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| QUOTES FROM WEST HAM UNITED: THE MANAGERS TED FENTON SAID: "Many a time managers would come to me after matches and say: ‘What wonderful football your lads played'. But we had lost!" "I want to make West Ham a glamour club. I want to make Upton Park London's jewel of the East. I want to make us so Ritzy that we will get the kind of reputation Arsenal had in the late 1930s and people will travel miles to see us. I want, too, to see restaurants on the ground, so that fans who come to the match straight from work endure the cold on something more than a basis of two buns and a cup of tea. Slick, modern restaurants are what are wanted - and not only for the stand customers, but for the fans behind the goals as well. When the man on the terraces gets hungry, he has as much right to eat as the season ticket holder. There are lots of ideas I have tucked up my sleeve for the future. "One possibility is to have a running commentary going over the loud speaker system into the restaurants, describing the behind-the-scenes activities as the teams get ready in the dressing rooms. A few words with some of the players and managers, and perhaps a question-and-answer session with any celebrity who might be visiting the ground. I want West Ham to be an interesting, intimate club with everybody getting the ‘family' feeling through sharing the ‘secrets'." RON GREENWOOD SAID:  "Entertaining football is a thing of chance, and I never saw the game as anything else. We made friends because we were different. Sometimes we were made to feel we were the last of a dying breed. We did not win the championship but, oh yes, there were compensations." JOHN LYALL SAID: "I see a lot of coaches today writing things down on the sidelines. I understand why they do it but I was always taught to look at everything that was going on all the time and never to take my eyes off what's happening on the field." "I think that, in our time, the technical side of the game had far more credibility than it does now. People used to say to me at times that I ‘over-coached'. But is there such a thing? People might ask why I stopped a particular training session eight times because a player kept making a mistake. But I believed in doing it over and over again until we got it right. If it got too embarrassing for a player, I'd ask him to come back after the others had gone inside to get changed so that we could go through what had gone wrong. "But how can people call themselves coaches when they're only on the training field for 10 minutes?"  "In our day, if I wanted to sign a player I just picked up the phone and spoke to the other manager concerned. But today, it's hard to identify who does what at a club. I can't see how it works, when a manager identifies a player he wants and yet somebody else at the club is responsible for actually getting him. I'd far rather try and sign a player myself, even if I didn't get him, than wonder whether someone else at my club valued that player as highly as I did, or had really tried as hard as I would've done to get him. I'm sure there are some managers and chief executives today who have an excellent relationship but I just find it hard to understand how you can have a manager who doesn't completely manage at his club.""Frank Lampard and Graham Paddon absolutely loved the game. They would stay on in the afternoons just to work on freekick routines they devised themselves. They were good mates and they'd just try little things, variations of flicks and shots, and it was great to see the affection they had for the game. We'd watch them practice and what they did would come off in matches. Towards the end of his career, if ever I dropped Frank Lampard from the team, he'd be back training every afternoon until he won his place back. He was brilliant at that and I can see why his boy has done so well, if he has the same attitude his father had back then." "The trouble with the game today is that it's over-complicated by too many people who don't understand it." LOU MACARI SAID: "Lots of people have regrets but I know that I should have stayed on at West Ham. But I didn't - and that was a very big mistake." "I made a lot of decisions in my short time at West Ham but I know one thing. I got one of them very badly wrong the day I decided to leave there. "My first big mistake was leaving the club and the second stupid, crazy thing I did was to go without even bothering to try and negotiate any kind of severance pay. I didn't think I was entitled to anything from West Ham after what had happened, even though Tom Finn left me in no doubt that the board would probably be willing to sit down with me and negotiate some settlement on the remaining two years of my contract." "You certainly can't imagine any football manager walking away from a club with nothing in today's world but I thought it would have been a bloody cheek on my part to have even asked for anything. I didn't think I deserved it." BILLY BONDS SAID:  "You can forgive them not being able to pass a ball properly, although that's hard enough, but when they're not putting the effort in or they don't give a shit . . . I found that very difficult to take. In all honesty, it was the most difficult part of the job." "A lot of managers and coaches don't talk straight anymore, they go around the houses. And much of it is bull***." "My idea of sports science was to tackle the wall in the gym, nut the door and throw a few ‘f***s' about before going out to play! That's the only sports science I knew. It was all about self-motivation." "I'm not saying the way we prepared for a game was right. Who knows, I might have been able to have run even quicker if I'd eaten pasta and the other things players eat before a game nowadays. "A bit later in my career, I'd have a drop of brandy just before a game. Now what would the dieticians of today make of that! Rob Jenkins would pop up to the boardroom to top up his little flask and Phil Parkes, Geoff Pike and me would have a drop before going out onto the field." "I read what Frank Lampard (junior) said in his book about the long-distance running we did when he was a young player at West Ham. He said his legs ‘felt like concrete' after one of my runs through the forest and that he ‘couldn't help thinking it was all a bit archaic'. Nowadays, they say you shouldn't do cross-country running and the type of work we always used to put in, and how it's now all based on short circuit routines. "Well, probably the reason why Frank gets around the pitch like he does is due, in some way, to the hard running he did in his earlier days with us. It gave him a solid fitness base and I often think that's where he gets a lot of his stamina from. "No-one loved a football more than Ron Greenwood or John Lyall. But the pre-seasons I had with them, as a player, were harder than those I gave my players when I became manager. Also, Frank should perhaps remember that the work we did in the 60s and 70s didn't do his dad, or Trevor Brooking and a few others any harm "It's probably why there are are so many injuries now. They talk about boots and pitches, but I wonder if the players are really putting in the right amount of work in pre-season. I'd like to know - it's a question mark for me, that one. How much do today's players do in pre-season? Why are we seeing so many injuries?" "When players weren't giving 100 per cent, I found it very difficult to come to terms with," he agreed. "When you are a player, whether you're skipper or not, you go out and give 100 per cent . . . and you always think your team-mates are giving 100 per cent no matter how good that is. But when you're a manager and you see players who you think aren't putting it in, you want to get them up against a wall, but you can't do that. "You find yourself dealing with players who may go to the press and you know they're not telling the truth. That's hard to deal with at times."  HARRY REDKNAPP SAID:"You know what happens at football clubs - someone, somewhere has said something to Bill. I'm sure people would have put the knife in on me but that seems to happen everywhere after someone leaves a club or any other job. "But there is no truth in any of that bullshit whatsoever. The last thing I ever wanted was his job. I really wanted to come back to Bournemouth at the time. This is where I live and I was starting to think to myself: ‘I'm spending too much time up there in the flat, driving backwards and forwards, and that life is too short.' I didn't want to be away from Sandra any longer. "Of course, I'm bitterly disappointed at what happened with Bill. I never did one single thing wrong to Bonzo and anyone who says they can prove otherwise is a liar. It hurts me to hear people say that I stabbed Bill in the back." "At 16, I was one of the best young players in the country," reflected Harry, with a hint of regret, as he added: "I should have been 10 times better than I was." "I know Frank's improved but Chelsea didn't pay £11m for potential," insists Harry. "They knew they were buying a proper player, who would have improved simply because of the way he was and still is. "No disrespect to Chelsea, but no-one has improved Frank except Frank himself. His Dad was the biggest influence on his career, spending a lot of time with him, but the kid is a fanatical trainer who would spend hours shooting and practicing with both feet. He practices like a golfer who hits a thousand balls a day. He trains like a lunatic - you can't get him off the training ground "He deserves everything he's achieved, because he has a fantastic attitude. The only player who trained harder than him was his Dad - no-one else," Redknapp added. Speaking well before the 2006 board takeover which heralded unprecedented money for Alan Curbishley's transfer kitty and new players' salaries, Redknapp reflected on his ‘Class of 2001' and said: "If West Ham had kept all of those players together, I think they would now have been challenging for a top four place - a Champions League position." "Better people than me - Bobby Moore for one - have never had the chance to manage West Ham, so I've got no grudges. Life goes on. I walked away thinking that I'd done a good job there." Asked if he had any regrets, Redknapp paused and then revealed another chink in his make-up.He said: "If I look back, I can see now that I argued with people too much, told them to their face what I really thought of them when I really should've kept my mouth shut more. If Terry Brown said something at a board meeting that I didn't think much of, I'd tell him to his face: ‘What a load of bollocks, you don't know what you're talking about,' I'd say. "Maybe it's disrespectful and maybe it's wrong - well, I know it is wrong - but I did it with Milan Mandaric at Portsmouth, too. I used to slaughter him. That's the way I am, unfortunately. I can't take it when people talk bollocks to me. If someone's talking crap, I have to tell them they are, whereas a lot of managers will just go with the flow and say the ‘right' things." "I always wanted to sign players - like Di Canio - who could really play," he said, "I wanted to go into training each morning and work with people who can play. I'd get fed up watching geezers just booting the ball anywhere." "All I know is, West Ham never got relegated when I was there. And the team they had in 2002-03 wouldn't have gone down if I'd still been their manager. "They finished fifth in the league under me. When's the next time they'll finish as high as that?"  GLENN ROEDER SAID:"When someone shows you a thread on a website forum that reads: ‘I didn't like Emlyn Hughes, and I'm glad he died of a brain tumour - I only hope I live long enough to see Glenn Roeder die from one', it makes you wonder about people. You could describe the person who typed that on his or her computer as an animal, but that would be cruel to animals. There are some sad, sick people about." Recalling the seven-goal capitulation at Ewood Park some six years later, it wasn't just the appalling performance of his team and the result that made the day such a nightmare ordeal for Roeder. Having regained his composure after his earlier tirade against the fans who verbally abused him, he chuckled as he explained the "interesting six-hour journey" home from Lancashire after his top player refused to fly back to London with his team-mates. "I had to drive Paolo (Di Canio) home from Blackburn, which you can imagine was enjoyable," said Glenn. "Luckily, he fell asleep about halfway home and I played lullaby music the rest of the way back to Essex! "What just about finished me off that day, though, was setting off a speed camera about half-a-mile from my house at Chigwell. It was the only time in my life I didn't want the three points!" "It annoys me when people analyse managers and praise the guy who is jumping up and down like a lunatic on the sidelines, kicking every ball, and suggest that he wants it more than the guy who is standing there, watching the game studiously. That is complete rubbish," he said. "I see other managers, doing a lot worse than I have, who don't have to suffer half the abuse that I did. What nobody can take away from me is the fact that very few English coaches have led two different teams to seventh-place finishes in the Premier League."  ALAN PARDEW SAID:"I admit, to the man in the street I might appear very arrogant." Speaking about his image in 2007, Pardew admits: "The type of personality I am, there is an arrogance about me and, yes, I do have to keep an eye on it. But I want to win and I'm confident. And I think that it can be misconstrued as something more sinister - that's absolutely true. "I admit, I have gone over that line occasionally, because I'm very close to that line. To the man in the street I might appear very arrogant. To someone in the football world, I might seem slightly arrogant, but to another manager I might appear normal. "You've got to have a certain ego to be successful in this job, there's no doubt about that. Players always think the manager is being a bit arrogant - I can remember thinking that about my managers - and because I'm the type of person who calls things as they are, I'm going to have that trouble at times." SIR TREVOR BROOKING (caretaker manager) SAID:  "Sports science in my day was getting weighed on a Monday and a Friday. And up until I was 26, at noon on a match day, I had a fillet steak as my pre-match meal. Then an England doctor came along and told us that red meat takes 24 hours to digest! "For all those years the likes of Bobby Moore had an 8oz steak lying on their stomachs as they ran around on a Saturday afternoon! At that time, though, it was considered the right thing to do. "The game has changed now, of course. You see all the masseurs and medical staff that provide support, and you've got to change with the times. But, in the end, the key person is that first team coach or manager, and the skill of how he manages the squad is more important than all other aspects," says Sir Trevor. "I was probably spoilt in that I had 19 years with Ron Greenwood and John Lyall, who I now know to be two of the best coaches you are ever likely to have. Lots of the little things they told me when I was younger still applied to the game when I packed up at 35. "I never forget those bits of advice, and now I see players who haven't got a clue about receiving the ball side-on, having pictures in their minds, or the basic skills you need."Ron and John did all the coaching themselves. They would walk us through the sessions. It's only a modern trend where a manager might stand on the sidelines and get someone else to organise the sessions while he studies them."  ALAN CURBISHLEY SAID:"I know the jury is still out on me. I have a lot to prove to people here.""I remember, soon after I'd started here at West Ham, asking Tim (De'Ath), our chef, to do me a dinner to take home. The family were going out for something to eat without me, so I was eating on my own and Tim did me a lovely plate of food. By the time I got home, though, I didn't really fancy it, so, as my father-in-law Bob lives nearby, I offered it to him. "The next day, I asked my wife if he'd enjoyed it and she said that he loved it. Then I asked her what had happened to the plate and she said: ‘Oh, you're not getting that plate back.' It was a West Ham plate, with the crest on the edge, and he wasn't giving it back!"Now he has his sandwiches on it every day, but he never, ever asked me for anything to do with Charlton! It's just little things like that. "At Charlton I had a closeted life, a situation where we had come from nowhere. When I started there, we were playing in front of 3,500 at Upton Park and when I left we had home crowds of 27,000. When I got home I had a quiet life."But I didn't realise, until I got this job, that my postman and milkman are both West Ham fans!" "Football has become so high profile that managers are becoming as well known as the players, and it was never like that years ago. There were phases when you had people like Clough and Bond and Atkinson, but then it settled down a bit and the teams did the talking. "Now, though, we are all caught up in a massive, massive PR industry, and there is no respite. The advent of radio phone-ins, websites, and the papers devoting six, seven or eight pages to football, has become in itself a problem to managers."Everyone has got an expert opinion, or a say on the situation, and managers are under a microscope seven days a week. It's all-consuming, with TV channels dedicated to reporting on the game, and everything keeps regurgitating into one big pressure bowl. "When groups of managers got together years ago, it would be to talk football. The conversation would be about players, matches, tactics. Now the conversations are about agents, fees and wages. And the problems. "The managers also had more time then to devote to other areas of the club. They saw their job as trying to build a club, and every aspect of it mattered to them. Now, though, it is about short-termism. Be successful now, at whatever level it is, because you may not be around long enough to worry about youth academies and infrastructures." |
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