“We struggled a bit the second year, but if you add that to the previous season’s third and divide it by two, it meant my record was sixth and a half place in the table. That would be half decent nowadays. But if you’re the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, you’re under pressure to deliver. This was at a time when they expected to be challenging. Arsenal weren’t ten years further ahead of us then. I had a very good record at Highbury actually. We won 2-1 on Boxing Day in 1984 and we went top.
“But fans know how it is. It’s especially marked today – everybody’s looking for that quick fix, this new wonder coach. Times were changing. My success at Tottenham had been built on knowing the players and being a big part of their development. Their salaries were good but it wasn’t beyond the realm; they earned good money but nothing silly. They were working class lads who didn’t have over-the-top motors. I didn’t need to go into the dressing room to try and impress them. As time went on, managers found that players became richer, less ambitious. They thought just arriving at a club was all that was needed. I saw a change in the lifestyle of professional footballers, their affection for the club and the manager as a person.
“Agents became a necessary evil. Managers would speak to a player and he would immediately say, ‘Talk to my agent.’ The large amounts of money they have taken out of the game – some of them have deserved it, some of them, well, it’s scandalous. No one ever said to me when I was dealing with players, ‘You’ll have to speak to my agent.’”
As to how the end came, there is no rancour on Shreeve’s part and he recalls it with typical professional fatalism. “The posse catches you up. In a John Wayne film the cowboys get together and go off and hunt the villain as a posse. It doesn’t matter who you are, how good you are, the posse catches up with you. It’s one of my sayings. Circumstances come together and they get you. That is when they say, ‘All the best Pete; fantastic, but see you later.’
“I wasn’t going to be manager of Tottenham Hotspur all my life. I was there 13 years – 13 fantastic years. They flew by. The job was made for me and I was made for the job. Dealing with all these youngsters, seeing them develop, and meeting people all over the world – what a life.”
Shreeve’s life since then has been full of eventful and enjoyable challenges. It included a brief and unsuccessful return as Tottenham manager during the turmoil of the Venables years in 1991/92, but he had more successful spells as either coach or manager at QPR, Sheffield Wednesday, Barnet and Chelsea where he assisted his former charge Glenn Hoddle. “We got to a cup final and got beat by Man U so I had three FA Cup finals. I actually went to Wembley with my teams ten times, when you include Charity Shields and semi-finals when they shifted to Wembley. So while some football people never get to Wembley, I went there loads of times. I don’t mean to show off but when you go there for the eighth time, you don’t know which suit to wear,” he laughs.
Ever the coach, he now combines a variety of training jobs – from work at an Essex-based academy run by former Spur John Moncur to recent coaching of players from the Premier India Football Academy – with his work as referee’s delegate for the Premier League and the Professional Game Match Officials Board, headed by his good friend Keith Hackett, who officiated in the 1981 final. With the PGMOB, he assesses the performance of officials at Premier League games, liaising with managers and addressing their concerns by going into the minute details of how their game was refereed. It suits Shreeve down to a tee, not only exploiting his wide-ranging and respected football expertise, but enabling him to travel the country watching football, and meeting football people.
“The standard of football is not that great,” he feels. “I go to Premier League games and I come away shaking my head at the pace and intensity. Down the leagues, there is too much long-ball football – tin hats football, we call it. It’s not my style, but I understand the pressure the manager is under to get a result. Survival is the name of the game.
“But I love being part of the football family. I can go to any ground, say somewhere like Rotherham or Brighton and there’ll be someone there ready with a smile and a ‘Hello Pete, how you doing?’ It’s a lovely feeling. Football is now a business, but the camaraderie between a group of football people, that sometimes will include reporters who you know won’t turn you over, gives you so many good laughs.
“We’ve had so many reunions with the Spurs players of the 1980s. But as soon as you get there, the piss-taking and the nicknames all start up again, like it’s yesterday, not over 25 years ago. Everybody remembers little details and stories, all those laughs. I go to White Hart Lane when players get inducted into the Hall of Fame. It always strikes me at those events that the supporters love all the banter around the club.”
It’s a happy note on which to end Shreeve’s recollections of those golden years. But Peter ‘Smooth’ Shreeve, the man who enjoyed the best years of his life being a central part of the great Tottenham Hotspur team of the 1980s mentions one last story that seems to encapsulate the bond between the men who made all that success happen. At the end of the 2007/08 season, Exeter City and their director of football Steve Perryman made it to Wembley for the Conference play-off final, beating Cambridge United 1-0 and so regaining their football league status. On a day of triumph for Perryman, it was fitting that his former managers and coaches, Keith Burkinshaw and Peter Shreeve, were among his proud guests.
“Steve apologised because he wanted to give two of the seats in the royal box to Keith and his wife, and he could ‘only’ give me a seat amongst the fans. It was still a great seat though and a lovely touch. I said to him, ‘Don’t worry Steve, I’m normal and don’t mind being in with the normal people.’”
Shreeve laughs when he tells the story, but the fact is this was anything but normal – it was a reunion of Spurs heroes. Things had come full circle, and 27 years on from that magical evening at the same venue, when the night air rang to the strains of Glory Glory Hallelujah, three of the famous Boys from White Hart Lane were together, unified in victory once more.
The Boys From White Hart Lane Page 26