Hunger and fight

It all started with an accident on the ice as I drove past Stonehenge one night.

I was playing for Yeovil in non-league football, but still working as a glazier in central London. I’d had some good years doing that, and worked my way through some of the bigger non-league clubs in and around the capital – Corinthian Casuals, Dulwich Hamlet – before signing for Yeovil.

That was probably my first real experience of the professional game. By non-league standards, Yeovil were a big club. They had a lot of former Bristol City players down there, which brought a greater level of professionalism than I had known before, and the money was good.

I was well into my 20s by then, but it was a period when players could still move from non-league into the professional game and be successful. Chris Waddle had done it a few years earlier, and Les Ferdinand would soon move to QPR from Hayes. I still had the belief that my dream of playing professional football wasn’t over.

I was still glazing, though, so midweek games were tough. I’d get in early and try to get all my work done by 3pm, so I could get out of the city and drive down to Yeovil. Then I’d play the game, drive back to London and get up for work the next day.

It was a tough regime, and I’d done it for 14 or 15 months before that accident near Stonehenge. I sat there at 10.30pm, in the cold, and thought to myself: “What the hell am I doing here? I don’t think I can do this any more.”

"you walked into that training ground and it was no holds barred. it was a real bearpit of honesty"

After speaking to the club, I hoped that a big non-league club would come in for me. Enfield, maybe, or Wealdstone, where Stuart Pearce had broken through a few years before.

Instead, Crystal Palace came in for me.

It wasn’t a great time for Palace. They were in trouble financially and having to run things pretty tightly. Steve Coppell was the manager and was trying to build a team of hungry young cast-offs and non-league players. I’d trained with Ian Wright at Dulwich for a little while before he had signed for Palace, and I decided this was something I wanted to be a part of.

Steve’s recruitment was such that he wanted strong individuals. You walked into that training ground and it was no holds barred. There were players in there who had real hunger, and so it was a real bearpit of honesty. I was lucky – non-league football had prepared me well for that.

Even so, I struggled at first. I had been a golden boy in non-league football, but all of a sudden I was a bit of a boo-boy with the Palace fans. I couldn’t get my head around it, but the truth is that I wasn’t playing with confidence and probably deserved it. It did help me develop a thick skin, however. That is something I’ve leaned on more than once in my managerial career.

By the time we made what was then the Second Division playoff final the following season, I knew what I could bring to the team. I had courage, I could get up and down the pitch, I was physically stronger. That all gave me the confidence I needed to make a difference.

"I recall lying in the bath wondering how we'd got beat 7-0. but it wasn't seven. it was nine"

Beating Blackburn over two legs – Ian Wright scored the winner in extra-time, in front of 30,000 at Selhurst Park – is still probably the highlight of my career. The feeling that evening, to know we were waking up the following morning as First Division players, was just amazing. To know that we would be playing against some of the greats – John Barnes, Gary Lineker, Ian Rush – was unbelievable.

But we started the new season, and we were nowhere near good enough. Our two strikers – Wright and Mark Bright – definitely were, but we had a couple of hammer-blow defeats that culminated in a trip to Liverpool that no one will ever forget. The dream of playing against the likes of Barnes and Rush quickly became a nightmare.

We went in at half-time 3-0 down, and I remember looking around the dressing room and thinking: “Wow, this ain’t us.” We were fighting each other out there, no one was really looking after one another. Of course, we go out for the second half and it gets worse. I came off the pitch, and I vividly recall lying in the big bath wondering how we’d got beat 7-0.

Then someone else in there actually said it out loud. It wasn’t seven. It was nine.

That was September. By the time the FA Cup semi finals came round in April, we were as good as safe in the league. We had got back to fighting tooth and nail for each other, hunting in packs. We had rediscovered our way.

Liverpool were the opponents again, but we were without Ian Wright. He had broken his leg, which was a massive blow to us. At the same time, though, it made us gel that little bit stronger.

"All I did was my job, but scoring that winner changed my career"

We started with Mark Bright on his own up top and felt pretty confident, but the first half was one-way traffic. Ian Rush had scored the only goal, but I’d gifted them possession with a square pass and walked off at half-time thinking I might get pulled. We were pretty low in the dressing room.

Steve wasn’t one to drag players at half-time, though. His message at the break was that we were going to go out and have a proper go.

And, well, that’s then it went wild. I think Bright equalised before Kenny Dalglish had even sat back down on the bench, and we ended up going 2-1 up. Then they absolutely battered us for 15 minutes and went ahead again. I remember thinking they must have had 13 men on the pitch. We somehow managed to equalise once more to take the game to extra-time, and then my moment came.

It was a well-worked set-play, which was something we were really good at. A near-post corner got flicked on, and it was my job to follow in and try to get on the end of it. And that’s all I did: my job. But scoring that winner turned me from a journeyman professional into someone who had scored a goal to get his club to an FA Cup final. It changed my career.

Careers in football, just like any other walk of life, depend on having people who believe in you. Steve Coppell had believed in me as a player, but I needed others to believe in me when it came to coaching.

Keith Peacock was the first. He was the reserve-team manager at Charlton when I moved there as a player. I’d gone from the bearpit of Palace to an ageing, old-school team managed by two young managers in Alan Curbishley and Steve Gritt. But my legs were starting to go a bit, and I ended up spending more time in the reserves with Keith.

"the first time i met tommy, he literally pinned me up against a wall"

“If you ever think about coaching, come and see me,” he said. “I think you could do well.”

He started giving me some matchday responsibilities with the reserves, and I really enjoyed it. I thought to myself: “Yeah, you know what? I can do this.”

By the time I left Charlton and got to Barnet, I knew I wanted to be a coach. It was literally a process of playing my last games – and I should apologise to Barnet fans, because by then I really wasn’t the best – and finishing my badges. I think, at the time, I became one of the youngest A Licence coaches around. I was well-set, and I was hungry.

I got my chance at Reading. Terry Bullivant had become manager there through sheer force of personality – John Madejski had taken to him, I think – and he took me in with him. I thought I was the best coach at the club, and kept pushing Terry to let me do more and more. He is the nicest guy you could possibly meet as a coach and was bringing me along nicely, letting me do my thing with the reserves. The first team wasn’t getting the results, though, and he got the sack.

That’s when Tommy Burns came in. Anyone who ever had anything to do with Tommy – whether at Celtic or anywhere else – will tell you how powerful a personality he had. The first time I met him, he literally pinned me up against a wall.

“Listen, you’re not my choice,” he said. “The chairman likes you and I’m told you’re a good coach, but I’m the boss. You watch my back every minute of every single day.”

"once you have a core of players who trust each other and bring that energy and fight, it's amazing what you can achieve"

Tommy had a massive impact on me. He had spent time in the Netherlands, studying their approach, and he wanted to play a brand of total football in the Championship. I couldn’t believe it, but he absolutely stuck to his beliefs and I learned a lot from him in his time at the club. It wasn’t for the want of trying that results never came.

Just as Keith Peacock had believed in me, so did Madejski. I knew he had a feel for me. Having accepted the role as caretaker manager at the club, I was eventually offered the job full-time.

And I took a little bit of Coppell with me, in looking for players with hunger, those desperate to prove people wrong. We built a team full of energy and, in my first full season, we made it to the Division Two playoff final against a wily old Walsall team managed by a wily manager in Ray Graydon. If I was managing that Reading team against that Walsall team now, I think we’d have won. I was still a bit naive as a manager, though, and got caught up in the emotion of the occasion. We lost in extra-time.

To be Reading manager and not get promoted out of the third tier of English football was massive. But the owner stuck with me, and we were promoted the following season. Just.

With 10 games to go, we felt like the job had been done. Then we drew at Cambridge. Then two more draws, at home to Bournemouth and Brighton. By the time we got to the final game of the season, we had drawn eight of our previous nine. That fixture was away at Brentford, who were managed by my old boss, Steve Coppell. If they won, they would be promoted above us.

But Jamie Cureton scored the type of goal only Jamie Cureton could score, and we drew the game. We had scraped promotion, but it was a huge moment for me as a manager.

"now i was going to be on the sidelines, managing against the likes of ferguson, wenger and mourinho"

I also had a squad that was made for the Championship. Players like James Harper, Andy Hughes, later Steve Sidwell. Once you have that core of players who trust each other and bring that energy and fight, it’s amazing what you can achieve. It’s what I saw when I looked at what Chris Wilder built when he took Sheffield United into the Premier League.

But that is not what I saw when I went in at West Ham. It had been a complicated move from Reading – and I took over from Trevor Brooking. Trevor had been doing really well as caretaker, but he didn’t want the job. The fans wanted him to stay, and I walked into a dressing room with a lot of senior pros who had spent the past five or six years in the Premier League. They really did not want to play in the Championship.

I understood that, but that’s where they were. I needed to cut through those who wanted to come on the journey with us, and those who didn’t. Senior pros can make it problematic for a new manager and his coaches, and we needed to move on those who could potentially do damage on the training ground. We managed to get a young side together, and built a team that went all the way to the playoff final. But we missed out, losing narrowly to a Crystal Palace team that had just got going at the right time.

A few big hitters came out against us in the media after that final, but I survived. One year later, we were the team with the momentum going into the playoffs. It was a group of players that had the same hunger I remembered in my old Palace team: Nigel Reo-Coker, Bobby Zamora, Marlon Harewood. There was a real camaraderie between them, and on the day of the final we did a proper job on a Preston team that was perhaps technically superior.

The feeling was just as it had been when I’d been promoted into the top division as a player. They’re the two best feelings I’ve had in football.

West Ham are a Premier League club, but I had never been a Premier League manager. When you start out as a coach, you look up to the guys at the top and wonder if you will ever be lucky enough to face them. Now, I was going to be on the sidelines, managing against the likes of Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger, José Mourinho. You’re always learning, and I’ve learned a lot from coaches who are long gone. But the opportunity to go up against guys like this was amazing.

"the belief started to go out of their game a little bit, and we grew into it. cup finals are about momentum"

José, in particular. I had admired him in his first season in England – loved the way he came in, his arrogance, everything about him was brilliant. He really made me chuckle, but then you come up against his teams and you soon found there was no way back if you let them get ahead. They would never run away with the game, never beat you five or six. But even at 1-0 down, you just wouldn’t get a sniff. To actually come up against him and beat him a couple of times is another real highlight for me.

The end of my first season in the Premier League ended at the Millennium Stadium, in an FA Cup final against Liverpool.

It was a game against a team that were better than us. We have to remember that.

But we looked to subdue their strengths, made it very difficult for them to create chances. Then, when the belief started to go out of their game a little bit, we grew into it. Cup finals are about momentum. If you can find a way to even things up, and you know you have players in your team who can get you a goal, then who knows?

And we definitely had players in that team who could score. I still say this now, that Dean Ashton was the best player I had worked with at that particular time. He could have been an England striker for the next five or six years.

His subsequent injury was a massive, massive blow. But he played in the final against Liverpool, he scored, and he was brilliant.

"gerrard wasn't getting the ball at all. he got the hump and decided to go very, very deep"

And, on the day, we were the better team.

I remember Peter Grant came up to me with about eight minutes to go. We were a goal up.

“What do you think?”

“I think we’re alright, Pete.”

“We just need to look out for Steven Gerrard, that’s all we need to do. Let’s put Nigel on him and I don’t think they’ll score.”

He made a good point. We put Reo-Coker on Gerrard, got him to just follow him around, and we didn’t look in any trouble. Liverpool had a lot of the ball, but they didn’t look like scoring – Gerrard wasn’t getting the ball at all, so he got the hump and decided to go very, very deep to pick it up.

Nigel, being honest as he was, thought he was okay there – so he dropped to sit in front of our back four and protect. With time running out, Gerrard picks it up deep from a clearance. I’m looking at him, he hits it, and he scores.

"i look back on what my players did that day, and i know they did an unbelievable job" 

The funny thing is that so many people remember that as the winning goal. But it wasn’t. We still had 30 minutes of extra-time to play, and Liverpool had pushed so hard in the last 15 minutes that they were exhausted. And we had one big chance to win it in that period, for Marlon Harewood. He didn’t manage to take it, though, and we ended up losing on penalties.

Losing a cup final is one of those blows that you have in football.

Do I think about it every day, you ask? No, I don’t. But you can’t play it down and say it was nothing. It was a major incident that affected West Ham’s progress as a club, and my progress manager. You just have to survive it as best you can.

But I look back on what my players did that day, and I know they did an unbelievable job.

And I look back on what I did, and I believe I did a pretty good job too.