by Tony Adams
In fact, we started well and had 17 points from our first eight games, though I suspected it might not last, given where the club still was and some of the things still occurring. For example, I had a centre half I was often at odds with in Roger Johnson. After that heavy defeat against Brighton the previous season, when he was sent off for a rant at an assistant referee, I asked him if he wanted to pay a fine or go for help to manage his anger. I think he thought I was nuts. He was decent, if not quite as good as he thought he was, and would go on to play with Cardiff City in the Premier League before moving to – and falling out of favour at – Wolves and Birmingham City, but he wasn’t the most open-minded of people at that time.
With all the scouting and off-field duties, the problem was that I simply wasn’t getting enough time to coach the players properly, which was, after all, the reason I had taken the job. They also weren’t good enough, frankly, to absorb what I wanted of them and it became frustrating.
There was a day when I invited Lee Dixon down for lunch and he took the chance to watch one of my coaching sessions. As it happened, I laid on a session with my right back, a Dutch player I’d signed from Chesterfield by the name of Gus Uhlenbeek. It was a simple phase of play, involving the centre half playing the ball wide to the full-back, who would then take a soft touch to tee the ball up for a second touch that sent it forward into the channel between the opposition’s centre back and left back for Nathan Tyson’s run. That was the session in a nutshell and I was on the field showing them how I wanted it to be played out.
On the first attempt, Gus took a touch, then a second to drag it out from under his feet before a third to send it into the channel. I stopped the session and asked Gus to do it again, just using two touches as Nathan was struggling to know when to time his run. The same thing happened. I gave it one more try. Yet again, Gus needed three touches. He just could not tee the ball up properly to send it forward with a second touch. You might think a Dutch player would have good technique, but he had come to England early in his career. Besides, a lot of Dutch down the years have lived on Johan Cruyff’s reputation.
On the UEFA B Licence, they tell you that if the drill doesn’t work, you should simply throw the ball into the channel for the striker to chase. I ended up sending the centre half and Gus away and working with Nathan myself.
Later I went over to Lee on the touchline.
‘Have you just tried to tell a professional right back how to control and pass the ball?’ he asked in whispered tones.
‘Welcome to my world,’ I said.
‘Unbelievable,’ he replied.
No wonder Lee never went into coaching and preferred the world of TV punditry. It would have driven him nuts.
The temptation to compromise was always there. If you had a player with a long throw who could launch it in behind the opposition down the line, for example, it was very tempting to use that weapon. I always wanted us to play football and keep possession, but then things happen that make you question what you are looking to achieve.
For example, at Oldham, who were managed by the old Arsenal midfield player Brian Talbot – or Turn ’Em Talbot, as he was known – my right back threw the ball infield to the centre back, who slipped over and let the opposition in for a goal. Now you have a question to ask of yourself and a decision to make: do you stay with your philosophy and persist with players who can’t pass the ball or do you play the percentage game?
Not surprisingly, in the lower divisions especially, so many do the latter when jobs are at stake. They start to coach the easy, safe option. I was concerned about becoming that coach.
It came to the first anniversary of me taking the job. Despite Steve Hayes now being a major figure at the club, Ivor remained chairman and he had a tradition of taking the manager out for dinner on the anniversary of his appointment. We went to a nice restaurant overlooking the Thames at Henley.
I told him where I was with the job. I had built him a team, costs had been cut and there was the prospect of selling players to wipe out any debt. We had also together overseen improvements to the training ground, Ivor’s building company having come in to construct new dressing rooms and a top floor with a leisure area above it. There were offices and a gym, and we could eat there too. Previously the players had had to change at Adams Park and drive over and the meals had been brought across after training by dear old Jim the groundsman, who was now doing well in his sobriety.
The club was in decent shape, Ivor and I agreed, and the team was in mid-table, possibly, I reckoned, capable of a play-off push in the New Year with one or two modifications. I added that I wasn’t particularly enjoying it, however. The club was not really going to progress much higher, I said, and I had gone about as far as I could with it.
Then, over the dessert – not wishing to spoil the meal entirely – I told him that I had decided to resign. I needed, I continued, to go away and be a proper coach somewhere, rather than just a solver of problems and mending and making do. I thanked him for the opportunity and for being such a good chairman to me. ‘Let’s just shake hands on it,’ I said. I think Ivor was a bit shocked and he asked me to stay on. At the very least, he wanted me to sleep on it and see how I felt the next morning.
That afternoon, I was doing a chair at a prison near Oxford, so I drove up the M40. I had a few of the old doubts: Had I done the right thing? What would people think? I recognised that it was just the old voices from early recovery. I knew that I needed to find a new path.
Then my phone began to buzz with calls from the press. How they’d found out that I had resigned I don’t know. These days, it could have been somebody in the restaurant overhearing, or Ivor having a private conversation with somebody at Wycombe and it being leaked.
Anyway, I was not going to lie and so I confirmed when asked that I had quit. It would duly come out that night and be in the papers the next morning. Ivor was upset that it came out the way it did, rather than the club handling the announcement, and looking back I could have managed the situation better by refusing to take any calls from the press. It was the first time I had been in this situation, though, and it was a learning experience.
I went in to the training ground the next day, said goodbye to the players and that was that. I think some Wycombe fans were upset with me, as was Ivor, but it was just their knee-jerk reaction. I wasn’t doing the job – or now, not doing it – for affection or approval, though the fans had always been pretty fair to me.
I think I was fair to them, as well. In the end, I shook hands with Ivor and we parted on good terms. I didn’t ask for the 18 months left on my contract to be paid up or anything like that, as some managers do by almost engineering their own sacking or in negotiating an exit package when they want to go. I took responsibility for my resignation. I had never been doing it for the money anyway.
I surely could have stayed on, could probably have remained there a long while indeed, as they were good people and Ivor would not have sacked me without giving me plenty more time. In fact, when Martin O’Neill later heard I had quit, he rang me to say that I should have given it another two or three years and I might well then have got a job higher up the scale.
My problem was that I just wasn’t learning how to be a coach, although I had at least managed to get my UEFA A Licence while at the club. I had done the residential course at Lilleshall, this time with my old mate Steve Bould – then coaching in the Arsenal academy – Graham Westley, the Stevenage manager, and Marieanne Spacey, the former Arsenal Ladies captain among others. (Steve, as I recall, failed it on that occasion because he got annoyed and swore at a goalkeeper during a session. Which of us hasn’t done that? And he would surely do it again when he became assistant manager to Arsène years later.)
I also came through the practical, when the course leader travelled down to Wycombe to see a session I put on. I was pleased with the way it went, with two attacking players working on a drill designed to improve their movement. In getting my A Licence, I had at le
ast made some progress in my career.
I was, though, learning only how to be a lower-division manager – which is not the same as a top-flight manager – and was worried that I might get stuck, pigeonholed, at the level. I was not working enough with players, and good enough players, to enable me to develop and operate at a higher level one day. Some of them weren’t as dedicated to their craft, or as aware of their standing, as they should have been.
I remember coming back from an away game at Wrexham, having drawn 0-0. We had not played well, with the game having been there for the taking. Had that been me as a player, I would have been upset and brooded about it on the coach journey home. Instead, the players were having a dance-off in the aisles, laughing and joking. In the end, I just couldn’t help but laugh myself and come out of my own gloomy mood.
I turned to Pete Cawley. ‘It never seems to hurt them, does it, Pete?’ I said.
‘You’ve got to remember, Tone,’ he said, ‘we’re dealing with broken toys here. There’s always something missing with a player at this level. Either they’re not quick enough or they can’t head a ball, or they’re one-footed or they’ve got a bad attitude.’
He was right and I understood that to a degree. I just wanted players who were teachable but, believe it or not, I didn’t find too many at that time. There was very little inbuilt criticism of their own game. Their perception of how they played was always different from how I saw things.
Some also appeared more like fans than professionals. Roger Johnson always seemed more concerned with how Chelsea were getting on than with what was happening at Wycombe. Then there was an episode during my first week at the club . . .
I decided to get three senior pros into my office, as Arsène had done with me and a couple of others in his early days at Arsenal. Keith Ryan was a legend at the club, Frank Talia a decent goalkeeper and Michael Simpson a good, honest midfield player.
I wanted them, I said, to be my leaders on the field. I was looking to build a relationship with them and we spent 20 or 30 minutes chatting things over. As they left, Michael turned round and attempted a joke: ‘I don’t like you. I support Manchester United.’ He giggled then made for the door. It was a strange moment, as if he hadn’t bought into the mood and what we had just been talking about. Wycombe was his club. Not Manchester United. I was just gobsmacked.
Against that, there were some successes, which showed, gratifyingly, that I was making a difference to some young players. I gave a start to a 16-year-old called Ikechi Anya from the youth team, making him Wycombe’s youngest ever debutant, and he would go on to play for Watford, in the Premier League, and Scotland. In the summer before my departure, I also took on Russell Martin, an 18-year-old defender from non-league Lewes, after he had been released by Brighton. He would go on to become Norwich City’s captain in the Premier League and lead Scotland. And send me this text out of the blue in 2016:
‘Hello boss . . . I just wanted to say thank you. I don’t think I ever got the chance to say it. You gave me a chance, a start in professional football. I’ll never forget it and will always be grateful. I hope you’ve watched from afar and are pleased to see me, Mike [Williamson] and Kech [Ikechi Anya] go on to do what we have done (still lots more to come I hope!) and you are proud of the part you played in it. You’re probably a bit surprised as well, ha ha!!’ It was very sweet of him and lovely to receive.
And I guess I was still regarded reasonably warmly at the club as they would ask me, also in 2016, to record a video message to mark the 500th appearance of club stalwart Matty Bloomfield, whom I signed from Ipswich Town.
Back in 2006, I had also returned to the club for the sad occasion of the funeral of Mark Philo, a 21-year-old player I had given a debut to, who was tragically killed in a road accident. Afterwards, Steve Hayes thanked me for finding Nathan Tyson and for a £40,000 sponsorship deal with Jewson I had brought in just before I resigned.
Finding and coaching players willing to learn was enjoyable but I just didn’t do enough of it. I could deal with agents – although I was surprised how many of them there were even at this level. I would meet many at youth and under-21 games who were themselves looking for the next big thing or trying to sell watching managers a player. I could also deal with the regional media, and even got the local paper guy into my office at one point to say that I wasn’t worried about criticism, having had it in the national press for years, but that this was for a local audience and they needed information and analysis, not just tabloid material.
In addition, I could build teams and perform all the tasks necessary on the management side of the job, but it was a struggle financially – and not just personally, as it was costing me money, what with all the travelling I was doing. Wycombe simply didn’t have the resources to implement a lot of the sports science elements I wanted, to do with physiology and nutrition for example. I had help here and there, with a strength and conditioning coach we used at Sporting Chance called John Goodman coming in for some sessions occasionally, but essentially I was a one-man band with little in the budget for anything ‘fancy’.
One example: I wanted some mannequins for the training ground to act as a wall for free-kick routines. They cost £500. It was around the same time – shortly before I resigned – as an away game at Darlington when I wanted an overnight stay on the Friday. Ivor told me I could have one or the other. I opted for the mannequins because at least they would be useful every day. We ended up going to Darlington and back on the day, a round trip of more than 10 hours. We lost 1-0.
Sadly, I think the lower divisions produce a certain type of manager/coach. It is a really tough environment, with people being sacked right, left and centre, and they do what they need to keep their jobs, rather than work on a style of play and develop teams. You have had Dario Gradi at Crewe Alexandra overseeing a club and a philosophy for a generation, being allowed to build something that would last, but that is rare, an exception indeed. More often the thinking is so short term. It is all about the next result.
My goal in life was not to win League Two, One, or even the Championship. My goal was to work with the best players at the highest level. I was learning how to go to Oldham and keep a clean sheet on a wet Tuesday, which saddened me and I didn’t like that feeling. Fair play to those who can but I didn’t want to turn into that kind of animal, driven by anxiety and doing what was needed just to survive.
I did find some of it fun, and certainly educational, but I do wonder sometimes about the organisation of the lower reaches of the Football League, with so much travelling and such little income. I understand the interest in Wycombe v Swindon or Bristol City, but in playing in the same division as Hartlepool, for example? It would be far better being regionalised into North and South to my mind, and I am sure Darlington would have agreed. They might not have gone out of business and had to start again.
It was time to walk away, time to say goodbye to some days that started at 5am and didn’t finish till midnight. I can’t speak for Ivor but for me it wasn’t a painful ending. And I’m sure for the club finding the next man was a matter of routine, as happens in the game.
I did switch my phone off for a few days afterwards and pondered how, eight years into recovery, I seemed always to feel a touch of seasonal affective disorder in November. It usually prompted me into a change, as it had done one year earlier when I left university to take the Wycombe job.
I couldn’t afford to be SAD for too long, however, and indeed I wouldn’t be, as something joyous was on the horizon. In fact, I had something else now to focus on that involved a joining together rather than a break-up.
8
Going Dutch
The past is history, tomorrow is a mystery,
but today is a gift.
That’s why they call it the present.
Saying in AA
Poppy and I were married on Wednesday 15 December 2004 at All Saints United Reformed Church, in the village of Tudeley, Kent. It was a beautiful, simple, candlelit
winter wedding but it was modest, just the way we wanted. So too the reception in a marquee on the Teacher family’s estate near Tonbridge in Kent.
Not that it got off to the most auspicious of starts. I was having lunch with my ushers in Tunbridge Wells and left there at about 3.30 for the 4pm ceremony. I missed the turning off a dual carriageway, however, and ended up being late. Poppy, meanwhile, had to go round the block again in the car, confirming her suspicions of me that I could be a bit rubbish. Then when I did arrive, she wasn’t there, which only increased my nervousness.
There were many highlights, not least being inside that church, which is the only church in the world to have all its stained-glass windows painted by the celebrated Russian-French artist, Marc Chagall. Poppy had an art-loving aunt she never knew, Sarah d’Avigdor-Goldsmid, who was tragically killed in a sailing accident in 1963 aged 21, and Sarah’s mother, Lady Rosemary (Poppy’s grandmother), commissioned Chagall to paint a memorial in the East window. Chagall liked the space so much that he ended up painting all 12 windows.
Another highlight for me came during my speech when I recalled what my oldest son Oliver – then 12, and my best man – had once told me.
‘No offence to Poppy, Dad,’ he said. ‘She’s lovely and everything. But I think I preferred a cuddle from Caprice.’ Poppy, being a well-balanced person, took it well. I know Ollie also used to enjoy playing on the trampoline with Caprice in the garden of my old house in Putney.
For some of the guests, the highlight in the evening was the Elvis tribute act, who even had me dancing. Unfortunately, he was just about the only person in the place who got drunk and he had a row with someone, which we had to calm down. Poppy and I spent our first night as a married couple at the Pool House on the estate. I felt very blessed. She had an amazing family, who took me into their hearts.