The Nowhere Men (14 page)

ALLAN
As you know, Peter Taylor is my brother-in-law. I’ve worked with him for thirty years, until recently really. Peter, Colin Murphy, who was his assistant at Hull, and Mick Jones, Warnock’s assistant, are almost father figures to me. They are genuine people, where others would do you big time. Everybody in here knows Peter. He’s got loads of promotions but he’d also go and manage Dover, because he loves football. He’ll manage Stevenage, Wigan, Dartford, Enfield. He’ll manage England under twenty-ones, because he loves football. If another one comes along, like Leicester or Gillingham or Brighton, he’ll do it. There are still a lot of people like Peter, Mick, Colin, us lot, who love football. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of people in the game who don’t. They just want the money. That’s sad.

BARRY
Young people don’t love their football. We talk about the old games Pat, we have done this morning. There is a lot to be learned, but if we tried to tell youngsters about Bobby Moore, they wouldn’t want to know. They’d say, so what? When I was a kid I lived in West London, near Heathrow. I don’t know why; my father was involved with a league round there. I used to watch Hayes quite regularly. Then I started going to Arsenal, and there was a bloke on the pitch called George Eastham. I used to go every week, and I’d get home and my dad would ask ‘what was the score?’ and I didn’t know. All I did for ninety minutes was watch him . . .

PAT
He was my idol.

BARRY
Was he? Unbelievable. Here’s a lovely story. Many, many years later I met him in the boardroom up at Stoke. I told him how I’d try and do things like he did, in my school matches and stuff like that. I thanked him for helping me build up a decent understanding of the game. How embarrassing! But I think it quite pleased him.

ALLAN
Bet it did. Well, we all had our idols, didn’t we? Mine was Bobby Moncur.

PAT
Who influences you when it comes to finding players? My greatest influence as a scout is me. I always had a thirst for knowledge. As a kid I’d be up in the offices of the manager. Out I’d come, cup of tea. ‘Why are you doing that? What are you going to talk to them about?’ You know? We were hungry, and I’m still hungry. I watch a match and go, I like that, that’ll do me. I’m sixty-one years of age but even as a little boy I would study the game. I mean the ’66 World Cup, one of my favourite players was Florien Albert, the Hungarian. Now, people wouldn’t have a clue about him. But he was one of the greatest players. ‘The Emperor’, they called him. Died last year. As a little boy, I’m watching the telly and I’m thinking, what a player! So you’re analysing even in those days, aren’t you? So I think you can’t teach a scout.

ALLAN
There are some very good managers who wouldn’t know how to select a player, or recruit a player, because they leave it to other people. Neil Warnock’s a classic – he leaves it all to Mick to make the final decisions on players, because Mick is very in-depth with it. It is ‘yes or no, Mick?’ and if he says ‘yes, we’ll have him’ he signs him. He wouldn’t have a clue, Neil. He honestly would not have a clue. At the club they won’t see Warnock till Thursday, because he’s taken his wife out for lovely lunches, but the impact he has on the Thursday for an hour, is frightening. And when he’s in the dressing room . . .

PAT
As a manager you’ve got to know what you’re good at. It is no different to managing a company. Ask yourself: what are my strengths? Delegation is the greatest thing. The difficulty with the managers is they don’t go to games.

BARRY
If you don’t go to games, how do you know if you want to sign players? This is a fucking classic, unbelievable. Russell Slade was manager, when I was chief scout, and he asked, ‘Have you seen Liam Dickinson at Derby?’ I said, ‘Funnily enough, I only saw him play when he was at Stockport. He got twenty-odd goals. He waddles around the pitch, he can’t fucking jump, his first touch is crap, can’t head the ball. Anything else you want to know?’ He said to me, ‘He’s playing for Leeds at the moment.’ I said, ‘Fine. I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll have a word with the lads up North, and I’ll have a look on my laptop.’ One of the lads had seen him, and said the only thing he didn’t do was put his hands in his pockets. So anyway, it gets serious. Three days later the chairman rings me up, says we’ve agreed a fee with Derby. The story was, Paul Jewell bought him from Stockport for three-quarters of a million quid. He played a reserve game for Derby, which Jewell attended. A week later he goes to Huddersfield on loan. Then he goes to Blackpool and Leeds, on loan. So the chairman rings up and says, ‘We’ve negotiated four hundred and fifty thousand for Dickinson.’ I said, ‘You’re having a fucking laugh, aren’t you? Have you seen the reports?’ The only reason I’m still in the job is that if I put in a report to the manager, I copy in the chairman. I tell him I’ll give Gwyn Williams a ring up at Leeds, just to get a flavour of the boy. Russell said, ‘Look Bal, I want him and that’s the end of the story.’ We signed him. Within a month, we’re trying to get him out on loan, because he was so bad. And of course Russell didn’t last longer than another couple of months.

PAT
I went for an interview with Barry Hearn for Leyton Orient. I go round to his house, and he says, ‘Tell me about yourself.’ So I said, ‘Well, I enjoy coaching. I like to develop young players.’ I’m saying all the wrong things. I don’t know the League, Division Three. I haven’t gone to reserve games. I wouldn’t know how to negotiate a contract. Anyway, I get the job. Steve Shorey was there. Lovely fella, went on to be chief scout at Reading. No videos, no reports, nothing. I lost my job because the majority of the players weren’t good enough. I was chasing my arse. One day Steve asked for a word. He went ‘I heard the apprentices talk about two of the lads we brought in. They do drugs.’ I went ‘You’re fucking joking.’ One was banned for a year, Roger Stanislaus. Forty thousand he cost me, from Bury. I phone up three people I respect about him. ‘It’s OK’ they tell me. ‘He’s a great lad.’ He got done by the FA for taking cocaine. Now I look at myself and think, you should have known better. But I didn’t.

ALLAN
As scouts we put people up and they are signed. Most are good players who go on to do well. We only get targeted with the ones that don’t happen, the ones who don’t do it for whatever reason. Then we get grief from above. It is disheartening at times, because of the work you put in.

BARRY
I used to get like that but I don’t any more. I just push it to one side. When I’ve seen a player that I’ve flagged up sign for another club and do well, I have a little smile. That’s all, nothing else. I have a little smile and go, ‘OK, next one.’

PAT
Steve Rowley. He’s one of the best in our game, correct? He’s been fantastic for me, from day one. He’s not what I’d call a mate, but he’s a friend in many respects. He’s a West Ham supporter, but he’s a lovely man. Sometimes I can see on his face that he’s under pressure. We take everything so personally.

ALLAN
You do. It’s your living.

PAT
When I was out of work, after the sack at Leyton Orient, Arsenal sent me to an age group international at Auxerre. I was fucking dreading it. I’d never been abroad. So, now I’m watching the game. Vieira’s in centre-midfield. France had a fucking good side. Silvestre also played. Anyway, I get back. Steve asks, ‘How did the left winger do?’ I said, ‘Erratic; nearly killed a fucking pigeon with one shot.’ You know who it was, don’t you?

BARRY
Henry?

PAT
Thierry Henry. I told the story to Frank Arnesen. He said, ‘Pat, I watched Henry six times. Did he play outside left?’ I said yeah. He said, ‘For me also, it was no, no, no every time.’ For some reason, Arsenal sent me to another game in France. Before I go Steve says, ‘Anelka mustn’t play.’ So what am I supposed to do about it? ‘Just tell the interpreter to tell the team manager that he mustn’t play.’ So we get there, I send the poor little bastard down. He comes back, said the manager was very upset. I watch the match, nothing special. Again, when I get back Steve says, ‘How did Anelka play?’ I said, ‘He didn’t. You told me he mustn’t play.’ Steve said, ‘We were fucking winding you up.’

BARRY
Classic. The average lifespan for a manager is anything up to eighteen months. The reason for that is poor team selection and poor recruitment. End of story. Most managers fail because of poor recruitment but clubs underrate it.

ALLAN
It’s a fundamental part of a football club. If you don’t get that right, you’ve no chance. Yet we have no professional guidance on what we can do. Some clubs treat you like ponces, as if you’re only there for a free ticket. They don’t think about the two hundred mile drive to get there, or the one hundred and thirty odd games you’ve done in a few months. Some places you don’t get a cup of tea. They give you a seat by the corner flag, or put you in one they can’t sell, because a pole is in the way.

BARRY
One of the analyst lads is always asking me to do a bit of scouting. He lives down in Eastbourne so I’ve been sending him locally. We’ve got a goalkeeper, Mitch Walker, on loan there. When the kid comes back with his report, he’s written a fucking book. It’s
War and Peace
, without the content. There’s nothing really relevant. He asked me what I think of Mitch, and I said, ‘He doesn’t fill the goal.’ He said, ‘What do you mean? He’s six foot two.’ He didn’t really understand presence, things like that.

ALLAN
Our fella, the analyst, is a lovely lad. Good boy, knows his stuff. He also wanted to come out with me. Well, the moment the first corner comes in, he’s asking, ‘How do you do it?’ It’s the striped shirts, with the numbers you can’t see. He doesn’t know what’s going on. I tell him in scouting you’ve got to see the big picture. That’s why we wouldn’t watch a game on the telly . . .

PAT
Unless you’ve got a telly that’s sixty yards long.

BARRY
You haven’t got the buzz, you haven’t got the noise. The fucking camera angle’s always wrong. They came to me six weeks ago and said ‘Bal, think we’re going to sign this centre half from Scotland. A lad called Wallace. Would you have a look at him?’ They didn’t want me to go up there. They wanted me to watch on the desk. They didn’t tell me what his number was, but I picked up who he was. Left-footed centre half. ‘What do you think?’ they ask. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I can’t tell you off the DVD because when the ball is on the left wing and the opposition have got it, I haven’t got a clue where he is because of the camera angle. I’ve seen him put his hand up a couple of times and been lucky to get an offside decision, but . . .’ We didn’t take him.

PAT
Can I say something? Someone asked me whether I’d miss scouting. But even if I didn’t have a job, I’d still want to do what I’ve always done, go and watch games. I love watching football. The feeling of seeing a player, knowing he is a player, is difficult to describe. I mean, I’ve got one at Southampton, a boy called Callum Chambers. He’s going to be a fucking player. Shaw is the one they’re all beating the bush about, but I like Chambers. They play him everywhere, bless him. He’s going to be an outside right. You wait and see. That’s the beauty of watching football, isn’t it?

ALLAN
Absolutely. José Fonte was definitely the one for me. I went out to Portugal, to Setúbal. It’s a pretty dire place to be honest with you. José was centre half and we knew about him. I was chief scout at Palace, and I had to say yes or no. Well, we signed him, for about three hundred and fifty grand. He went to Southampton for about one point two, so we made some good money on him. He was somebody who wasn’t tried and tested in English football, but instinct told me he’d do well. It was the same when I was a player at Tottenham. There was a kid who took my eye. Everyone went, ‘I don’t think he’ll make it here.’ I actually spoke to Jack Charlton about him. I went, ‘Fucking hell, he’s going to be a player, isn’t he?’ It was Graeme Souness. Jack bought him for thirty grand for Middlesbrough.

BARRY
It is all about using the information at your disposal. Most of the phone calls I get will be about players at my club that other people fancy. They will ring me to say, ‘What’s he like, Bal, as a person?’ You wouldn’t ring certain people because you know you’d get a load of bullshit. There are those you trust, and those you don’t. But the majority of us get on great together. We’re all at the same places . . .

ALLAN
We’ve got our own little domain. Very friendly people, get on great, the majority of us. I would never pull a stroke. If Barry phoned me up and said, ‘What do you think about so and so at Forest?’ I’d give him an answer. And, of course, every year there’s a lad who appears on the non-league scene. There’s a mad rush. I think the classic was the boy Chambers at Dulwich Hamlet.

BARRY
Oh yeah, unbelievable. Michael Chambers. There was a little clip in the newspapers about this kid who had gone on trial at Manchester United. I’d seen him play for the youth team the year before, and thought nothing of it. Suddenly everyone’s there. There’s sixty-three scouts at a game, watching this one kid. It was the third time me and Pat had seen him. I’m sitting there thinking: what am I doing here? Simply, it was because somebody at the club read about him. They said, ‘Bal, will you check up again?’ It didn’t alter my opinion, but Palace have taken him. We could all be wrong.

ALLAN
People like to know about the one that got away or the one you spotted, but I don’t think it’s ever as black and white as that. If you go to Barry’s office, he will have a list of six goalkeepers, six different outfield teams in 4–4–2, 4–3–3. There will be sixty or seventy names on his desk. Unless you are not doing your job properly, it’s pretty much impossible to miss someone. We all speak to each other; we all identify the same talent. The people in this room work twenty-four days a week, but I also know a lot of scouts who don’t. I know a chief scout who has put seven thousand miles on his car, in a year. Now he ain’t out there doing his job. Whether it is watching a park game on a Sunday morning, or Bromley, or Dartford, or Manchester United or Liverpool, you’ve got to be there. You’ve got to put the miles in. You’ve got to be there, because if you ain’t wearing those tyres out, you ain’t going to find that one.