The Nowhere Men (27 page)

Murphy was born in Islington, and walked to watch Arsenal, but his first love was Wolverhampton Wanderers. They enraptured him in the immediate post-war years, when radio amplified the achievements of such players as Billy Wright, Jimmy Mullen, Johnny Hancocks and Jessie Pye. As he grew up, and studied Arsenal from the terraces, opposite the Highbury clock, he developed a new group of heroes. Little Joe Baker, an effervescent centre forward signed from Torino for £70,000 in 1962, became a particular favourite when he floored Bill Shankly’s cherished enforcer, Ronnie Yates.

Murphy is unashamedly old school, and will not use email. Yet his humanity is timeless. He represents a distinct group of football men, drawn not from the abrasive, impulsive world of the dressing room, but from the more reflective, aspirational environment of the classroom. David Pleat, who was Tottenham’s caretaker manager on the day Rocastle died, employed Murphy in later years because of his depth of knowledge, and his innate sensitivity.

‘Alan Sugar always used to say of scouts “What is he? Is he a spotter or a closer?” I knew exactly what he meant. Some can get the younger boys. They can schmooze the parents. They can go and knock at their flat, on the seventeenth floor in a high rise in the East End. They might be facing a single mother, who doesn’t know football from Adam. She’s got to be convinced that Arsenal are better than Tottenham or Tottenham are better than Arsenal, or whatever. That’s a job, in my opinion, for an ex-school teacher, someone with well-developed social skills. Many scouts are expected to have those, and not many are capable of doing the job.’

Murphy diverted personal praise, but agreed with the sentiments. He regards lateral thinking as an essential element in football’s intellectual challenge. ‘I think that way of thinking comes from Don Howe,’ he said. ‘What he did in the game, for all the peaks he reached, he always had an open mind. He acknowledged he didn’t know everything. There was always something else to know, to learn and discover.

‘I think it is the same with scouting. You can’t be dogmatic and say if you see this or that, you’ve got a player. It’s difficult to know where to start, because you go to matches for so many reasons. Sometimes you are there as a match assessor, or just to see if there is anything special. Other times you go to see someone who has been recommended, or to have a look at your own player, on loan.

‘Football intelligence is different to normal intelligence, and there are so many factors. Some people, I believe, are born with a gift. Footballers are like musicians; in every aspect of life there is someone who is born with something that’s a bit special. There are a number of players probably like that, the Georgie Bests and the Paul Gascoignes of this world.

‘What catches my eye is someone doing something that’s a bit different. I concentrate on him, to see if it was a one-off. Then I consider the opposition. You want to know whether he could do well, given less time, against better opposition. There are so many variables. Over time I’ve seen so many people who’ve looked a bit special, only for them to peak and fade away.

‘Nothing is certain. I remember one boy, having a trial to go to the old FA national school at Lilleshall. He was a good player, on the day one of the best in the group. The coach sat them down to talk to them, and he just moved away. He wasn’t interested in what the coach was saying. I thought: hello, attitude isn’t quite what it should be, but he went on to be one of the top ones. It was Andy Cole. It’s funny. I was with him recently, watching his son Devante in a Nike tournament. He’s a player, doing well at Manchester City. Andy and I started talking and he remembered that trial. We had a laugh about it. He told me, “my lad’s like me, he doesn’t listen to anybody.”

‘This is where scouting, seeing players and making decisions, gets real. You have to be honest, and question yourself. I keep notes and records. I look back and try to work out why someone I thought was going to be a good player didn’t come through. What went wrong there? You don’t know everything as a scout, no way. I always think that as a professional, you’ve got to be seventy per cent right. You’re never going to be a hundred per cent right. A normal person would get it right ten per cent of the time.

‘You’re always looking at the good ones who made it and at the ones who were better than them, but didn’t. In one good group at Arsenal we had two players in the same position at thirteen, coming up to fourteen. We just wanted to keep one. This one was sharp, good movement, got forward. He was a full back. We decided to keep him and he bombed, captained the reserves, but nothing more. He hit that peak where he needed to work harder to get through it. He didn’t or couldn’t do it. The lad’s name was Robbie Johnson. He’s a taxi driver now, I believe.

‘I had to say no to the other one. No matter how many years I did it, I always found it difficult. To tell the boy and his parents, sorry, you haven’t made it, is not enough, on its own. I used to say, Well, it’s our opinion at this moment in time. It’s really up to you. You can either go away from here and say I’ve finished with football, or you can say I’ll prove him wrong. Well, this particular boy was quite a big-set fella. He put his foot in but didn’t appear to have a lot of pace. Nobody was interested in him. He went out and played Sunday morning football. Then he got into non-league, and then he became an England player.

‘It was Stuart Pearce. He was the sort of character who just got on with the game and played it. I’ve spoken to him about it and he understood. He said, “Well, that’s what makes it difficult doesn’t it? You can never be certain with a player.” Everyone has their own character, don’t they? We could have easily made the same mistake with Martin Keown. I can remember seeing him as a thirteen-year-old, playing in a district match in Oxford.

‘What stood out was his pace and his aggression when he went in to win the ball. I was Arsenal’s youth development officer, so I had the chief scout look at him. He said not for me. I respected his opinion, but it was my decision. I kept Martin because he had basics that other people lacked, and he was a winner. OK, technically he might have lapsed occasionally, at that stage in his development, but no one else had his qualities.’

Just as the relationship with Rocastle and his family acquired tenderness and longevity, the bond between Murphy and Keown has blurred personal and professional boundaries. The scout attended Keown’s wedding, and remains close friends with his father. He has followed the progress of the former England defender’s son Niall, who has balanced his football career, as a defender in Reading’s Academy, with academic work.

‘Arsenal could not have a better role model or ambassador,’ said Keown, with unashamed affection. ‘Terry was my first point of contact with the club. I can still see him coming to my school, to meet the headmaster before I signed schoolboy forms. Arsenal blazer. Collar and tie. Impeccably presented. You knew here was a man of great dignity. Terry was loyal to us because we believed in the dream.’

Keown used to board with Murphy and his wife Pat on Friday nights, when he slept in the study after taking two trains and a bus, from Oxford to Muswell Hill. The scout drove himself to distraction, unsuccessfully attempting to match the boy’s three-minute mastery of a Rubik’s cube, but he also shared life lessons. Old match programmes were scrutinised, and wisdom was dispensed without pretension or condescension.

‘Terry and his wife were a fantastic partnership. Pat was an absolute diamond of a person, a polar opposite in character, but so kind. She used to do all the cakes and sandwiches for the trial matches. There was quite a bit of interest in me from other clubs. They kept calling me, promising me that I’d be their captain, but I couldn’t bring myself to let Terry down. He taught me that, if you play for Arsenal, you need to love the club.’

The educator in Murphy is never far from the surface. He unzipped a leather folder, which had been perched on the arm of his chair, and handed me a single piece of paper. There, in landscape form, was the Arsenal way, fashioned over 40 years of siphoning boys into a business which eats its young. Scouting may seem a disconnected, haphazard calling, but he had transcribed its most sacred tenets. The tone was set by a single word, in capital letters, on the top left of the sheet: ‘PRINCIPLES’.

An old-fashioned image of a footballer was set in the centre of the page. Four basic elements of the game Physical Attributes, Character, Technique and Understanding – were at the centre of a web of interconnectivity which highlighted 32 qualities found in a successful recruit. They ranged from mental toughness to controlled aggression, athleticism to adaptability. The document encouraged a series of questions, covering the quality of decision-making, intensity of commitment and awareness of responsibility. In the bottom right-hand corner, Murphy had written a fundamental truth, in copperplate handwriting, which testified to the disciplines of his youth: ‘Players reach peaks, and the higher they climb, the harder it is to take the next step.’

Roger Smith, another of scouting’s tribal elders, who remained at Charlton, was familiar with the contents. He, too, was a product of the Arsenal system, despite playing for six seasons at Tottenham. He forged a close relationship with Terry Burton after starting at a regional centre of excellence with Steve Rowley, who went on to become the club’s chief scout. Roger’s son, Gary, who was attempting to maintain his impact as Stevenage manager, after losing in the previous season’s League One play-offs, spent several years in Arsenal’s youth system before joining Fulham, on his release.

‘Essex is always a good hunting ground for Arsenal,’ said Roger. ‘Steve was more the eyes, to recruit players. I coached them, because initially that’s what I wanted to do. Whenever Steve wanted another opinion, he’d ask me. That was my first venture into looking at schoolboy players. I was working for Kerrygold, the Irish dairy produce company that later became Adams Foods, but I had a burning desire to get into football full time.

‘That’s where my direction changed. There were a lot of people in the queue at Arsenal, and Terry Burton had moved on to become youth team coach at Wimbledon. They had just won the FA Cup, and wanted to set up their youth team properly. Terry asked if I was interested in becoming what was then a youth development officer. There were no academies at that point, and that role involved responsibility for a scouting network. I was satisfying my coaching needs in training, but gradually became recognised more as a recruiter. It was a slow process and maybe I didn’t even realise it myself, but my coaching ambitions were receding.

‘I was always wary when I went to games. I wasn’t being anti-social, although quite a few people probably thought I was, but I avoided that big group of scouts who were often standing on the line, chatting to each other. They were having a laugh. Some of them even had their back to the game for half of it. I wanted to find my own space. I’d mix with them, of course, but not get engulfed in the social activity. I didn’t want to have a game go by, and wonder what I’d seen.

‘There is a strange phenomenon involving scouts, where a name might start to get bandied about. It’s like one of those Christmas games where Chinese whispers get passed on. Suddenly this boy’s been built up to be the best thing since sliced bread. Everyone ends up watching him, merely because his name’s been touted around. That’s why I try to keep a little bit of distance. I try to take in everything, because I might need to speak to the team manager, maybe even the parents.

‘In those days it wasn’t difficult to find out who was little Johnny’s dad, especially if he was quite decent. They’re normally quite happy to let everyone know who they are. Parents, Christ. Some of the scouts also want to tell you why they’re there. They’re decent, well-meaning people. Maybe they’ve only played in parks football, but have just wanted to somehow be involved in the professional game. A lot of them are doing it for next to nothing, apart from a ticket and a jacket to wear at the weekend.

‘You don’t need to have been a pro to be a good scout. Take Steve. To the best of my knowledge he’s played nothing but parks football. He’s chief scout at one of the biggest clubs in Europe. He’s got some very good people who are his eyes and ears around the world, so you’re going through them first before he gets involved. But he’s clearly a very good judge of a player. I’ve seen that. Football is about personal contact. I went to Cardiff as chief scout when Terry was assistant to Dave Jones.

‘We had a decent three years, got close but not quite close enough, and the Malaysians who’d taken over about a year before moved Dave on. Malky Mackay came in, and everyone I knew had gone. What he said at the time was correct; he was left with only twelve in-contract players. I would have thought the first person he would have rung in that situation would have been his chief scout, but he didn’t. There are not many advantages about getting older but one is that you don’t have to put up with things. I put my notice in. Clearly Malky was going to go with his own guys. It would have been quite nice if he had told me, but sadly people deal with things in their own way . . .’

There was no surprise, or even particular sadness in Smith’s tone. Just as many servants of the Pharaoh in Ancient Egypt were entombed with their king, so they could assist in the afterlife, the fate of the chief scout tends to be determined by his allegiance to a particular manager. Everyone accepts the recurrent absurdities of the situation; Dave Bowman left Wolves with Mick McCarthy, and joined him at Ipswich when they sacked Paul Jewell, whose faithful retainer David Hamilton spent more time with his allotment, and did some mileage work for Millwall while he waited for the wheel to turn.

Football’s throwaway society lacks logic. Any industry which diminishes the self-esteem of its contributors, on a systematic basis, has major fault lines. Murphy, an idealist, was taking stock, literally and metaphorically. A compulsive hoarder, like many scouts, he was in the process of clearing out his attic. He smiled at a yellowing press cutting, in which Sir Alex Ferguson was promising to protect a 1,000-match tyro named Ryan Giggs. He pored over half-forgotten treatises on physiology, conditioning and the principles of talent identification. He cherished knowledge for its own sake. His report on a scouting trip to Brazil in the late 1990s intrigued him: