by Tony Evans
‘The Irons’ are the Cockney club. Most away fans from the provinces refer to all Londoners the same way. ‘Shit on the Cockneys’ was as likely to be sung at Stamford Bridge in SW6 as it was at Upton Park. The East Enders, born in the area traditionally within the sound of the bells of St Mary-le-Bow in the City of London, thought themselves a breed apart. When the legend of the Bow Bells developed in the nineteenth century, the ringing could be discerned as far away as ten miles to the east if the wind was blowing in the right direction. With modern tower blocks and traffic, the radius for Cockneys had shrunk but West Ham’s association with working-class East End life lingered longer than the peal of the bells.
McAvennie fitted in with the flash Essex-boy aesthetic that was developing. The barrow boys of the Cockney heartland largely bought into Thatcherite ethics. Like Frank, they wanted blondes, champagne and piles of cash. They would get their chance very quickly. Since 1983, the Conservative government had been planning the deregulation of the financial markets in the City of London. The ‘Big Bang’ of 1986 was a two-pronged assault – to loosen the restrictions on stock market activity and to destroy the elitist ‘old school tie’ networks that had dominated the Square Mile. This was not Conservatism. It was radicalism.
West Ham’s mindset was undergoing a radical overhaul, too. The team were starting to believe that they could become England’s best side. They were not all flash. Alan Devonshire, the delicate, talented midfielder, was a forklift truck driver until he was 20, when he was spotted by a scout and finally found himself a professional footballer. Devonshire never learnt to drive anything larger than the forklift and used to take the Tube to Barking Station, where he was picked up by Tony Gale for the last part of the journey to training. Despite playing in the first division, Devonshire would take public transport each morning, have a fry-up and read the Racing Post while he waited for his teammate to arrive with his lift.
Gale, a Londoner from Pimlico, was one of the big characters in the dressing room. He was nicknamed ‘Reggie’ after one of the Kray twins, the East End’s most famous gangsters. The defender was tough and the rest of the squad feared his cutting tongue. Along with Alvin Martin, Gale gave West Ham a defensive meanness that the Irons had sometimes lacked over the years. Mark Ward, a quick, clever winger, had the combination of skill and vigour that knitted the team together.
‘Mark Ward was the cog,’ McAvennie said. ‘He was a great buy. He made all the difference.’
And what a difference it was. ‘West Ham fans tended to go to the match hoping the team would win but not really expecting it,’ Tony Cottee said. ‘Same with the players. That season, supporters and players went to every game expecting to win. For one season, we competed.’
Cottee developed a fine partnership with McAvennie but it took some time to gel.
‘It took a while for me and Tony to get used to each other,’ the Scot said. ‘When I was shouting at him, he thought I wanted to fight him all the time. At first he didn’t understand it was just that I was desperate to win.’
McAvennie’s work rate also put the young Londoner to shame. It was noticed by the rest of the team and there was talk among the players that Cottee was not pulling his weight. Martin, the captain, a rugged Scouser from Bootle, thought the mood was unhealthy and called a team meeting where the striker was told about the concerns to his face.
‘I don’t remember much about it,’ Cottee said. ‘It’s the sort of thing that needs to happen. Frank would be chasing defenders down but I was only 20 and thought goalscoring was all I had to do. It cleared the air and things went from strength to strength. No one was complaining at the end of the season.’
‘It’s very rarely you go to every game and think you’re going to score,’ McAvennie said. ‘This was one of those seasons.’
As Manchester United faltered, West Ham became the talk of the game. By the turn of the year, McAvennie had scored 18 league goals while his junior partner tucked in with nine. Despite all the excitement, they were in fifth place in the table but with a game in hand that could see them leapfrog Liverpool and Everton in fourth and third place respectively. In second place, just two points behind a faltering United, were another surprise London package: Chelsea.
Ken Bates would have loved financial deregulation. The Big Bang came too late for the Chelsea chairman’s career in banking. At least he had football.
Bates is a force of nature. Few people in the game have ever exuded such energy, pursued their aims so ferociously or been so open to comic parody. He could have personified the Thatcher era. He was the living essence of vulgarity as a sign of vigour.
He was born in west London and began his career in haulage. By the 1960s, he started to see that football presented an opportunity and became involved at Oldham Athletic. Grubbing around in the lower regions of the English leagues was a mere cottage industry. Bates had bigger ambitions.
More Arthur Daley than Gordon Gekko, Bates dipped his toe into banking. He attempted to buy an island in the tax haven of the British Virgin Islands but local resistance led to the sale being thwarted. Instead, he went to Dublin and set up the Irish Trust Bank, an institution that went bust causing numerous small investors to lose their money.
By 1980, he was back to football and became co-owner of Wigan Athletic. They got promotion from the fourth division to the third but two years later a better opportunity arose. Chelsea, who were treading water in the second tier of the game, became available.
The team were struggling but the club had plenty going for it, especially off the pitch.
Stamford Bridge sits on some of the most expensive land in London. When Bates got the chance to take control of the club – for £1 – he jumped at it.
If anyone ever suggests to Bates that he bought Chelsea for a pound, he is eager to correct them. ‘I assumed the debts for a quid,’ he says in a characteristically aggressive style. The businessman was never a Chelsea fan and had not hitherto shown an altruistic approach to investment in the game. What he did have were good connections in South Africa, the United States and Israel.
Bates likes to see himself as a visionary. From the comfort of the Premier League, two decades after taking control in SW6, he told the Guardian:
When I took over the club, I thought to myself, we’ve got 12 acres of land here in the most valuable part of London and it is only open for business 25 days a year. What business can survive on that? So, ever since, I have been trying to make it work 365 days a year.
The reality was that television money would transform the game, not footfall on non-match days. Bates was an implacable enemy of cameras in grounds. He fought the TV companies viciously.
Part of it was ideological. Like the Thatcher government, Bates had an instinctive dislike of the BBC. He regarded the television licence, paid to the public broadcaster, as an assault on freedom of choice. The duopoly of the BBC and ITV, the privately owned, advertising-funded alternative to the national television service, not only drove down the prices for football on the small screen but represented a cartel that imposed a restriction on competitive bidding for the TV rights.
Bates was big on freedom. When it suited him. He resented the power of the Big Five, whom he saw as the aristocracy of the game, keeping down the middling and smaller clubs. Along with Ron Noades, he rallied football’s have-nots. They knew that television was only interested in a small clique of big sides. ‘There are only about eight teams in the first division that are attractive to the nation,’ John Bromley, the head of ITV Sport in the 1980s, told Anthony King for his book End of the Terraces: The Transformation of English Football. Casual viewers did not tune in to watch the ‘lesser’ clubs.
The blackout widened the gap between the Big Five and the rest. The phrase ‘Big Five’ was a new phenomenon. It only came into popular usage in the early 1980s – King could not find an instance of its use before 1981 – but the comments that came from the boardrooms of this privileged handful warned Bates what to expect.
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sp; ‘We cannot continue forever and a day to divide our money among 92 clubs,’ Philip Carter, the Everton chairman, told The Times in November 1985. ‘We are starting a long road of change and there will be problems for some clubs.’
Bates might have been all for the harsh Thatcherite economics of survival of the profitable if he was in Carter’s shoes but he would not let Chelsea suffer without a fight. And Ken knew how to fight.
In both business and his personal life, Bates used boorishness as a weapon. Chelsea had a notorious reputation for hooliganism in the early 1980s and their chairman defended the fans vigorously in his programme notes. Then he installed electric fences at Stamford Bridge. A combination of local-authority opposition, health and safety rules and good sense meant that current never flowed through the wires on a match day. Much to Bates’s regret.
Results started to improve. Chelsea bought wisely and John Neal, the manager, was allowed to bring in players like Kerry Dixon, David Speedie, Pat Nevin, Nigel Spackman and Eddie Niedzwiecki. The team stormed into the top flight.
The first season back in the big time brought success. Chelsea finished sixth in the table but Neal retired because of poor health. He was replaced by John Hollins, one of the club’s finest players.
Hollins got off to a good start. Without the sort of flashy goalscoring exploits of McAvennie or Manchester United’s all-conquering start, Chelsea were in third place in the table by the time they went to Anfield on the last day of November. A 1–1 draw with Liverpool underlined their credentials. It was a match that kicked off at midday in an attempt to avoid trouble. Not only had there been violence in games between these clubs over the previous decade but John Smith’s blame-throwing over Heysel still rankled with Chelsea fans. They were not responsible for the disaster in Belgium and any suggestion that they were involved was ludicrous. There was friction in the air when the teams met. Chelsea left Anfield having scored more than a point.
A month later they closed out 1985 in second place in the first division, two points behind United. They had beaten the champions Everton at Stamford Bridge and Dixon had banged in 12 goals while Speedie had bagged ten. Bates, who had set himself up as the flagbearer of the Football League’s strugglers, was beginning to think about crashing the big-time five. He was an increasingly strong voice within the FA and Football League.
If Bates was fixated by finance, so were Liverpool City Council. They managed to fight off the district auditor’s attempt to unseat the councillors but D-Day was 21 November. Wages were due to be paid to 31,000 local authority workers. There was no money in the bank. Merseyside was about to collapse. It was then Tony Byrne produced a stroke of genius to outwit their enemies. The council had borrowed £30 million from Swiss banks. The crisis was averted. The workers were paid and a legal rate set.
Effectively, Liverpool City Council had borrowed against its property, confounding for the moment a government that was encouraging its citizens to take out mortgages and put themselves into debt to buy council houses. For now, Merseyside had avoided bankruptcy.
Others playing games of financial brinkmanship fared less well. Six days before Christmas, football caved in to television. The deal was only until the end of the season and ITV and the BBC paid £1.3 million for the right to screen nine first division and league cup games live, plus highlights. The broadcasters had originally offered £19.2 million over four years.
A separate deal was agreed for the FA Cup. The first live game was Charlton Athletic against West Ham in the third round in early January. Armchair viewers would finally get a glimpse of McAvennie.
The West Ham striker had nothing but contempt for the game’s authorities. ‘The figures they were arguing about were pathetic,’ the Scot said. ‘The miserable sods running football didn’t have a clue. The money was going to them, anyway, not the players.’
The face-off with television was over but the civil war between the clubs ratcheted up a notch. The Big Five were determined to change the distribution of wealth within the game. A committee of leading figures from the sport had been working on how this could best be accomplished and they delivered their verdict in December. They handed the clubs a ten-point plan as a basis for discussion. The main suggestions were these: that the first division be reduced from 22 to 20 clubs by 1988; play-offs should be introduced to decide the final promotion place; the top flight should receive half the television and sponsorship income, the second division 25 per cent and the third and fourth tiers share the remaining 25 per cent; the Football League levy of 4 per cent of gate receipts earmarked for redistribution across the 92 clubs should be reduced to 3 per cent; and the voting system should be reformed to give more power to the bigger clubs.
Everton’s chairman, Philip Carter, made the threat explicit, telling The Times: ‘If we [the Big Five] do not get the support, then the first division clubs will have to look at their future again. We hate bringing out the idea of a Super League or breakaway. But if things stay the same there is no way the major clubs will allow themselves to be dragged down into obscurity.’
Football’s most dangerous year was finally over. One thing was certain. Nothing would ever be the same again.
So the cameras came back into the stadiums and on Sunday, 5 January 1986, the nation finally got a chance to see Frank McAvennie in claret and blue on a pitch rather than on an interviewer’s couch.
West Ham had drawn Charlton Athletic in the third round of the FA Cup and, in a drab set of ties, the chance to show the Hammers was too good for the BBC to ignore.
Charlton were a tier below their rivals but riding high in the second division. Two years earlier, the club had gone into administration and barely survived. Things got worse after the dreadful events of 1985. The Football League deemed their ground unsafe after the Popplewell Report.
They barely had the cash to scrape by from week to week and were unable to make the improvements demanded to stay at the Valley, one of English football’s iconic grounds. Too many areas of the stadium were dangerous.
Their last game at their home was in September and they were forced to move to ground-share with Crystal Palace. The first televised match of the new era took place at Selhurst Park.
The nation must have wondered what all the fuss was about for the majority of the game. McAvennie was quiet and Charlton held the high-flying Hammers for 88 minutes until West Ham’s striking duo eventually gave a glimpse of their ability. McAvennie reacted first to a sliced clearance and gained half a yard on his marker. Despite the close attention of a defender and the sight of the onrushing goalkeeper, the Scot toe-poked a delicate chip towards goal. It looked too delicate. On the mud patch that comprised the Selhurst goalmouth, it was unclear whether the shot had the pace to bounce in before a defender arrived. Cottee removed the doubt by slamming the ball into the back of the net. The Englishman was on the scoresheet but McAvennie’s contribution to the goal showed the viewers what his game was all about – uncanny anticipation, a blinding five yards of pace and the vision to select the right type of contact when shooting goalwards. ‘Frank was a superstar,’ Cottee said. ‘No one had seen us because of the TV blackout. Now it was a chance for everyone to see what we could do. We wanted to perform in front of the cameras to show everyone that West Ham’s form wasn’t a fluke.’
13
Holding out for a hero
Frank McAvennie had scored 18 league goals by the time the new year arrived. Many in football would regard 1985 as the bleakest of years but it was the Scot’s prime time.
By the time the West Ham striker went on Wogan, it appeared that he was a certainty to be the division’s leading goalscorer. Gary Lineker had just 11 league goals to his name. The Everton striker’s own Yuletide extravaganza was about to unfold, though. In the three matches over Christmas, Lineker netted five more times. The Englishman’s influence on the season had been underestimated but that was about to change.
He was overlooked a little because the spotlight was on the new boy in the East End.
After all, the football public already knew what Lineker could do. Going into 1986, the England striker had scored 16 in the league but he had also notched five more in the cup competitions.
Lineker was the child of a greengrocer in the East Midlands – something he had in common with Margaret Thatcher – but their family businesses were at opposite ends of the fruit and veg trade. In Grantham, Thatcher grew up with a father who was a lay preacher, an alderman and eventually the town’s mayor. The Linekers were market traders, operating in a much earthier environment. They were relatively well off but certainly not wealthy.
Gary was a fine sportsman, excelling at cricket, but football was his vocation. His teachers did not agree. A school report suggested he ‘concentrates too much on football’ and predicted that he would not make a living playing the game.
After leaving school, he joined his hometown club, Leicester City, and made his debut two years later in 1979. He played seven times before the end of the campaign.
The following season he had 20 first-team outings as Leicester won the second division and earned promotion to the top flight. He was deemed too raw for City’s season in the big time and was selected for a mere nine games as the team fought a losing battle against relegation.
His first three seasons gave few clues that a brilliant goalscorer was evolving. His strike tally for those three campaigns was one, three and three. Lineker came of age in 1981–82 in the second division, when he scored 17 league goals and two in the FA Cup as the team reached the semi-finals.
With the improving striker as a cutting edge, Leicester won promotion 12 months later with Lineker leading the way with 26 goals. He had two seasons with Leicester in the top flight, breaking the 20-goal barrier in each campaign. In 1983–84, his 22 strikes made him second leading scorer behind Liverpool’s prolific Ian Rush. The next season he shared the top-scoring title with Chelsea’s Kerry Dixon, both men notching 24 times.