The Damned Utd

Day Four

You drive down to a meeting with the Derby County directors at the Baseball Ground. The job’s yours but it still has to be ratified and confirmed by the full board, according to Sam. You’ve got the wife with you, the three bairns in the back of the Rover. You drop them by the swings in Normanton Park. You tell the wife you’ll be back within the hour. You drive on to the Baseball Ground.

Sam Longson is waiting for you with the rest of the board: Sidney Bradley, Harry Paine, Bob Kirkland and three others who say nothing and whose names you do not catch. Turns out the board have been overwhelmed with applications for the job, least that’s what they’re telling you. Turns out they have a shortlist of four –

Alan Ashman, Billy Bingham, Tommy Cummings and you –

Turns out the job’s not quite yours –

The Derby board do not even offer you a drink, so you help yourself.

‘My injury finished me as a player and took away the thing I loved most in this world,’ you tell them. ‘But it did give me an early start in management at Hartlepools. Re-election had become an annual event for them, but I changed that. I cut the playing staff down. I got rid of the players who were crap. I brought in one or two who were slightly better than crap. Hartlepools finished eighth at the end of this season. I also built them a new stand as well as a new team and have left them solvent. But I didn’t do it alone. I couldn’t have done it without Peter Taylor, and I want him here with me at Derby. We come as a pair or not at all.’

They shuffle their papers and fiddle with their pens, these worried rich men.

‘Me and Peter Taylor can turn this club around. We can guarantee you that you’ll not finish as low as you have this season and, more to the point, we can get the public off your backs. But we can only do it together –

‘Me and Peter Taylor!’

They are interested now, these worried rich men, thinking of walking the streets of Derby without abuse, thinking of holding their heads up high again with their wives on their arms, thinking of finally getting the appreciation they deserve. They nod in the direction of their chairman, these worried rich men –

They have been overwhelmed by you, the shortlist down to one –

‘I remember when you played here with Sunderland,’ says Sam Longson. ‘Pointing here, pointing there. Shouting at this one, shouting at that one. Telling everyone what to do. Lot of folk said you were arrogant, but I said you were a leader. That’s what we need here: a leader.’

‘And that’s what you’ll get,’ you tell him. ‘I promise you that. But I want a contract because you’ve got seven directors here and, within a month, at least one of them will want us gone. I promise you that and all.’

‘Mr Clough,’ says Longson. ‘Your salary shall be £5,000 a year and your assistant’s shall be £2,500. Furthermore, £70,000 will be available for new players and you shall both have contracts, don’t you worry about that.’

Eight hours later you get back to Normanton Park; your boys are asleep on the swings, your wife and daughter curled up on a bench.

* * *

Saturday’s come, with Saturday’s stink. The sweat and the mud, the liniment and the grease. The steam and the soap, the sewer and the shampoo. The beer and the wine, the spirits and the cigars –

It’s only a friendly, only a testimonial. But it’s still a game, still my first.

I watch them climb up the steps onto the coach with their paperback books and their packs of cards and I count the hearts –

Not one among them.

No one speaks and no one smiles. But the journey to Leeds Road, Huddersfield, is supposed to be a short one.

I sit down next to Bremner. I ask him, ‘You get my telegram, did you?’

‘What telegram?’ he says.

‘The one I sent from Majorca,’ I tell him. ‘The one I sent inviting you and your family to join me and mine for a few days in the sun. The one in which I said how proud I was to be the new manager of Leeds United.’

‘No,’ he says and looks back down at his paperback book –

The Beautiful Couple.

I am first off the coach and the reception is warm. I sign autographs for the kids and shake hands with their dads –

It’s only a friendly, only a testimonial.

Through the doors. Down the corridors. Round the corners. Up the stairs. Into the boardroom. Into the bar. Into the spirits –

The handshakes and the backslaps –

Then Jimmy is in my ear –

‘They’re waiting,’ he whispers. ‘They want to know who’s playing.’

‘Bring them up here,’ I laugh. ‘Get a few pints down them.’

‘Come on, Boss,’ he pleads, his eyes wide and his palms out –

I finish my drink. I light another fag. I follow him out of the board room. Down the stairs. Round the corner. Down the corridor –

To the doors of the visitors’ dressing room. To the sound of silence –

I put out my fag. I take a deep breath. I open the door –

To the visitors’ dressing room. To the stink of Saturday –

‘Stewart, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, McQueen, Hunter, Lorimer, Bates, Clarke, Giles and Madeley,’ I tell them and leave them, leave them to their dressing room. Their silence. The stink of Saturday –

‘Mr Clough?’

I turn round; Bates stood in the corridor outside the dressing room.

‘You bloody deaf, are you, young man?’ I ask him. ‘You’re playing. Now go and get your fucking boots on.’

‘I know,’ says Mick Bates. ‘But where do you want me to play? I’m usually in midfield but, with both me and Paul Madeley playing today, I was wondering if I should play further up, in front of Johnny Giles and Billy Bremner?’

‘Look, you’ll do what I bloody tell you and play where I fucking say,’ I shout. ‘Now fuck off back in there and get your bloody boots on before I change my mind and have you fucking cleaning them all next bloody week!’

I walk off down the corridor. Round the corner. Up the stairs –

I take a seat in the stands to watch the game. My first game as manager of Leeds United. The Champions of England. But they are not my team. Not mine –

They go a goal behind. Then the Irishman volleys one back –

I look at my watch. It’s not there. Still missing.

Half-time, I’ll take off Norman Hunter and stick on Trevor Cherry and then they’ll pass better and score a winner, but I’m already looking through my address book –

Because they are not my team. Not mine. Not this team, and they never will be –

They are his team. His Leeds. His dirty, fucking Leeds and they always will be.

Not my team. Never. Not mine. Never. Not this team. Never –

They are not Derby County. Never Derby County.

* * *

There’s a beard and a smell about Peter when he answers the door, dark rings around his eyes and fresh whisky on his breath.

‘Lillian’s not bloody left you, has she?’ you ask him.

‘You never called,’ he says. ‘I thought you’d forgotten about us.’

‘Forgotten?’ you laugh. ‘I didn’t get back to the bloody house till midnight.’

‘So?’ he says.

‘So, what?’ you ask.

He wipes his mouth and he says, ‘Don’t make me beg, Brian. Please …’

‘Beg?’ you laugh. ‘You’ll never beg again. We’re in! Bloody in!’

‘Both of us?’ he says. ‘They agreed to take me and all?’

‘Course they bloody did,’ you tell him. ‘Me and you.’

He’s still smiling but now he’s asking, ‘How much?’

‘£2,500 a year, with £70,000 for new players.’

‘£2,500 a year each?’

‘With £70,000 for new players,’ you tell him again, and now he’s jumping up and down on his doorstep and hugging you like you’ve both just come up on the bloody pools, and you’re opening up the carrier bag in your hand and taking out the two bottles of champagne and the packets of cigars –

‘We’re on our way,’ he’s shouting. ‘You and me; Clough and Taylor!’