The Second Half (24 page)

Shane Supple was a goalkeeper, and he’d been involved in the first team. He was a really nice lad. He came to see me one morning in my office and told me he was retiring. He was only twenty-two.

The first thing I’d always suggest in a situation like that is for the player to have a break, and come back in a week or so. The player might be a bit low, or he might have had an injury, or it’s a family issue. I’d had my moments when I’d felt I’d had enough. But I could just tell by Shane’s eyes that he’d made his mind up. He was cool about it; he wasn’t upset.

I remember saying to him, ‘You’re not changing your mind, are you?’

He went, ‘No, no. I’ve thought about it.’

He didn’t love the game any more. And he said he didn’t want to work with people who didn’t care if they won or lost. I think it was the whole industry that he disliked.

I admired him for it. People often end up in jobs that they don’t want, in places where they don’t want to be. And I think,
too, that the pull of Ireland was there; he wanted to go home to Dublin.

I gave him the option of coming back but I knew I was wasting my time. I think he was going back to Ireland to become a Garda – a policeman – so I thought to myself, ‘I’d better keep onside with Shane.’

So, that was one of our goalkeepers gone.

Of the fourteen games before we beat Derby on 31 October, eight were draws. They were all bad draws, but the 3–3 draw at Doncaster, in mid-September, was a disaster. We were winning – we’re 3–2 up going into injury time. And Quinton Fortune, ex-United, cuts in. I played with Quinton, and I never saw him use his right foot. But he hits it with his right, and scores – top corner. We’d been 1–0 up, and 2–1 up, and 3–2 up.

Ten days later, we drew 3–3 with Sheffield United. The same story – they scored in injury time.

Six goals, two points. At that stage of the season, the four points we dropped would have sent us up ten places in the table.

Twenty draws in one season – it’s still mind-boggling. And we had been winning so many of those games. I should have used the substitutions better – ‘Get an extra defender on.’ But I thought, ‘It’s only Doncaster’, and they equalised. We’d have been better off losing ten of those draws, and winning ten. We’d have had ten more points.

Those ten days between Doncaster and Sheffield, we were nearly there. But we never really had the exhilaration of two wins in a row – a run of results. We didn’t get the momentum, or the self-belief that comes with it.

Newcastle came to Portman Road. They hammered us, 4–0. It shouldn’t have hurt so much. They had Andy Carroll; they’d Nolan, they’d Nicky Butt. A blind man would have got Newcastle promoted that year. But I was ex-Sunderland, the Newcastle fans
travelled in numbers, there was the tribute to Bobby Robson, it was on TV.

But Newcastle weren’t coming to town every day. You wouldn’t have looked at us and said, ‘They’re not even trying.’ There wasn’t chaos. We didn’t play particularly well when we beat Derby. We played Watford one night. We had twenty-six chances, but we drew 1–1. They scored in injury time – another bad draw. We were nearly a decent team.

The family had moved down with me, and we rented a house. I liked it; I liked the sea air. But we moved house three times in the first year. It was unsettling, but we were trying to find the right village, and villages can be funny old places. We couldn’t find a Catholic school, like St Bede’s in Manchester, for the kids. The school we eventually found was different; it was more conventionally English, very middle class – cricket and rugby, tea and scones.

We went to a charity function for the school a few months after the kids had started there. It was a tuxedo job, and I ended up sitting beside a man I didn’t know. I wondered how the conversation was going to flow.

He said, ‘What do you think of this new coalition government?’

I thought, ‘For fuck’s sake—’ I nearly went ‘Is there a new coalition government? Did you watch Barcelona last night?’

I thought the New Coalition was a team playing in the Suffolk League. I think I missed St Bede’s more than the kids did.

And the blue kit!

It always felt a bit wrong.

Simon Clegg, the new chief executive, came on board the same day I started. Chemistry again – it wasn’t there. He’d been the chief executive of the British Olympic Association, but he wasn’t a footballing man. But I think it had more to do with the differences in our backgrounds. As well as being an ex-Para, he
was public-school educated. I was from Mayfield, in Cork. But I had to grow up. I couldn’t expect to be working with Irish people.

But the conversation has to flow.

I’d say, ‘I’m interested in that player.’

He’d say, ‘Well, what do I do?’

He’d never been involved in football before. I think he was all about being answerable to Marcus, not helping the manager. Everything was hard work.

Most Championship clubs lose money. Simon suggested a restructuring of the player and staff bonuses. Even as a player I’d always thought that you should only really get a bonus if you’d earned it. The idea was that the bonuses would be delivered with promotion or on reaching the play-offs. Normally a player would get a bonus for a win or a draw. The average player at Ipswich would have been on eight or nine grand a week, so holding the bonuses – three or four hundred quid a game – till the end of the season was a big incentive; one big sum, instead of small amounts.

The players were okay with the bonus restructuring; they were already sitting on eight or nine grand a week. But the staff were also affected, and they wouldn’t have been on the same kind of money. The bonuses were a bigger thing for them.

I now realise that the staff bonuses are vital for morale. I didn’t comprehend that at the time, but people need incentives. It’s human nature – everyone loves a bonus. When a club has a win at the weekend, the training ground is a much happier place the following week. And a big reason for that is because the staff are all getting their bonuses. But that was gone, a bit. And we could tell quite early in the season that we weren’t going to be promoted – so there’d be no bonuses. I should have left the staff alone – a couple of hundred quid a win. That money was a night out with their wives, or a treat for their families. Success – and the bonuses – affected the families, made them part of the club.
But I was taking something away, and they were obviously going to think less of me. It was stupid. I must have lost some of them, before the season had even started.

Some of the players – they were very quiet. We didn’t have a Dwight Yorke; we didn’t have the characters. I needed some new players. I’d talk to the owner over the phone, give him a ballpark figure. Tamás Priskin was at Watford, and available. The scouts were keen, and I watched him once, pre-season. He scored, played well – but it was a friendly. His contract was up in a year, and I thought he might be worth a punt. I think I mentioned a figure of £400,000 to the owner. I rang Malky Mackay, who was managing Watford.

‘Listen, Malky, I’m just giving you a heads-up. We’re interested in a player.’

I never spoke to other managers about a fee for a player; I never got involved.

Malky goes, ‘Roy, I appreciate the call.’

I said, ‘I’m leaving it to the chief executive.’

I couldn’t believe it when I heard what we paid for him. I think it was £1,750,000. Watford couldn’t believe their luck. That was our lack of communication, the fact that the three of us never spoke together. Priskin wasn’t worth that money, but nobody had got back to me, to get my opinion.

I brought in two of the lads from Sunderland, Carlos Edwards and Grant Leadbitter. They were good lads, but we paid too much for them. I thought about two million for the two of them would have been decent. But we paid just less than four.

I phoned Steve Bruce, who was managing Sunderland.

I said, ‘I can’t believe how much you’re getting for Grant and Carlos.’

Brucie went, ‘Ah, now, Roy – they’ve agreed a deal.’

It had nothing to do with him. He was never going to say,
‘No, no, you’re paying too much.’ The deal had been between Simon and Niall.

I liked the look of Jordan Rhodes. He scored at Brentford for us, pre-season, and he scored at home to Colchester. A couple of clubs rang me about him. Notts County and Huddersfield – it wasn’t Liverpool and Arsenal. I’d brought a few lads in, and I’d been told that some lads would have to go out. I still get criticised for selling Jordan, and I have to accept that. But it was also a club decision. We sold him to Huddersfield, down a division, for £350,000, and he started scoring loads of goals. I think I was the one who suggested a sell-on clause, and thank God we had it, because they sold him to Blackburn for eight million. The mistake myself and the staff made with Jordan was, we discussed what he couldn’t do, instead of what he could do.

I knew Lee Martin, a bit, from my playing days at United, but he didn’t work out. He was a decent player, but the Championship is about good, strong characters. I don’t think Lee had that quality for the Championship. Priskin, too – technically, he wasn’t bad, but I don’t think he worked hard enough.

My recruitment wasn’t good enough. I’ve no excuses.

Damien Delaney came in and did okay. I was a bit hard on him sometimes, probably because I knew him and he was from Cork. But I went over the top. I was the same with another lad, Colin Healy. He was from Cork, too, and I told him he was moving his feet like a League of Ireland player. It was wrong. Colin was new to the club; I should have been bending over backwards for him. At Ipswich, I sometimes said the wrong things. Maybe I was trying too hard.

When you’re a manager, people say you should never worry about the players liking you; it’s about them respecting you. But we all want to be liked. You don’t want the people you work with
disliking you. Maybe, after the Paras experience and bringing a few lads in and letting the wrong lads go, I was trying to right a few wrongs.

We were playing away to Cardiff on 29 November, a Sunday. We’d beaten Derby and, since then, we’d had two more draws. I saw that there was a rugby match on in Cardiff the day before our game. Wales were playing Australia. And I like the rugby, so I thought, ‘Well, I fancy going. How can I justify going down to Cardiff a day earlier?’

I decided I’d bring everybody. I rented a box at the Millennium Stadium, and we had a great day. I paid for it. Staff, players – we all walked up to the stadium together. It was brilliant. There’s always a friendly atmosphere at rugby matches, so we weren’t having to tell the players to watch their backs. It wasn’t a football match we were going to, and it wasn’t Ireland against England. The food wasn’t ideal for the day before a match day – mashed potatoes, sausages – but we got stuck into it. They should have been having pasta. But I just thought, we’d been doing that for three months and we hadn’t been getting the results. We just had a really nice day.

Maybe if we’d lost the day after I’d have blamed all the mash and sausages. But we went out and we won. Did we win because of the rugby? Probably not. But the players appreciated it. I don’t think they saw it as me trying to ingratiate myself, or to win hearts and minds. There’d been photographs for the local paper and the match programme at the end of the Paras experience, and I remember thinking, ‘Maybe there shouldn’t be.’ But at the rugby there were no photographs, no fuss, no media stuff. It brings back good memories; they were a good group of lads.

We won, but I didn’t think of it as a turning point. I still knew it was going to be one of those seasons. When you don’t win for the first fourteen matches, it’s not all down to bad luck. There
were just too many draws; we couldn’t finish the job off. But the signs were better after the Cardiff match. We started to win a few games. In December, we won two, drew two and lost one.

The two draws were both 0–0, one after the other. Away to Bristol City, at home to Peterborough. At Bristol, I played Pablo Couñago, a player I didn’t particularly like or get on with. He was a striker, very talented. He had a chance with about five minutes to go. We had a shot, the keeper parried it to Pablo. He was ten or eleven yards out. He took three touches, and the keeper blocked it. He could have hit it first time. There are games that sum up your spell at a club, and that was the game.

I remember people saying to me about Pablo, ‘He’s really no good to you away from home, and he doesn’t always fancy it at home.’ That wasn’t a good start, because half of your games are going to be away from home.

I had a dig at him after the match.

‘Fuckin’ hell, Pablo, you’ve got to do that first time.’

He was, ‘Oh’, this and that.

Missing a chance like that is a reflection of the attitude to training. The first day, pre-season, Pablo walked off the training pitch, feeling his groin, or something. It wasn’t from a tackle, because the players had just been running and stretching. After we’d finished, I spoke to him. He’d been at home in Spain for the last six or seven weeks, and he landed back in England at half eleven the night before. I didn’t think that was great.

The next day – the second day of pre-season – I was in my office, and I saw Pablo chatting to some of the players in the car park, at about ten past nine. He was due to have treatment, and the injured lads would have been in at about half eight or nine. So I called him in – I knocked on the window.

I said, ‘What are you doing? It’s ten past nine.’

And he went, ‘Oh yeah, but we just kind of do what we want.’

I said, ‘Well, them days are over.’

My days with Pablo were numbered – but he stayed at the club for another year because we couldn’t move him on. No club was interested in taking him – and I was happy to tell him that. I just found him dead lazy.

But he did get an important goal for me. We beat Coventry at home, 3–2, and Pablo scored the winner in injury time. But that, really, was the only time he produced. I’m not a big fan of judging players from DVDs, but I watched a few Ipswich matches on DVD before I took the job. There was one, Pablo came on as a sub. He walked on to the pitch – he was so lackadaisical. He looked like he was going down a coal pit for ten hours. Ipswich got a penalty, and he missed it. I thought, ‘That’s what you get for walking on. You’re supposed to run on to the pitch, like it means something.’