Always Managing: My Autobiography, page 16
BILLY AND THE KIDS
Billy Bonds was the most fantastic player. What would West Ham United, or any club for that matter, give to have him now? He could play central midfield, centre-back, full-back; he was fearless in the tackle, he could run all day. I’ve known Bill since I was 16, when he was a youth player with Charlton Athletic and an England trialist. We were together at the Football Association’s training centre at Lilleshall. He was one of my closest friends in football. But was Billy in love with being a football manager? I don’t think so. I can understand that. Throughout the time I knew him, Bill’s idea of a perfect day was to go down to Dorset, to Thomas Hardy country, and do a bit of bird watching. He is very frugal. He is the sort of bloke that could live on fifty quid a week and certainly wasn’t a big one for going out and spending fortunes. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I loved Bill to bits, he was a fantastic fella. But in the Premier League world of modern football, he was increasingly a man out of time.
In an era when man management was more important than ever before, with foreign internationals coming into the English game and wages soaring so that players no longer needed their weekly pay cheque, Bill wasn’t really a people person. He loved the game, but didn’t much care for footballers or their problems. He would get the hump with the ones who weren’t as talented as him, or didn’t work as hard, or didn’t have the same attitude. That was always a problem. I think he looked at his players sometimes and they just got on his nerves. It didn’t help that at the end of our first season in the Premier League we signed a player who was everything that Bill wasn’t: Joey Beauchamp from Oxford United for £1.2 million. Billy had the hots for him because he remembered Joey giving Julian Dicks a chasing in one of the matches during our promotion season. He was a talented wide midfield player who could play on either left or right.
We had tried to get him earlier in the year, but without success. Oxford wanted to do the deal, but Joey didn’t want to come. That should have been the clue. Who wouldn’t want to leave Oxford for West Ham? Undaunted, we tried again. This time, we signed him, but the deal dragged on for ages, far longer than was normal when a player was moving from the third tier to the Premier League. What was wrong with him? We soon found out. His first day at the club, I walked in. ‘Morning Joe, you all right?’
He just groaned. ‘I should have gone to Swindon,’ he said.
I thought he was talking about his route to work. ‘No, Joe, you don’t want to go to Swindon, that’s down the M4,’ I told him. ‘You go in the opposite direction from Oxford to Swindon. Come down the M40 towards London, round the M25. That’s the best way. If you come on the M4, follow signs to Newbury.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I should have signed for Swindon. Swindon Town. The football club.’
‘You’re at West Ham, in the Premier League, and you’re telling me you should have gone to Swindon?’ I asked him.
Swindon had been relegated from the Premier League the previous season, rock bottom, having conceded 100 goals.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I’ve made a mistake.’
And it got worse each day from there. He didn’t like the journey, he didn’t like the club, he missed home, he missed his girlfriend; his attitude was a drain on all of us. One week we took the squad training to Eastbourne, jogging around the hills. Bill was at the front, the fittest of the lot, as ever – I was at the back, lagging behind as usual – and Joey, our new signing, was four hundred yards behind me. We played some pre-season games in Scotland and he spent all day on the phone to his girlfriend. It was pathetic for a grown man on a good salary to be so lacking in independence. He acted like an eight-year-old. He didn’t want to run, he didn’t want to play the matches. I know what I wanted to do – I wanted to slap him – but I was supposed to be the man-manager in our partnership. Stuff like that did Billy’s head in. Joey just sulked all day. He wouldn’t talk to us, wouldn’t discuss his problems. It drove Bill crazy. He had bent over backwards in the negotiations, allowing him to live in Oxford and arranging a signing-on fee of £30,000. Now Joey was saying that he was too tired and stressed to come in because he had been sitting in traffic jams. He just wanted to be back home, playing for his local team and going dog racing. He liked the dogs. That’s about all we had in common. Even when we finally decided to cut our losses and sell him to Swindon, he demanded £350,000 to leave the club. I wasn’t having that. The deal had been dragging on all night when I told their manager John Gorman to put Joey on the phone. John was tearing his hair out because Joey was insisting he wouldn’t sign until he got his money. ‘What is fucking going on?’ I shouted. ‘Don’t think you’re coming back here. You’ve been nothing but fucking aggravation since you arrived and we don’t want you. You didn’t want to be here, you wanted to go Swindon. So stop being a greedy bastard, take what they are offering and fucking go to Swindon.’
Joey changed his mind and signed, but problems like that took a toll on Bill. He was so straight as a player, so honest, that he couldn’t stand the attitude of some in the modern game.
The drinking culture in football had not been eradicated, and there were a few at West Ham who were hard work. That definitely upset Billy. He hated being around them, and the lack of professionalism – the sport had changed beyond recognition since our own playing days – got him down. I think Bill’s love of the game began and ended with pulling on his claret and blue shirt as a player, really. He loved football but when that final whistle blew, he’d be halfway through the Blackwall Tunnel and home before some of the lads were even out of the shower. Training was the same. There would still be people ambling off the pitch when Bill’s tail-lights were disappearing out of the car park. So as a manager he was never going to be the sort of guy who was the last one out of the office at night, or away scouting five times a week. He was a home man, he loved his family, his wife – he didn’t want to hang around the football club all day, he wasn’t a great one for talking to other managers or any football people, at all. Was it the modern game that Bill disliked? It is hard to say. Even when he played he didn’t have a great rapport with the rest of the team. We used to go greyhound racing and room together, so he was fine with me, but Bill wasn’t a great mixer. One year, Ron Greenwood gave us the opportunity to go to America at the end of the season. It was an incredible trip, because nobody went there in those days. We were going to do five weeks in Baltimore, one more in Bermuda, and then home. Play a few matches, but nothing too serious. We all thought it was the opportunity of a lifetime, but Bill wouldn’t go. Ron said that we all travelled or the trip was off, so we spent weeks pleading with Bill to change his mind. In the end, he flew out with the team, but came home early saying his aunt was ill. Bill never wanted to be too far from his garden.
So every day would start the same. I’d be in first, waiting for Billy, and then he’d arrive and issue instructions for the training or the match the next day. ‘Shirt and tie tomorrow,’ Bill would say. ‘Bollocks to that,’ Julian Dicks would reply, pick up a ball and boot it over the fence on to the railway line. You can imagine Bill’s face in those moments.
I remember his absolute disgust before our first match in the Premier League, against Wimbledon. I got to Upton Park early and the groundsman told me that Sam Hammam, Wimbledon’s owner, had gone into the away dressing room with a big pile of pens. ‘He’s been in there about forty-five minutes,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what he’s doing.’ I told him to find out and come back and tell me. Neither of us could believe what we saw. There was graffiti all over the dressing-room walls. Filthy insults aimed at the Wimbledon players: stuff about Vinnie Jones, stuff about John Fashanu, calling them all wankers and worse. At that moment, Sam walked in. I was furious. ‘What have you done?’ I asked him. ‘No, not me, you have done this,’ he said, standing there with the pens in his hand. I told the groundsman to get a policeman. We used to take kids on a tour of Upton Park before match days. That was now ruined because they couldn’t visit the dressing rooms and see this rubbish scrawled everywhere. Hammam then had the audacity to try to throw us out. ‘This is our dressing room, you must leave,’ he said. ‘Get out, you have written this on our walls.’
We removed him in the end, but Billy was really upset when he arrived. It wasn’t long after Bobby Moore had died. ‘We’ve just buried Bobby,’ he said, ‘and this is what we’ve got to deal with.’ He was all for going to the police and the Football Association with an official complaint, but the club must have talked him out of it. I thought Hammam was sick in the head at first, but then I realised it was merely a crude motivational tactic. He wanted his players to think we had insulted and demeaned them, so they could be wound up into a frenzy and would go out wanting to kill us. Apparently, the previous season, when Wimbledon played at Blackburn Rovers, he had got to Ewood Park early and thrown all their boots and the neatly laid-out kit into a freezing bath and written graffiti all over the walls there, too. Kenny Dalglish was holding a team meeting when half the Wimbledon team burst in threatening all sorts. Wimbledon came away with a point that day – they’d frightened the life out of them.
It was at those moments that I could really understand some of Bill’s disdain for the modern game, so when a former chairman of Bournemouth, Geoffrey Hayward, called to offer me the opportunity to return to the club, I must say I was interested. Geoffrey lived around the corner from me, and his family had been involved with Bournemouth, off and on, for decades. He said he wanted to buy it again, but would only do so if I came back. I could have whatever title and job I liked, from manager to managing director. ‘I’ll give you the club, it’s yours to run,’ he said. It sounded a very appealing proposition. I was enjoying my time at West Ham professionally, but personally it was hard. I lived in a flat in Emerson Park, Romford, and only went home to Bournemouth and my family at weekends after the game. I thought that having helped the club win promotion, and consolidate in our first season in the Premier League, I could leave with head held high and no hard feelings. The news of Geoffrey’s takeover was being announced by local newspapers the next day and as I was such a big part of it, I told Bill that I should come clean with the West Ham board. Bill knew how much this new job appealed to me. When I told him I wanted to go back to Bournemouth, his first reaction was, ‘I don’t blame you.’
We were in Scotland at the time on a pre-season tour, but Terry Brown, the chairman, and Peter Storrie, the managing director, were also staying at our hotel. We arranged a meeting and I explained my position, but Brown’s reaction came as a shock. ‘Why do you want to go back to Bournemouth?’ he asked. ‘Is it because you’d like to be a manager again?’ I explained that wasn’t the case. I wanted to go home to where my wife lived, and to a club where I had been very happy for most of my ten years. It wasn’t about being a manager. The way Geoffrey had told it, I could be more than just the manager there anyway. ‘Why don’t you be our manager instead?’ Brown continued. ‘Bill can be the director of football – with a ten-year contract.’ This wasn’t what I expected and I felt very uncomfortable being offered Bill’s job with him sat there in front of me. ‘Bill’s the manager,’ I said. ‘We didn’t come in here for this. That’s not the idea at all.’ But Terry Brown had shown his hand.
‘It’s obvious you want Harry instead of me,’ Bill interrupted. ‘You think he’s a better manager than me, and you want him to replace me.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Right,’ Bill continued. ‘What does “director of football” mean, anyway?’
Brown began outlining the job. It seemed a very loose arrangement. Go to training when he liked, turn up on match days, and be the club ambassador. It was a job for life, too. Complete security and no pressure – I was beginning to wish they had offered it to me. Bill said he needed time to consider and we all parted company. It wasn’t the meeting I had planned, the one in which I made a dignified exit to start anew at Bournemouth; and Bill was genuinely undecided, as well. We had dinner together that night, as usual, and there was not a squeak of difference between us. I told Billy I still wanted to go back to Bournemouth. ‘I’m living in a flat, Bill,’ I told him. ‘Back home, we’ve got room, we’re on the coast, my wife’s there with our dogs. This doesn’t suit me – I don’t want to live this way any more.’
I don’t know what the final straw was for Billy. Certainly, Joey Beauchamp turning up late for a friendly at Portsmouth that Saturday and not trying one leg did not help his mood greatly. I was torn as well. It still all hinged on his decision, though, and on the Monday Bill called me. ‘I’m at the ground,’ he said. ‘I’m packing up.’
I drove down there as quickly as I could with Ronnie Boyce, our chief scout, but we couldn’t talk him around. I even offered to stay as his number two, but he was set on resigning. He went in to see Terry Brown and quit.
Immediately, Terry called me in and asked if I would be manager.
I said I needed time to think it over. My head was spinning. A few days earlier I had decided to go back to Bournemouth, to be with Sandra and the family. Now I was going to be the manager of a Premier League club and more immersed and distanced than ever. I should have simply driven home and given myself time to think, but the club were eager to put on a united public face, and the biggest mistake I made, in hindsight, was agreeing to a press conference. The club wanted to make it appear that the loose end of Billy’s resignation had been tied up, but I should never have agreed. I wasn’t ready to be manager – I hadn’t even made my own mind up yet, and I was so uncertain that I did not return to Upton Park for a week.
It wasn’t until Frank Lampard Senior came to see me over the next weekend that I made my decision. ‘I don’t want Bill’s job, Frank,’ I told him. ‘Why not?’ he replied. ‘Look, Harry, they clearly wished to make a change. Someone else is going to get offered this even if you turn it down. They wanted you – give them what they want.’
Peter Storrie kept calling asking for a decision, but I was still troubled by how Bill felt. It was only when we spoke that I felt content I was doing the right thing. ‘Take it,’ Billy said. ‘It’s a good job, well paid; you’d be a fool not to. Don’t worry about me, I’ve been well looked after. Take it.’
Yet, even on the day I walked into West Ham as manager, I still felt most comfortable with the thought of returning to Bournemouth. People see me as a very ambitious person, but I’m not like that at all. If I’m happy with my life, that is good enough. All week, I kept telling Peter Storrie that I didn’t want to be manager of West Ham, and it wasn’t until Frank came down to see me that I began to open my mind. What I did not expect, though, was to lose Bill’s friendship over the decision. All these years later, that still hurts – and I would swap having Billy as a mate for all of my seven years as manager at Upton Park.
Let me get this straight: I didn’t push Billy Bonds out of West Ham. In fact, for the two weeks after I took the job we continued to speak. Yet each conversation grew more stilted and, in the end, I could tell it wasn’t right. I knew what was happening. People were mixing it for us. That always happens when a manager leaves a club. There is always someone who can’t wait to tell you what is being said, or what was going on behind your back. It happened when I left Bournemouth. Tony Pulis said this; Tony Pulis did that. The same at Tottenham with Tim Sherwood, who everyone said had the ear of Daniel Levy, the chairman. There is always a story, that is how it is in football, and probably Billy heard too many stories about me. The difference was that he believed them. I asked him to have his photograph taken with me, to show there were no hard feelings, but he refused. I realised then that it was over, and that it was always going to be difficult between us.
That is what happens when people stir the pot. Tony Gale was a terrific centre-half for West Ham, but in 1994 we let him go on a free transfer to Blackburn. Tony always blamed me – although it worked out well for him, because he got a championship winner’s medal up there the following season – and he’s barely had a good word to say about me since. But it was Bill who wanted Tony out of the club. Tony used to spend the summer working at a holiday camp owned by our chairman, Terry Brown, and Bill was convinced he was telling him our business.
Looking back, from the club’s perspective, it could have been handled better. I think the way that Terry Brown sprung the director of football position on Bill was silly. Terry knew I had overseen the sale of Julian Dicks to Liverpool, and probably thought I was more into being a manager than Billy. In that respect, he was right. Bill often gave the impression that he found the job exhausting and if it had been broached differently, I think he might have enjoyed his ambassadorial role. It could have been a great job for him. I certainly wouldn’t have turned it down had the positions been reversed. A job for life? I’d have said, ‘Thanks very much, Mr Chairman,’ and they wouldn’t have had to ask twice. Bill would have been a perfect director of football for the club, and I genuinely think Terry Brown was trying to find a solution that would make Bill happy. In Terry’s eyes, I was more of a manager than Bill at the time. I’d done well at Bournemouth, I liked scouting and coaching and mixing with players, and Billy just wasn’t into that. With better management, I think Billy could still be there now, the one constant through the many changes of ownership.
So it was his decision to leave and, knowing that, I have been disappointed with some of what has subsequently been said. Billy clearly feels I overstepped the mark as his assistant. He says I gave interviews before matches on Sky discussing tactics, but that is certainly not my recollection of it. I may have sat in our meeting room and had a cup of tea with Andy Gray, but I don’t remember doing anything for the cameras. Yes, I was direct in my approach at times, but it was Billy who asked for my help. Once I had accepted that invitation I wasn’t in the business of being relegated. I was at West Ham to have a proper go. I still do not understand why Bill would take that personally. It was as if he wanted me to do a job, and then when I did that job and it got noticed, he didn’t like it. The headline in the Sun from that time said I stabbed him in the back, but there is not a chance I would do that, not a prayer.
