by Simon Hughes
‘A lot of people also try to lay blame for the changes in fortunes for the club over the last 20 years. He came back from Italy with some great ideas and probably tried to change it too quickly. I reckon he had the foresight to see where football was going by making Melwood the daily base for the club and introducing fresh dietary regimes. A lot of people pooh-poohed the ideas, but now every club has adopted it. His biggest mistake was to sell some of the club’s most-experienced players a year too early. The same people that say the club didn’t change quickly enough over the last two decades also blame Graeme. That’s contradictory in my opinion.’
Gayle likens Souness’s coaching methods to those of Tony Waiters, a coach who arrived at Liverpool in the early ’70s after studying in America.
‘Liverpool’s methods were tried and trusted, but they weren’t ready for changes in football. Waiters came into Melwood, but other people on the coaching staff didn’t accept him. Ronnie [Moran] once joked in front of all the lads that he couldn’t do a training session without a clipboard. “In the end, we just chased him.” Now, I’m not saying that Waiters was a great coach, but the club should have been more open-minded to change. I’ve played in America, and there are some skills that can be transferred. They’re so meticulous: everything is written down and planned. Because Liverpool was so successful with no qualified coaches or even physio – Bob Paisley was the only person with a medical certificate – maybe they rested on their laurels.’
Gayle admits himself that after the European Cup final in ’81, maybe he too ‘rested on his laurels’. After only being an unused substitute against AZ Alkmaar the following November, he disappeared back into the reserve side and never played in the first team again.
‘Sometimes, I still go to bed at night and dream about scoring in front of the Kop for the first team when there’s 25,000 standing there. Unfortunately, my only goal came in an away match against Tottenham. But I still have that memory. Sometimes, I still can’t believe that I fulfilled what hundreds of thousands of kids grow up dreaming about. There are days, even now, when I miss training. There were days at other clubs when I thought, “Nah – I can’t be arsed going in today.” But it was never like that at Liverpool. Every single day was brilliant. When you went to bed of a night, you couldn’t wait for the next morning.
‘It was a personal tragedy that it all had to come to an end. Maybe I jumped off the ship too early and took a calculated risk that didn’t quite work out. But once you’ve played in the reserves and gone into the first team, it’s very hard to adjust to reserve-team football again and be motivated in the same way, because you crave that atmosphere.’
Gayle spent another 18 months frustrated in the reserve team before agreeing to sign in 1983 for Ron Saunders and Birmingham City. Saunders, born in Birkenhead, was not to every player’s taste because of his rudimentary tactics. In an interview with John Gidman, a fellow Scouser who played under him previously at Aston Villa, the mere mention of the manager’s name provoked the response ‘that cunt’. Gayle, however, has fonder memories.
‘I’ve got a lot of time for that man,’ he says. ‘He’d be great in modern-day football. I’d liken Ron to José Mourinho – that’s how he turned everything round. It was always them against us. Anybody outside of the club was considered the enemy. You’d get journalists following us around at Birmingham, sniffing round for front-page news rather than sports stories. Ron would create this siege mentality. He kept all the focus off us and heaped it all on himself.
‘Ron was a disciplinarian, and all the players would know where the line was. If you stepped over it, you suffered the consequences – it should be that way in any walk of life. He wasn’t regimental with it, but he didn’t like players who didn’t put in a shift. He wanted commitment and that’s why I got on so well with him, because I needed a manager like that.’
The atmosphere at Birmingham was different to Liverpool.
‘When I went to Birmingham, Noel Blake was already there, so it was different sharing a dressing-room with other black players. That made it easier for me to settle, although the banter wasn’t quite as instinctive amongst the players as it was at Liverpool. Birmingham was and still is a big club, and I don’t think people across the country appreciate just how big they are. If they won the Premier League, I’d imagine that Birmingham is the type of club and place where they could sustain success. They’re a bigger club than Aston Villa.’
Gayle’s performances at St Andrews earned him a call-up to the England Under-21 side as an overage player, despite the opportunity to represent both Sierra Leona and Ghana.
‘We won the European Championship in Italy, which was great, and I enjoyed the experience of playing with some top-class players. But I’m not one of those people who goes round singing “Three Lions on my chest”. For me, the pride always came playing for the club, because they’re the people you share the day-to-day affinity with, whereas England was once every couple of months. As a fan, it always miffed me how one week people can be kicking shite out of each other on the terraces and the next week be singing “Two World Wars and one World Cup”.’
Despite enjoying life living in Solihull and scoring nine times in his debut season at St Andrews, Gayle joined Sunderland when Birmingham were relegated from the First Division.
‘I signed for Len Ashurst shortly after Gary Bennett from Cardiff,’ he remembers. ‘Unfortunately for Lennie, he only lasted a season. It was a funny situation, because initially Len was only on a trial contract. After we beat Chelsea in the Milk Cup semi-final, they offered him a three-year contract and we were buzzing. The following Saturday, he came in the dressing-room and he was a changed man. It was his downfall. He was in the comfort zone. Previously, everybody in that dressing-room had been playing for him. As a manager, that’s what you dream of. But against Leicester, he pinned the team up on the wall and said, “If anyone doesn’t agree with it, come and see me on Monday morning.” Then he walked out.
‘Gordon Chisholm had scored in the midweek and he’d been dropped for no apparent reason. The whole room went quiet. Leicester had Alan Smith and Gary Lineker in their side. They scored two each and Leicester beat us 4–0, and we couldn’t put two passes together. It deflated the whole team and we ended up getting relegated. We got beaten by Norwich in the Milk Cup final as well, but they eventually went down too.’
Ashurst was replaced by Lawrie McMenemy. Quickly, Gayle’s future became clear.
‘In my first game for Sunderland, we’d played Southampton and I’d ripped Reuben Agboola to bits. The Sunderland fans loved it and McMenemy [then Southampton manager] was fuming. He was going to Steve Williams [the Southampton midfielder], “Isn’t somebody going to deal with that fucking Gayle?” I went over to the touchline and said, “Not today, mate.” He didn’t like that.
‘When he arrived at Sunderland, we played Norwich, got a good result, then stayed down south for a game against Wimbledon midweek. They were beatable, and I assumed the manager would keep the same team because we’d played well at Carrow Road.
‘I went to put my shirt on and McMenemy marches over, “Oh, oh, oh, oh. What are you doing? You’re on the bench.” He got his assistant Lew Chatterley to explain why, but it was bullshit. I was close to walking out of Plough Lane there and then. We lost the game 2–0, but the next week we beat Stoke to stay up and he started me. With ten minutes to go, he took me off and it seemed like a statement to me. So I walked towards the bench, threw my shirt at him and walked down the tunnel.’
Gayle walked out of Sunderland and moved to America, where he played indoor football with Dallas Sidekicks for a season.
‘Dallas was brilliant. The decision to come home was one of my biggest mistakes. I remember listing to BBC World Service on the radio when we had a game in New York with Keith Weller [the former Leicester City playmaker], and Watford were beating Arsenal 4–1 at Highbury in the FA Cup. Barnesy and Luther Blissett were ripping them to bits. I thought, “I’ve gotta go back home
and start playing proper football again.” It was all indoors in America and that was a bit weird. I spoke to the coach, Gordon Jago [a Londoner who played for Charlton in the ’50s], and he agreed to let me go. But when I stepped off the plane at Heathrow on a miserable day in March I just thought, “You’ve just made the biggest mistake of your life.” There were so many opportunities out there away from football, and Dallas was a great place to live. I loved the show – the glitz and the glamour.’
Gayle spent time on loan at Stoke before signing for Blackburn.
‘When Jack Walker came in as the owner, it all changed. We started bringing in players like Ossie Ardiles, Steve Archibald, Frank Stapleton and Kevin Moran. These were the big names that the club needed. They went for Teddy Sheringham at Millwall as well for £2 million. Then there was a big offer for Brett Angell at Southend. But they didn’t come because there wasn’t a figurehead as a manager. Don Mackay had done a great job previously on a shoestring, but I got the impression that people at the top of the club wanted a high-profile person in charge who would attract expensive players.
‘We were on our way back from Ipswich on the bus, and we all knew Don was on his way out. The players were talking and I said, “Kenny Dalglish you know, he’d fancy it.” He was on gardening leave from Liverpool. Jack Walker wouldn’t have a problem paying the compensation, which was something like £500k. By the Monday, it was in the newspapers in Blackburn and I was thinking, “What have I started here?” By the end of the week, Kenny was in place.’
Gayle retired from football after short spells with Halifax and Accrington Stanley. He was offered a deal by Michael Knighton (a businessman who had earlier failed to buy Man United) for £150 a week to play for Carlisle. ‘“Fuck that,” I thought. My enthusiasm had gone so I spewed it.’
Gayle has been working back in Toxteth for two decades.
‘It’s an area that’s close to my heart,’ he says. ‘I’ve spent a large portion of my life here, and it’s where my family have spent most of theirs as well. Toxteth is populated mainly by black people, and it’s the black kids in the main that have been underachieving.
‘A lot of kids have got themselves into something through peer pressure, but when you look behind the mask they’re genuine young kids who can change. Society tends to bar its youngsters at this moment in time. They’re told that they’re lazy and bad constantly by the government through ASBOs and heavy-handed police work. In the end, if you tell somebody they are something often enough, they become it.
‘The kids here have problems at home and they bring all that baggage with them into school or, even worse, don’t attend school at all. It means they fall behind in their education, and by the time they reach secondary school they’re way behind a lot of the other students. Some of them stop going to school altogether and that creates a problem for us as a community because kids are out hustling on the streets.’
You get the impression if anyone can straighten a youngster out, Howard Gayle is the man to do it.
CHAPTER THREE
GUARDIAN READER, Michael Robinson
‘THATCHER BORE THE SAME CHARM AS THE BUBONIC PLAGUE,’ declares Michael Robinson, Liverpool striker turned Spanish television presenter. ‘Because of that woman,’ he pauses, pointing a Marlboro Red in my direction, leaning forward with a plume of smoke spiralling skyward, ‘we live in a society where you have to save up to get ill. That is not an absolute truth, of course. But it is a part of her legacy. I believe in a capitalism that I can embrace with a social conscience, remembering that there’s a great difference between having a shit and tearing your arse.’
Robinson, or Robín, as he is affectionately known in Spain, became the country’s most popular sporting pundit and arguably the most famous TV star by pioneering the Canal Plus magazine show El Día Después (The Day After). Even the old litmus test has him way out in front of other public figures – his rubber double fronts the Spanish equivalent of Spitting Image.
He is also your original version of a term that has now become a cliché, ‘the thinking man’s footballer’. Like Graeme Le Saux, he would read The Guardian or the Financial Times on buses or train rides while travelling to away matches. Unlike Le Saux, there is something incredibly endearing about him. Robinson is fabulously good company.
When I meet him in Madrid at his office on Calle de Almagro, a street parallel to the regal Castellana and just a few blocks down from the Santiago Bernabéu Stadium, he has already booked a table at a restaurant. ‘We’ll do the interview over a long lunch and a few G&Ts,’ he informs me on arrival, rubbing his hands and grinning before carefully arranging a neat-looking briefcase. The office is very Zen, with whitewashed walls only broken by a desk, a laptop and two quilted chairs. Robinson moved into this space in 2008 to deal with the extra business and entertainment opportunities that have been afforded to him since becoming Spain’s answer to Gary Lineker. I am aware, however, that this comparison annoys him.
‘The BBC get Lineker because he’s Julie Andrews,’ he told me in a previous interview. ‘Sling him on and throw in Hansen and Lawrenson, and that’ll do. There’s no recognition of the cultural elements that envelop football in British broadcasting. Period.’
Wearing a grey suit and fitted light-blue shirt minus the tie, Robinson adjusts a pair of thick-rimmed black glasses that have seemingly been modelled on Nana Mouskouri, before revealing a little bit about his life at the moment. It’s hectic. Only in the last fortnight he has played at a charity golf tournament in Augusta in honour of his old friend Seve Ballesteros, flown back to Spain for a live interview with Morgan Freeman on his television show Informe Robinson (The Robinson Report), before enjoying lunch with the former vice president of Spain, Roberto Figaredo. They ate in the same restaurant we are dining at today.
En route to La Parra (The Grill), on the fringes of Madrid’s prosperous Salamanca district, I am reminded why Robinson is the football equivalent of the Kings of Leon – underappreciated, if completely anonymous at home yet hugely popular in a foreign land. He enjoys cult status in Spain. ‘Robín,’ chortles one of a hat-trick of admirers on the street. ‘You’re a genius.’
‘Thank you,’ he responds, in a mix of smooth Spanish and nasally fading Lancastrian, stretching a toothy almost goofy smile, his broad shoulders bobbing up and down with contentment. Robinson is taller and heavier than one remembers. His physique reveals that he is a former centre-forward.
Underneath La Parra’s restaurant sign on a tree-lined street it reads ‘Londres, Paris, Madrid, Seville’. We are in Madrid’s equivalent of Mayfair. Inside there is a mosaic of green, yellow and brown Moorish tiles, a reminder of Spain’s Islamic past. There are leather seats, the finest linen tablecloths and a wine list the length of the nearby Manzanares River.
Robinson’s face beams underneath the lampshade that hangs above. A pianist sporting a tuxedo and a pencil-thin moustache tickles the ivories. The scene could be fresh out of a Poirot episode in some mysterious Arabic shisha den. I almost expect a shady character with an ominous silhouette to appear at our table, opening a copy of El País before commenting assertively that the eagle will fly north from Moscow this autumn. And everybody knows Robinson. The hurried waiters can’t do enough for their esteemed guest.
Speaking to a number of ex-Reds who played with Robín during an 18-month spell at Anfield between 1983 and 1984, they say that he was the most likely to carve an alternative career upon retirement. They also half-joke that he is probably a better TV presenter than he was a footballer.
‘I can’t disagree with that,’ he laughs, reflecting on the 13 goals he scored in 52 appearances in a Liverpool shirt. ‘One of my best moments came when I got three away at West Ham. After the game, all the lads signed the match ball. Kenny Dalglish left a message. It read, “I don’t believe it.”’
Robinson was a closet intellectual amongst his teammates at Melwood, reluctant to let it all come out. Not that he spoke in a voice somewhere between Quentin Crisp and the Duke o
f Edinburgh. He was just brighter than most and thought deeply about life, a side of his character that he later tells me affected his performances.
Here, almost 26 years after he left Anfield, we enjoy an outstanding three-course meal washed down with an ’02 Rioja, four pints of cerveza each and a G&T like he promised. Considering there’s a saying in Spain, ‘We eat everything in the pig except the walk’, and that the night before I’d eaten sautéed pig’s ear in a tiny Galician tapas bar on a scruffy side street in the rundown immigrant barrio of Lavapiés, Robinson’s enriching choice for the two of us of asparagus and prawns followed by langoustine risotto is welcome. As the freshest seeded batch of restaurant-baked bread arrives on the table from the furnace in the busy kitchen behind, thoughts of Robinson’s upbringing in the South Shore area of Blackpool must seem very far away.
‘I was still an egg when my mum and dad decided to leave Leicester to run a boarding house in Blackpool,’ he explains. ‘They’d been publicans beforehand. For a shy boy like me, it was quite an experience growing up in what was really a small hotel. I became sociable.