Sober

by Tony Adams

  At one point in June, we had 11 players at training but five of those were leaving. Harry said not to worry about it. He had some big players coming. Joe also told me not to be concerned. Harry liked a lot in and a lot out, said Joe, who had seen it all before. Harry had also recruited the well-respected Ian Broomfield as chief scout from Aston Villa and he was bringing his input to bear.

  It became one of football’s best-used lines when Harry would say that his squad was ‘down to the bare bones’, but we genuinely were at that moment. I actually think he loved building teams from scratch. To describe him as a wheeler and dealer was too simple a tag, but it was in reality a compliment, although he hated the phrase. He was a master at getting players to come and play for him, a superb recruiter. He makes you feel fantastic. He makes people like him when they meet him.

  He was as good as his word about some big players coming in. Back in the January, he had taken a bit of a gamble with the Zimbabwean striker Benjani Mwaruwari for £4 million from Auxerre, which looked to have failed when Benjani went 14 games without scoring. The crowd took to him, though, for his willingness to work hard. Then two goals in that big win over Wigan cemented his position.

  Now, before the transfer window closed at the end of August, Harry brought in David James and Andy Cole from Manchester City, Sol Campbell from Arsenal, Glen Johnson on a season’s loan from Chelsea and Kanu from West Bromwich Albion. From overseas came Niko Kranjcar, from Hajduk Split, and Roudolphe Douala on loan from Sporting Lisbon.

  Here and there, Harry felt he was picking up second-hand goods, with players either past their peak or cast-offs from other clubs, but they were certainly better than I was used to. The fees weren’t enormous – around £2 million for David and Andy, while Sol was a free agent – but the wages were decent, I’m sure. I didn’t really get involved in that, but Harry had the backing of Peter Storrie and the owner, that was for sure.

  In fact, Sol’s wages were a sticking point for a while. He was arguing with Harry about money to the point where Harry asked me to have a word with him, as I’d played with Sol at Arsenal. ‘I can’t believe it,’ Harry said. ‘He comes from Newham, for God’s sake. But we need him.’

  Finally, Sol signed and Harry felt that a big part of his work was done. ‘Relegation avoided,’ was how he saw it. Tactics and formations may have played a part in successful football teams but, for him, it was all about the quality of players.

  I know there are many ironies about Harry, not least that he will probably have been well paid in his managerial spells, while hating players who were in the game just for the money and didn’t love it. He will say, I’m sure, and I would agree with him, that he was good at what he did and deserved his pay. And nobody could say he didn’t love the game. He always loved a footballer, one who could play a bit.

  He got them in, I worked with them, along with Joe, and after a pre-season that seemed to be a tour of Harry’s old clubs and a stay at Nigel Mansell’s estate in Devon, we started in the Premier League like a train.

  We had a good back five now, with David James underpinning it. He was an interesting character and I talked to him a lot. I didn’t need to work on much with Sol, who was already accomplished and established, so took on Linvoy Primus as my pet project, trying to make him a better centre half by keeping his game simple. He responded well, leading to Harry telling him he was the real player of the season despite David James officially winning it that year. David kept clean sheets in his first five games and that season he would surpass David Seaman’s Premier League record of 142 in total. He was exceptional but it helped that he now had a solid, organised defence in front of him.

  On either flank we had Gary O’Neil and Matt Taylor at their career best, along with Sean Davis in midfield with the Portuguese Pedro Mendes. I worked a lot on one-v-ones with Glen Johnson, who made a lot of goals from right back for Benjani and Kanu. These were good professionals with whom I enjoyed working and, while Portsmouth may have seen some players of similar high quality in its past, such as the legendary Jimmy Dickinson who led them to two titles, in 1949 and 1950, I doubt they had seen so many in one team.

  We were a very workmanlike, high-intensity team, who pressed hard and closed sides down. The statistics showed that if we covered 7,000 metres of high-intensity running as a team, we at least got a point. If we dropped below that, we lost.

  We found this out by using, as was becoming more prevalent in the game, some very sophisticated computer programmes. Most people will have heard of Prozone without quite knowing what it does in any detail. We used a French company called Amisco, who were rivals, though the two companies would join forces in 2011.

  The idea was that using TV footage from Premier League fixtures, a game was fed into a computer and would provide data both on the team and individual players, tracking them throughout the 90 minutes. Nowadays, players even wear special vests in training that provide data so the intensity of the sessions can be varied as the week goes on. Harry may not have always have relied on data, often using his intuition, but it was something a modern club had to employ.

  By mid-September, we were top of the Premier League, having won four of our first five games, drawing the other at Manchester City. We knew it was a comfortable start – with the wins coming against Blackburn, Middlesbrough, Wigan and Charlton – and that it probably wouldn’t last.

  We had a good team but not a deep squad and, as soon as we suffered our first defeat at the end of September at the hands of Bolton, another three in five games followed, though they were all away from home. At traditional Fratton Park we were formidable. It was a compact, old-fashioned arena, with fans who made a lot of intimidating noise, and we were a tight team.

  I enjoyed going back to Arsenal – now in their first season at the Emirates – and getting a 2-2 draw. In fact, we achieved some great results, also drawing at Liverpool and winning 2-1 at West Ham, as well as beating Manchester United at home by that score. Even a 2-1 defeat at Old Trafford in the FA Cup fourth round would prove a valuable experience for another day . . .

  In fact, both personally and collectively, it was a fantastic season. Pompey finished a more than creditable ninth, just two points off a European place, with Sacha Gaydamak getting carried away at one point in asking Harry if we were going to make the Champions League.

  I learned so much, too, not least about analysing the opposition. We had two exceptionally good guys working in our technical department, Michael Edwards and David Woodfine – Eddy and Woody – and they supplied data and video on opposing teams and players, which really furthered my education. They would also boost my ego by letting me and Paul Groves beat them at head tennis in the afternoons after Harry and Joe had gone home.

  Harry was an old-school manager for sure and, for a while, I think it was difficult for him to adapt to and adopt more modern methods using technology that were second nature to a new generation of guys. He hated seeing his old mates in the game, those he looked after like all his scouts, being made redundant and losing their £100 a week pin money for looking at players and opponents when it was now all done on computer. They included his lovely old assistant from Bournemouth, Stuart Morgan, with whom he had a very touching relationship. Stuart would sometimes come and join us in the coaches’ room after training, chewing the fat, telling football stories.

  But Harry was clever enough to know he had to change and smart enough to let people he trusted get on with their jobs, allowing Joe to prepare the detailed analysis of the opposition with the tech guys and giving me a free hand in certain coaching sessions, which not too many managers would do. I felt sure Arsène wouldn’t, so in control on a daily basis was he.

  There were frustrations. Sometimes I would be sitting next to Harry on the bench and suggesting he make changes, perhaps going to 4-3-3, perhaps to make a substitution. Sometimes he would agree and act, sometimes he wouldn’t. Whatever the outcome, the manager would always learn something from the game. But as an assistant, if it doesn’
t happen, you can’t learn from it. Then again, while learning may have been my agenda, I accept that it wasn’t Harry’s. Results were. His head was on the block. Mine wasn’t.

  The flipside of that is that, as a number two, you are protected. If you lose a game it hurts, but not as much as for the manager. It means equally that, if you win a game, you don’t feel quite as triumphant. I knew at some stage that I would want to get my own team again, to be in charge. I have always found it difficult to take orders and prefer giving them out. I am an addict, after all. And, I like to think, a leader.

  I’m sure Harry saw me as a bit aloof. Maybe even a bit strange. In fact, I know he did because that was the feedback I got from somebody I knew who was close to Milan Mandaric, the former Pompey owner who then took over at Leicester and with whom Harry still spoke.

  I don’t think it was anything to do with me not drinking. I like to think he was respectful of that and, also, he probably wasn’t even interested. I must admit it was not something I ever talked about in front of him. He was my boss after all. No, I think he just found me different to what he’d expected me to be. Now, I was more composed, a more calming influence than I had been when he saw me as a player in the up-and-at-’em days.

  The game had changed and I had changed. As a young player, I was brought up in a tough school. I always remember the Arsenal caretaker manager Steve Burtenshaw making the phrase ‘Kick, bollock and bite’ part of his team talk, as an exhortation before we went out. It stuck with me but it was just no longer relevant. All that hairdryer stuff – the term used to describe Sir Alex Ferguson standing in front of a player and giving him a blast of verbals – was changing. Sir Alex himself knew it.

  I never had any trouble motivating myself, but I was simply much less noisy about it in my latter days as a player. I know fans like to see passion and pride in the shirt – and I do too – but it’s not always about being showy. More often you need to keep a clear head, rather than be too wound up and make mistakes. A lot more players nowadays just want to be quiet in the dressing room to prepare mentally, and gradually in my career I learned about delivering messages more effectively. It was a case of strong words, calmly but firmly spoken. And for all his own old-school reputation, I only ever saw Harry deliver one bollocking and that was in a pre-season friendly, as will be seen . . . Credit to him. He changed as well.

  I often made my own way to away games, which would also have made me look a bit of a loner. The team were flying to pretty much every away game north of London, even to Birmingham, on a Friday, out of Southampton airport. I preferred to go home to the Cotswolds then drive to the ground on the Saturday, ready to sit at Harry’s shoulder for pre-match.

  Over the summer before my second year at the club, Harry had another busy period of developing his squad, shifting some on and bringing in another consignment of very good players. Out went Andy Cole to Sunderland. Gary O’Neil went to Middlesbrough while Lomana LuaLua left for Olympiacos and Dejan Stefanovic for Fulham. Plenty more further down the pecking order left too.

  Against that, Glen Johnson signed permanently from Chelsea, while John Utaka came from Rennes, Sulley Muntari from Udinese, David Nugent from Preston, Sylvain Distin on a free from Manchester City and Papa Bouba Diop from Fulham. Plenty more to bolster squad numbers arrived too.

  The deficit in dealing was around £25 million, but the club seemed to have it to spend. It was part of Harry’s desire to push the club on from that ninth place that both he and the owners wanted. We certainly looked like a Premier League squad now, deeper and with much more quality. It would show as the season unfolded into one of the greatest in the club’s history.

  We went from the high-pressing, tough-to-beat team to one that could dictate the play and be on the front foot rather than sit back. David James had a back four in front of him of Glen Johnson, Sol, Sylvain and Hermann Hreidarsson, both full-backs capable of bombing on. Sylvain was not the best on his right foot but improved us, while Hermann had a great attitude.

  We looked more like a natural 4-3-3, as I said to Harry, with Papa Bouba Diop, Pedro Mendes, who could keep the ball, and Sulley Muntari in midfield, while further forward there was Niko Kranjcar coming in off the left on to his right foot, John Utaka on the right and Benjani or Kanu centrally up front.

  Despite starting off patchily, taking only nine points from our first seven games, I knew we would be all right. We were just too good not to be. Then came a 7-4 win at home to Reading, setting a Premier League record for the number of goals scored in one game. I remember nothing about it. I refuse to. I have blanked it from my mind. I hate games like that.

  I can recall more easily the game early on at Chelsea, where we lost 1-0, which is more my type of result, though naturally I would have preferred it the other way round. Afterwards, Jose Mourinho, in one of his final matches before the end of his first spell at Stamford Bridge, invited me into his office. There he produced that Arsenal shirt he had retrieved from our laundry basket that night at Wembley when we played Barcelona in the Champions League. And he asked me to sign it. I was very flattered.

  By the turn of the year and the midpoint of the season, we were comfortably mid-table and we were thinking of Europe. Come January, we were also thinking of the FA Cup, being in a good position for a run with no danger of relegation, though Harry had a few bits of business to do before then.

  Benjani had done well for us in the first half of the season and he attracted the interest of Manchester City, then managed by Sven-Goran Eriksson. They offered £7.5 million for him with all the add-ons and Harry took it. The only problem was that the player did not want to leave. He loved it on the south coast. In fact, Benjani was in tears when Harry told him he was selling him and that he had to go.

  That was where I saw Harry’s ruthless side. Benjani’s tears counted for little. Harry knew the money was good and it would also enable him to do other deals, most notably the signing of Jermain Defoe from Tottenham for £7.5 million. He also took Milan Baros on loan from Lyon as Jermain was cup-tied. Matt Taylor left in that window too, for Bolton, while in came a player from Arsenal who would prove great business.

  We got Lassana Diarra because Arsène wanted all his players to do 1,000 metres of high-intensity running during a game, out of the average 10,000 metres that midfield players cover. ‘Lassie’ never achieved that at Arsenal and so was sold on, in this case for £5 million. In fact, with us early on, the stats showed that he was doing just 400 to 500 metres. He was decent over five or 10 yards, but he simply couldn’t do the distances at high intensity. Still, I liked him as a player for his ability to protect the ball and the back four and said to Harry that he could just sit in there and do a great job for us. We would play to his strengths and perhaps in return he would increase his distances.

  Harry loved the FA Cup almost as much as a transfer bargain, and this year he wanted to give it a good go, knowing that we were strong and the bigger clubs were never as bothered about it these days due to the European competition they were usually involved in.

  The third round sent us to Ipswich and it was a tricky tie against a Championship side. David James had a great game, though, and we clung on for a 1-0 win. It brought us a home tie against Plymouth Argyle.

  Harry wanted to play his first-choice team. He always wanted to play his strongest team. Joe and I, though, pointed out that we had Manchester United four days later in the Premier League and we prevailed this time, sending out a smattering of squad players who needed to play. Thankfully, the team prevailed too, by 2-1, with Lassie, who needed the game time having not been playing for Arsenal, scoring a goal.

  Sometimes Harry and Joe would have some serious ding-dongs and I found myself mediating on more than one occasion. Harry, for example, would want to play 4-4-2, Joe would want to go 4-5-1.

  ‘Fuck off, Joe,’ Harry would say.

  ‘Harry, you cannot play that way. It’s too attacking. We will get smashed if we play that way,’ Joe would reply. He could be fearso
me, as he was in his playing days for Leeds, Manchester United, Verona and Scotland, with that snarl of his made more intimidating by not keeping in his denture to cover his missing front teeth.

  On it would go until I said, ‘Enough’ or it had run its course. It would depend on how Harry saw the game, with that canny intuition of his, as to who would prevail. Me? I would side with whoever I thought made the better argument.

  The great thing was there were never any grudges and that has always been one of the good things about football in general – mostly – and Harry in particular. You would soon be back in each other’s good books again. It was also to Harry’s credit that he didn’t just employ yes-men.

  I enjoyed all those times after training when Harry would come into the coaches’ office having changed into his civvies and want a chat and a gossip. He would relay stories, his phone going off all the time, often with agents calling him. ‘No, don’t like him, Athole,’ he would say or, ‘Yeah, love him, Pini. You’ve got to get him for us.’

  I particularly liked a story he told about John Hartson at West Ham when he was fed up with him and his lack of contribution during a game.

  ‘Warm up, John,’ Harry shouted from the dugout. ‘You’re coming on, Son.’

  As our cup run built, he would always be in there talking about the draw and how far we could go, loving it when a big team went out, as plenty were doing that season. His belief increased after the fifth-round 1-0 win at Preston, when we had that bit of luck all teams who have a cup run can point to, as David James saved a penalty and we nicked a goal in the last minute. It was an old Arsenal performance under George Graham based on a good goalkeeper, a solid back four and a striker who can take a chance, except at Deepdale we didn’t need that as the winner was an own goal.