“But winning the cup gave me huge professional satisfaction. There’s no denying it, it was the single best day of my life in football. We won the cup the next year – we got lucky again really, beating QPR – and we won the UEFA Cup, but that first victory was the best. We went back to the Chanticleer afterwards and we were there till the morning. For all of us, apart from Stevie, it was our first big trophy. None of us had worked at a club that had won the FA Cup.
“On the coach coming away from Wembley, Ricky went up to Don McAllister and gave him his winners’ medal. Ricky said ‘You deserve this, you should have been playing.’ Don was really upset that he had been left out of the final squad and I think that momentarily Don accepted the medal, it was such a nice thing for Ricky to do. But eventually we said to him that he’d won the FA Cup Final and they’d be talking about his winning goal for years, so he must have the medal to show for it. Don said, ‘Of course I’ll give it back to him.’ But what a fantastic touch.”
Shreeve went on to help mastermind further success as assistant to Burkinshaw, but the title eluded them. Given that his players have had their say as to why they missed it out, it seems reasonable to ask Peter for his view. The disciple of silky soccer is typically honest in his appraisal.
“If you ask me now who will win the league next season it will be one of only four teams. Back in the early ’80s Spurs got close but from a position when we hadn’t even threatened. You don’t suddenly win the league from the position of tenth the season before. You have to establish that pedigree and experience of winning things. We said to ourselves, ‘We’re pretty good at winning these cups, but in the day-to-day grind of churning out wins in the league we aren’t. We thought we had a good chance but when it came to the moment, we were found wanting. It was just a long, long course coming out on top after 42 games as it was then, carrying injuries without cover.
“Keith, and I as well, we played very fair on team selections. In those days, when we had an injury to a left midfielder, the reserve team player in that position came in – Ian Crook; when it was the left back, Mark Bowen stepped in. We always replaced like for like, we never put square pegs in round holes. On reflection, maybe we should have done – we should have had more physical power in the team and used a more experienced player out of his natural position rather than putting in a young boy. We said to these lads, ‘You’ve earned the right to play.’ Otherwise the youngsters would all think, ‘What chance have I got?’ But maybe we should have been more ruthless.
“After ’81 we knew we had a good team. We made some additional signings, Ray came in as a keeper, other players started to come through. The team was packed with internationals, yet I still used to do half an hour’s work on technique with them every day. I would say, ‘I’ll stop getting on at you to do this when you can do it.’ I’ve spoken to them since and they say they couldn’t believe it that as internationals I was still trying to drum this stuff into them. We were flying high in the league and cups, but every day I insisted – ‘Left foot, right foot, chest, play it this way, play it that way.’”
Such a philosophy was perhaps out of step with the rest of domestic football, but Shreeve is adamant that the team still retained fundamental British attitudes. “When we were in Europe, we had a hell of a good side, but the foreign teams were terrified of us; they expected that when they came to Tottenham the pace would be intense, the tackles would be flying in. So I used to say to the players, ‘Don’t disappoint them on that; let’s display the physical side of things; when they’ve got the ball, get in amongst them. But when we’ve got the ball, it’s time for silky soccer.’ They would not be able to cope with the hustle and bustle of a London or an English side. That more or less brought all our success. Eventually, European teams got fitter and then it was purely a case of technique.
“We had a potent mix. I used to go and watch all the teams we played in Europe; Ajax, Real Madrid. I would come back and tell the boys what they needed to know. I would say to Stevie P, who was a marvellous, marvellous captain, ‘Steve, their number 7 is a bit tasty, you’re going to have to get close to him’. He understood fully what I meant. The first time their number 7 got the ball, Steve Perryman would rattle his cage and that fella knew he was not going to get much time to show his array of skills.
“When we had the ball, we had a clear-cut plan that what I called the foot soldiers had to give the ball to the connoisseurs – the Paul Millers of this world had to get and give the ball to the ball players. I would say to Maxie, ‘I don’t want you to be hitting 50 yard passes – give it Glenn Hoddle and he can do that, he can drop it on a sixpence.’ I would say to Glenn, ‘Don’t forget the very fact they are giving you the ball to deliver it; don’t look down on him because he’s done the hard work to get the ball off the other team.’ We had to encourage a set up where the players had respect for their team-mates in what they could do – and at Tottenham we had that.
“But a side like Liverpool were more ruthless. The major turning point in the 1982 League Cup final game was Graeme Souness going over the top and taking Tony Galvin out of the game. That was Liverpool knowing how to win – playing a bit ugly if you like.
“When I left Spurs and went to other clubs, I realised that were ten ways of winning a game. At Spurs we only had two or three and they were all variations on silky soccer. Some games, especially away, we needed to shut up shop a little bit. We thought we would play teams off the park and in most cases we did because we had a good team. But there were times when a different formation or slightly different style of play might have accumulated more points. Keith was a purist but I shared his belief in how the game should be played.”
The Glenn Hoddle-inspired demolition of Feyenoord early in the victorious ’83/’84 UEFA Cup campaign was a case in point. “I’d been out there and seen that they had some good players, but Cruyff made such a pig’s ear of the preparation. He wasn’t the manager, just a player, but he went to the papers and said, ‘I’ve heard about this young Hoddle; he won’t get a kick; I’ll mark him out of the game.’ If Glenn ever produced 45 minutes’ football that was better than that night then I wasn’t there to see it, and I saw every game Glenn played including his internationals. He was unplayable. He was hitting balls above his neck 40 yards to someone on the run and getting it perfect. It was like a matador’s performance; he had that cape in that hand and he was more or less saying to Cruyff, ‘Where are you? Where are you, son. You’re nowhere near me.’
“At 4-0 they were dead and buried. But they took Cruyff off and brought on a couple of midfielders; they changed their tactics, kept it tight and got a couple of goals back. I still knew we’d go through, we got a result out there with Chris Hughton scoring one of the goals, a fine goal playing a one-two. But the home leg was the five-star performance. That European run was superb.”
The trophy was secured with a well-managed victory in the final since, at the end of a long and punishing season, Burkinshaw and Shreeve had to marshal their injury-hit resources to beat a very good Anderlecht side. Shreeve reveals a story arising from that game, however, which shows how even the best laid plans can be undone by the most unpredictable of circumstances.
“They had a sweeper at the back who I later tried to sign for Spurs when I became manager, the Danish international Morten Olsen. I thought the system was the way ahead. Anderlecht always played with one marker and one sweeper at the centre of defence and I thought Olsen would be the one for us.
“I went out with Irving Scholar to sign him. We met Olsen at the hotel in Copenhagen, we spoke at length and it was a done deal. He then said to me, ‘What about my dogs?’ ‘Excuse me?’ I said. He said, ‘I’ve got these two dogs!’ I said to him, ‘I know the rule in England and I’m telling you now, they’ll have to go into quarantine for six months.’ ‘You mean I can’t have them in the house?’ said Olsen. ‘No, no. When we find you a place to live, we might be able to arrange it so it’s only a hundred yards down from some kennels where the
dogs will have to stay.’ But he wouldn’t have it – the deal broke down because of his dogs. Obviously we couldn’t publicly say we couldn’t sign this great player because he would miss his pets, so we came out with some other reason for the press. So the truth is finally out. I stayed good friends with him though. We thought he would have been a key player for us. We tried Ian Crook in that sweeper role, and he was very good at it, but he didn’t have the expertise that a player like Olsen had.
“It was us wanting to become a modern club, if you like, because all the top clubs on the continent at that time nearly always played with a spare defender and three markers, and the spare defender was always an immaculate footballer and an expert passer.”
Shreeve’s attempt to introduce the sweeper system came as he took the reins of power after Burkinshaw’s departure. It was a proud moment for the former youth team coach to make the step up, and represented some welcome continuity at a time when the club was undergoing a period of uncertainty after the arrival of new owners with significantly different ideas.
“Keith had made it quite clear he didn’t like the way a modern club board worked. He thought the time had come to up sticks and he got a fantastic offer to go and be the manager of Bahrain. Naturally, I knew in advance that he planned to go. I didn’t want to be seen to be disloyal to the man I had almost shared a bed with, but I didn’t want to go to Bahrain. I had a young family. I’d done well at Tottenham, I didn’t know I would be appointed, but I knew I was a strong member of the coaching staff and had a chance.
“The club went on the trip to Swaziland in the close season. There was a lot of speculation as to who the new Spurs manager was going to be. Obviously I was a candidate, but I wasn’t an international name. Everyone else’s name was being bandied about. We landed at Johannesburg airport and for the first time I got to learn about how the press worked. We were in transit and a reporter came up to me saying, ‘There’s a news item broken in London that you are going to be the new Spurs manager – what’s your reaction?’ I should have said, as I learned when I became more experienced in dealing with the media, ‘I have no detail of this, I can only deal with facts, until I have those facts I have no comment.’ What I did actually say was, ‘Well, no disrespect to any other candidates but I know the club better than anyone else; the players all know me; I’d be delighted to get the job.’ That comment nearly cost me the job, because the club wanted to control the news and issue a statement. This reporter knew the score better than me, and realising it was a story he could earn money on, he sold it down the line to London. My quotes were in the papers the following morning.
“Thankfully Irving wasn’t dissuaded, said to me that I’d done well and that the job was mine. The players were happy because it meant there wouldn’t be somebody else coming in with all new ideas and the proof was in the pudding. We finished third in the first season and were at the top for quite a while; we went close to winning the league, so my time as manager was time well spent.
“Everybody who has been in that situation will say that becoming manager after being coach is a difficult step to take. Everyone will also say, ‘Be yourself.’ I was determined not to change. We all worked hard together when I was coach so why should I do any different as manager? But there’s an inevitable difference when you change roles. When I was the youth team coach, for example, I was ‘Uncle Peter’; when I became first team coach, I was ‘that so-and-so Shreevesie’. The level of demand was that much higher – we needed to produce victories, not defeats. Some people might say I was a better Uncle Peter than I was the other, which might be fair comment. Most of them did well for me and looking back it was a fantastic time.”
Burkinshaw was a hard act to follow, but it is easy to forget now that Shreeve’s side was one of the best Spurs have produced for many years, and the third place finish in his first season has been equalled only once since. The pivotal game in that 1984/85 season was the 2-1 home defeat by eventual champions Everton.
“We were there or thereabouts. On reflection the defeat at home against Aston Villa when we had senior players missing hurt us. But Everton were a good side. When I was working with the Welsh national side, I spent a lot of time with Neville Southall. He used to talk me through that game every time. ‘Do you remember that save I made off Falco?’ he would say. Mark had a shot destined for the top corner, yet somehow Neville kept it out. ‘How the hell did you keep that out?’ I would ask him. He’d say, ‘I’m a top goalie Pete, you know that.’ We became good friends. And every time I see an Evertonian, they’ll say, ‘You’re that Peter Shreeves. You did all right at Tottenham. You weren’t as good as us though, were you?’
“The Talksport presenter, Mike Parry, whenever I see him, he immediately comes up and his recall of anything to do with Everton, and particularly of that season, inspires him and he gives me every detail – the teams, the matches, every incident. ‘You was unlucky there, lad, you had a good season.’ 67 years old and he calls me ‘lad’!
The weight of expectation fell on Shreeve’s shoulders, but in his view that came with the territory, rather than it being a specifically Spurs thing. It wasn’t just Peter who had to bear the pressure but his family as well.
“I was outgoing but I didn’t look for publicity; I just got on with it. I used to deal with the press no matter what the result was and more often than not it was a pleasure because we won. I would return calls and because of that they gave me a fair ride, they thought I was a straight bloke. But always, always, always there is pressure if you are the manager, whatever the club. There were always phone calls to make, problems to address. I was top of the league in my first season and I was still under pressure. You had to be 100 per cent clean in your private life, you had to be careful who you were spotted smiling with or what you said because they [the media] had people watching you all the time. People were always trying to pull you down. That is the less pleasant side of the game that all managers had to deal with. Touch wood I was clean so nothing ever came out but I was constantly worrying about it.
“The truth of the matter is I’ve got lovely kids and three lovely grandchildren, but I never saw my daughters and son grow up. I used to go to their school functions and I was this ‘famous dad’, but I missed out on so much. I never got to take them to the zoo or do things I’m doing with my grandchildren now because I was always at a game or on a plane somewhere.
“I used to go over to Holland every Sunday morning and go and see their best sides. I saw Frank Rijkaard make his debut for Ajax as a 16-year-old centre half. The scouts we had in Holland sent me to watch Frank Arnesen who’s at Chelsea now. He was a good midfielder; he played against us for Anderlecht. But I saw this kid playing the same day and thought ‘Wow’, a superb athlete and a real prospect. I came back and Irving said to me, ‘How was Arnesen?’ I said, ‘Irving, he was OK, but this kid Frankie Rijkaard, he was absolutely magnificent.’ When they found out he was only a young kid it didn’t go any further.
“But I knew the Dutch set-up very well because I studied it and devoted time to it. I used to work six days a week as coach but I gave up the seventh day as manager to go and watch Dutch football. It was all-consuming.”
Despite the demands made upon him personally and missing out on both Olsen and Rijkaard, albeit for contrasting reasons, Shreeve doesn’t harbour any resentment towards the then owners of the club. “My feeling was that as long as they didn’t interfere with the football side of things I was OK. Chairmen now ring up and say, ‘Are you playing so-and-so at the weekend?’ But as manager at Spurs I never experienced anything of that nature. I was totally in charge of the team, training, and the buying and selling of players.
“There were always other people outside of the club telling you who you should have signed. Take the Argentinian centre forward Mario Kempes, the star of the 1978 World Cup. The agent flagged up that he was available. I asked Ossie what he thought of him. He said, ‘He’s a world class player, Pete, but, I’ve got to be honest with y
ou, he’s just beginning to go a bit.’ ‘OK’, I said, ‘we’ll see.’ He was looking for a club. You know that if someone is looking for a club, as opposed to all the clubs chasing him, you know that they might be struggling. But in the World Cup he had been fantastic.
“He came on pre-season trips with us and we finished against Monaco. We were playing amateur teams and winning 8-0 with Kempes scoring four goals. Everybody was raving about him. But I could see the opposition was so weak I could have scored a goal. When we got to Monaco, he gave me his watch. He couldn’t speak English but he indicated for me to look after it. I put it on and I said to Ossie, ‘How much is this worth?’ He said, ‘Oh, about 14 grand.’ I made my mind up there and then. How was he going to be Tuesday night at Middlesbrough in the middle of an English winter with a 14 grand watch on? That might seem silly, but I never signed the boy and he struggled to find a club. It was big story at the time that we were going to sign him, but we were right not to.
“We did sign some good ones, though, like Clive Allen, his cousin Paul, John Chiedozie, though he didn’t quite work out, lovely lad though he was. Chrissie Waddle came, he became my soulmate and went with me to Sheffield Wednesday. I paid £495,000 for him and he was sold for over £4 million. So I didn’t owe them any money when I left,” chuckles Shreeve.
The third-place finish in 1985, however, was to be Shreeve’s high-water mark as Spurs manager. The club finished tenth the next season and changes were swiftly rung. Like the break-up of the team, the managerial dynasty that could trace a direct line back to Bill Nicholson came to an end abruptly and without sentiment, amid changing football times.
The Boys From White Hart Lane Page 25