up there, so you won’t do any harm.’

That got my back up, and rightly so. But I wasn’t one for arguing with staff on the training ground. I could count the number of arguments I’ve had with staff on the training ground on one hand. But I was thinking, ‘Am I missing something?’ And I concluded, ‘Probably.’ But I wasn’t thinking of the villa in Portugal at that time.

A couple of days later, I was talking to the manager and I said, ‘Carlos has been a bit strange, you know. He’s reluctant to get me back in the group.’

And the manager went, ‘Yeah, I know he can be a funny old sod, but leave that with me, Roy.’

The season started okay. We won our first three games, against Everton, Villa and Newcastle, and we drew at home to Manchester City, which I would have classed as a bad result; we should always beat City at home. But then I broke my foot. In a tackle, at Liverpool. Steven Gerrard stood on my foot. Gerrard was wearing those new bladed boots, and I’m convinced they did the damage. I carried on playing but it was sore – fuckin’ very sore. I was tackled again later, by Luis García, and I limped away from that one, so people often think it was García who caused the injury. But it was Gerrard and his blades.

I went off with a few minutes to go. Liverpool have an X-ray machine right next to the dressing room, so they X-rayed my foot and came back straightaway with the news; I’d broken it in – I don’t know – five or six places. So that was me out injured again. I remember thinking to myself in the dressing room, ‘This is bad timing.’ For all sorts of reasons.

The problem with a foot injury is that it’s a dead slow recovery. Your foot is in a medical boot, and the blood flow is slow. It’s bad, because there’s not much you can do. You have to be very patient. It’s always a four- or five- or six-week job, no matter how fit you are. I’d already been injured, I was into the last year
of my contract, there’d been the awkwardness with Carlos – the insecurities were queuing up.

As part of our contractual deal with MUTV, United’s television channel, each player had to go into a studio now and again, to discuss the latest game – the match we’d just played. There was a rota of players, and my turn would come up two or three times a season. About a month after the injury, I think we were playing Spurs at home and I was supposed to cover it for MUTV. But the manager gave me a few days off.

He said, ‘Why don’t you go and get a bit of sun for yourself?’

I was off the crutches at this stage, and I think the boot – you wear it to keep the weight off the foot – might have been off by then, too. So I was pretty mobile. Coincidentally, my family had already booked a holiday in Dubai, before I got injured. So I just thought, ‘The timing’s perfect. I can join them.’ They went out a couple of days before me; I flew out alone, and came back with them.

A swap was done. I think it was Gary Neville who covered the Spurs game for MUTV, instead of me. And the producers asked if I’d do the next game, away to Middlesbrough, when I got back from the holiday.

So I was in Dubai, getting a bit of sun and putting my foot in the salt water. I suppose I could have gone to Ireland, to Youghal, for that, but I was in Dubai; it’s slightly more romantic. I knew the Middlesbrough game was on TV. I thought to myself, ‘I want to watch the team anyway, and I’ll be doing the analysis when I get back to Manchester.’ So I decided to watch it in the hotel bar.

They lost 4–1 – disaster; United were awful. And that just happened to be the game I’d be doing!

Fucking hell.

Later on, I’d think, ‘If I’d just done the Spurs game the week
before’, ‘If I hadn’t broken my foot’, ‘If I hadn’t gone to Dubai’, ‘If United had beaten Middlesbrough.’

Ifs and ands, pots and pans.

I came back to Manchester from Dubai and MUTV people go, ‘It’s your turn.’ And I had to do it. United were poor. And I was disappointed with the players. But it was MUTV; it’s the in-house channel, propaganda for the club. All the top clubs have channels like it. If things are going bad, they get some positive news out there. Forget about that bad result, some young player’s doing well out on loan. If we got knocked out of a cup, the next day they’d announce that some player had signed a new contract, or that share prices were up. That’s the game – it’s part of the game. So I did the interview. ‘He was poor’ – ‘poor defending’ – ‘he’s got to do better than that’. I was annoyed, I remember, but I wasn’t edgy about it. The idea that I was in the studio, ranting and raving – no, it was quite calculated. The message was, we weren’t good enough and we could do better.

I think it was the next day, I was told that the interview was being pulled and that they couldn’t believe what I’d said.

I was, like, ‘I don’t think it was too bad.’

We’d lost 4–1; I couldn’t say we’d played well. When we’d been beaten before, I’d often said, ‘That wasn’t good enough today.’ Now, it was as if you weren’t supposed to say that. It was all too delicate. I just thought everyone was overreacting.

But the news got into the media, and I knew it didn’t look good for me. People were starting to say, ‘Oh, they’ve had to pull this video.’

I’m pretty sure that someone at United leaked it. I’d insulted the team, I’d been disloyal. They were building a picture: I was this loose cannon, slagging off everybody. It was back-page headlines, in all the papers. When it comes to Manchester United, everything is extremes. You win a game, you’re the greatest; you
lose a game, you’re the world’s worst. But this was so over the top it was untrue. I was looking at it, going, ‘There’s something going on here.’

It was even more intense in Manchester, where I live, because it was about Manchester United. I couldn’t help thinking, ‘This is going to end in disaster.’ When I’d stepped out of line before, the PR people at United had always been good at managing it, giving it a bit of balance. But there was nobody giving me a dig-out this time.

I wasn’t worried about the dressing room, because I think the players knew my form. But all sorts of stuff was coming out now – that I’d spoken about players’ wages, for example – something that I would never do. Usually, when there was anything in the media about any of the players, or a member of the staff, we’d nip it in the bud by going, ‘Listen, we’re used to it, we’re Man United, everything is going to be exaggerated.’ It was par for the course. But this was getting a bit silly. And United had just been beaten by Lille in the Champions League, which didn’t help the atmosphere. Or the manager’s mood.

So, eventually, I got the players together in the dressing room and I said, ‘Look, lads, I need to get this off my chest. You’ve seen all this stuff in the media. Just to let you know, lads, that it’s fuckin’ nonsense. I would never go into stuff about players’ wages or people not trying. I might say a player had a bad game but—’

And they were all going, ‘Yeah, yeah—’ as I spoke. Not one of them had an issue – not one.

But at the back of my mind part of me was thinking, ‘What
did
I say in the video? I might have said something pretty bad, for them to pull it.’ And even now – today – people still say, ‘This video had to be destroyed.’ Like it was a nuclear weapon or something. Did someone drive out to the countryside and bury it in the
fuckin’ ground? Or did a bomb-disposal unit come and explode it? It had to be destroyed!

Anyway, by now we were talking about the quality of our game, and how we’d taken our eyes off the ball a little bit; we’d had one or two bad results. It went on for about an hour. Instead of going out training, we ended up having this chat. All the players were getting involved. I’ve spoken to some of them about it since, and Ole Gunnar Solskjær, who’s a man I have a lot of respect for, still talks about the conversation I started that morning, about how we needed to refocus, and how we shouldn’t let ourselves be distracted by off-the-field stuff – boot sponsors, magazine interviews, too many media commitments. And Ole still reckons it was exactly what we’d needed. No ranting or raving, no finger pointing – nothing like that. And we spoke about training, too – ‘Lads, we need to sharpen up. Remember what we’re about. It’s about what we do – football. Winning football matches.’