It was a strange game, and almost entirely forgettable to be honest, and it finished in a drab 0-0 draw. It was a strange feeling at full-time because everything had been planned for us winning that cup, and here we were heading home empty-handed and with a replay to prepare for at Hillsborough four days later. It’s a far better set-up today, finishing finals on the day with extra-time and penalties if they’re needed.
When we got back to the hotel, the atmosphere was as dead as a doornail because nothing had happened one way or the other, and everyone’s minds had already turned to the replay. I was in bed watching the highlights of the final on Match of the Day by 10.30 and any cup winner’s party would have to wait.
We returned to Birmingham on the Sunday, before we then headed to Sheffield on the Monday. For the replay on the Wednesday it was a full house again, 55,000 this time, and we went one-up when Roger Kenyon scored an own goal. It was a crap game, but it looked like we’d done enough until Bob Latchford equalised in the last minute to take it to a second replay.
The third game was to be played at Old Trafford, almost a month later. In a cup final you should be turning up expecting to win or lose, so it was strange when there was still nothing decided. A lot of tension was building up, with Ron Saunders so desperate to get us into Europe. He was uptight for every game leading up to the final, because it was hanging over us and was a bit unsettling.
We were a bit weakened for the final too – Andy and John Gidman were out of the team injured. The first two matches against Everton had been pretty awful but the third clash was an absolute classic. There were 55,000 inside Old Trafford, and although a couple of our key men were missing I think our fans could still sense it was going to be our night. I remember making a good stop from a Latchford header, but he still put them in front. Chris Nicholl hit an absolute corker from 35 yards to equalise in the second half, and when Brian Little scored a couple of minutes later I was thinking to myself that’s got to be it all over. But again – with one Villa hand seemingly on the trophy – Everton forced it into extra-time when Mike Lyons scored after a goalmouth scramble. It didn’t look like we would have a winner at the end of that 30 minutes either, but Brian scored in the last minute and to our great relief we’d finally won the cup.
As I went up the steps to get my medal, I gave a wink to my new royal pal Princess Anne, and then after a lap of honour on the Old Trafford pitch the jubilant Villa team headed for a well-earned knees-up. After all, that champagne had been on ice for a month!
CHAPTER 9
THE DOUR RON RON
‘Saunders was putting so much pressure on me. I would have known how to handle it if I had been older.’
When I was at Blackpool the expectations weren’t unbearably high, but at Aston Villa we were constantly under pressure to win something. It would have been exactly the same at Liverpool, Manchester United, Rangers or Celtic – it’s a good thing to have at a club when the fans demand success. But at Villa, in those days, it seemed a big ask. It had been great winning the League Cup, and all credit to Ron Saunders for the job he was doing, but I started to get irritated with the way he was treating me. He was always putting me down and that started to affect my confidence. I was in a very strong team at Aston Villa and we had players who were capable of beating anyone in that league. But I had been bought for almost a hundred grand and was expected to perform like a veteran – something I was 10 years short of. I had a lot of experience for my age maybe, but I was a long way short of having the type of life experience needed to cope with the demands of the job. The pressure was really getting to me. I started to get irritable and was arguing with my wife when I got home. I was finding it harder and harder to put my football problems to one side, and it was all I thought about.
Saunders was putting so much pressure on me. I would have known how to handle that if I had been a bit older. But when you are in your early 20s, in goalkeeping terms you’re still a bit of a baby. I needed an arm round my shoulder sometimes instead of being continually criticised. I was always a fighter though, whatever crap was chucked at me, and I kept my place in the team throughout the League Cup-winning season because of my battling qualities.
Saunders had been an excellent striker for Portsmouth in his day and we would do a lot of crossing and volleying on the training ground, which he liked to join in. He could still hit the ball well and was a good header of the ball too and sometimes he and Andy would work as a pair, one on the near post and one on the back post. But whenever he scored a good goal, maybe one he’d hit it on the volley from seven or eight yards, he would be right over and in my face shouting ‘You should have saved that!’ It was getting to me. If I’d been older, I would have just laughed it off. But I had a notoriously short fuse and I ended up going for him…going for the MANAGER! Next ball that came over, I battered into him, but he still had the last laugh – the ball ran through for Andy to score at the back post. It was confrontations like that that did me no favours at all, and if a player clashes with a manager, the odds are stacked against the player ever winning.
After a couple of years of him sniping it was getting to me – I was getting increasingly unhappy and angry. I thought to myself ‘I need to get away from this guy.’ At first, Villa wouldn’t contemplate letting me go because I was playing well. I would have loved to have gone on and had a long and happy spell at Villa, because they were an absolutely fantastic club, with great players – Brian Little, Dennis Mortimer, Alex Cropley, Andy Gray, I could go right through that team. But it didn’t really matter who my team-mates were, I found Ron Saunders unapproachable and difficult to get on with – he was a very serious, dour person – and if you’re unhappy then there isn’t much point hanging around.
I was flattered that he had signed me in the first place, but there was no way we were ever going to get on and our contrasting personalities (I had one, he didn’t) clashed over and over again. To give you an example, we went away to Greece for an end of season break, just a bit of a piss up for the lads and a bit of team bonding. We were all sitting round the pool, having a beer and chatting, when this poser in his tight Speedos at the other end of the pool started doing fancy flips off the diving board into the pool – he was trying everything to impress the girls who were sunbathing by the side of the pool. He really fancied himself and was getting on all the lads’ nerves, strutting like a peacock and making a nuisance of himself with all his splashing about. They were egging me on to shut him up and put him in his place. I’d had a couple of beers, which I still wasn’t able to handle very well, so without any further ado I flipped myself onto my hands and started walking round the pool upside down. Ron Saunders was watching me like a hawk as I walked on my hands past the poser, shuffled on to the diving board then jumped into the pool, arse over tit. ‘How about THAT then, girls!’ I shouted when I surfaced. The lads were hooting with laughter as the poser sloped away, his macho pride dented by the clown. It was just a bit of light-hearted fun, but Saunders didn’t like that kind of thing. I had only done it for a bit of team spirit, but any showmanship seemed to make Ron bristle. Instead of turning a blind eye or trying to see the funny side, he just gave me that cold, steely look and told me to grow up.
Another time I really got under his skin was when we were coming back from a European game and were making our descent into Birmingham airport. Ron Saunders was the worst flyer you have ever seen in your life – he was frightened to death. He used to down about six tranquilliser tablets and a bottle of whisky before he’d even set foot on a plane. He used to insist on taking the middle seat, with the trainer Roy McLaren beside him, and the club doctor on the other side. Unfortunately for him on that occasion, it was the ‘bad boys’ of Aston Villa that were sitting directly behind him. I had Andy on my left and John Gidman on my right, and the temptation to wind him up was too great for me to resist. Earlier in the journey, I had been chirping away behind him. As we were flying over a mountain range, I was loudly saying to Andy and John that if the weather t
urned bad, the plane might go down. I was taking great satisfaction from watching Ron squirming uneasily in his seat in front of me. It was a bit cruel, but I was fed up with all the shouting and screaming from him on the football field and training ground, so it was my little way of getting him back.
As we approached the runway at Birmingham, just a matter of feet from the ground – the bit where everyone gets a little bit nervous and takes a deep breath – I decided it was time to go in for the kill and sock it to him. I got hold of my sick bag from the back of his seat, blew it up as far as it would go, then made a knot in the end. I showed it to Andy and John Gidman, and, just as they were trying to say: ‘No Budgie, don’t do it…’, I leant over him with my bag all pumped up like a crisp packet and smashed it right behind his ear. It went BANG and Saunders went sliding down to the floor screaming. Roy McLaren turned round and punched me right in the face. The doctor turned round and said: ‘You idiot, you could have given him a heart attack!’ I was full of adrenaline and started screaming back: ‘I wish I had given him one!’ The players were in uproar, everyone was pissing themselves, and it was pandemonium as we came to a standstill on the runway. He never said a word to me when we got back to the airport terminal; he looked like he’d seen a ghost. I lost my place in the team for that stunt, he dropped me immediately.
After our League Cup-winning run and our qualification for Europe I had plenty of money tucked away in the bank – Villa were a generous club and were quick to reward success. Life may have been good financially, but I was so young and the pressure from Saunders was mounting. I could see my days at Villa were numbered because I was becoming very unhappy and the spring had gone from my step. I was being well paid and we had a great team but I just could not take the pressure. It was too much for a lad of my age. If I had been playing under a manager who could have handled me properly and nursed me through the bad times a bit I would have stayed, but Saunders was a real bully boy.
I’ve never played for Alex Ferguson, and I know he has mellowed to an extent with age, but over the years he has struck me as being in a similar mould to Saunders. You can bully a midfield player or bully a defender or a forward, but you can’t bully a goalkeeper. A goalkeeper needs to be full of confidence at all times. If a manager is slagging you off, then your confidence nosedives. If he’s right up in your face giving you the hair-dryer treatment – and most of them were a bit like that in those days – it is the wrong thing to do when dealing with a young keeper. A midfielder can make a misplaced pass or a striker can miss an open goal but for a goalkeeper there is no hiding place. You don’t get away with it. I don’t care what anyone says, the most important position on the football field is the goalkeeper. You always get remembered for your mistakes, and Saunders made damn sure I remembered all of mine. I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown. I had it out with him in his office one day and he called me a ‘pussy’ – maybe I was, but to play in goal for a club like Aston Villa at such a tender age, you had to be a certain type of person, mentally unbreakable. When I later went to Crystal Palace I always had Terry Venables telling me how good I was and that would fill me with confidence and I would take that on to the pitch. But man management wasn’t Saunders’ strong point. The records show he is a Villa legend, and one hell of a manager in terms of success, but I never took to the man. After my own experiences, particularly with Saunders, I always put goalkeepers at ease when I coach them now, try and tell them they are the best even if they are not. If you hammer them it’s the worst anyone can feel because I’ve been through it myself.
Even now when goalkeepers are blamed for goals, I always try to take the goalkeeper’s side. Even though deep inside my heart I know they are to blame for the goal, I will always stick up for them.
It was clear that my relationship with Saunders had deteriorated to the point that I knew I had no future at Villa Park, so I slapped in a transfer request which was accepted in an instant by the manager. To speed up my departure, he signed a new goalkeeper not just to challenge me for the gloves, but to directly replace me. I was out on the training ground one morning and I saw the manager striding towards us with another goalkeeper by his side. I recognised him straight away – I’d seen him before playing for Manchester United a few years before. It was Jimmy Rimmer, who he had bought at a knock-down price from Arsenal reserves. He was a top-class keeper, but Pat Jennings had been keeping him out of the first team and he was too good to be sitting in the reserves. Saunders pulled us all together and introduced him to the team. We all shook his hand and wished him all the best, but while I was putting a brave face on it, inside I felt a little bit pissed off. Even though I had asked for a transfer and I knew I’d soon be heading to another club, I couldn’t help feeling a bit jealous.
Jimmy was a good guy and a very good keeper, and I had nothing against him personally, but my pride was bruised and I was feeling like yesterday’s man and I felt the need to lash out a bit. In one session, we were practising free kicks and corners, and Saunders ordered me to get out of the goal and told Jimmy to go in. It was a fair enough call, as he needed to work the man who would be playing on Saturday, but he made me feel so insignificant that I was raging inside. The mistake he made, though, was putting me with the forwards for the training drill. I put on a bib and joined the attackers, and just before it was my turn to try to get on the end of a cross, Andy Gray came up behind me and said under his breath: ‘Budgie, this is a golden opportunity for you. Dinnae hold back, fuckin’ whack him.’ That was all the encouragement I needed, and Andy the mischief-maker must have known that. So when ball got fired over, a low near-post ball, I came flying in on Jimmy and kneed him, sending him onto his arse. Why I did it I’ll never know. As I headed back to join the rest of the forwards at the halfway line, they were all laughing their heads off, especially Andy who had been the instigator. But he wasn’t finished, and neither was I. ‘Budgie, that was nothing, surely you can do better than that?’ said Andy. So I tried the same again, except this time, Jimmy saw it coming and managed to ride the challenge a bit better. But Saunders wasn’t going to let me crock his new keeper and hollered at me: ‘That’s enough!’ He took the bib off me and, not to put too fine a point on it, told me to ‘get the fuck off the training ground.’ I didn’t care, but I still wouldn’t give in to him, I was way too stubborn just to head back to the changing rooms like a chided schoolboy. Instead, I went and stood behind the goals, mooching about for the rest of the session in a huff.
I was sent to play for the reserves and I hated it. I had been used to playing First Division football, and all of a sudden I found myself at places like Port Vale – playing in front of three men and a dog. I thought ‘Shit, what’s going on here?’ I hadn’t a clue how to handle the situation. I swallowed my pride one day and went to see Saunders. ‘I’m finding it hard to play reserve team football,’ I told him. ‘Until a club comes in for me, can I go out on loan somewhere?’ Give him his due, he was accommodating and said he would try his best and see what he could do for me. He was true to his word, and it was put in the papers that I was available for loan. About a week later, Southend United came in for me. I think it was fated that I would play for them one day, because a funny thing had happened to me a few years before when I was at Workington – I’d had a strange dream about Southend. Before I had even set foot in Southend, I’d dreamt all about their ground, exactly how it looked, and even the correct score before we played them – it would be Southend 1, Workington 1. When I went there on the bus with Workington, I turned to the manager Brian Doyle and said: ‘I’ve been here before – I’ve dreamt about it.’ I think Brian just shrugged it off as me being a bit eccentric as usual, but I swear everything was exactly the way imagined it – right down to the score, 1-1! So there was always something lingering in the back of my mind about Southend, and it was an easy choice to go out on loan to them. Without hesitation I said I would rather be playing for Southend than Aston Villa reserves. Okay, it was Fourth Division, but their manage
r Dave Smith was a cracking bloke and everyone at the club made me feel so welcome. Janet and I stayed in a nice boarding house right on the sea front, which reminded us of Blackpool, and I stayed on the same salary I was on at Villa.
Dave’s enthusiasm for the game was infectious and he knew his football too. The club were going places under him, and it may have been the Fourth Division but they had to start somewhere. I played six games and we won them all. We beat Bournemouth, Scunthorpe, Halifax and Southport at home, and beat Crewe and York away. I enjoyed the games, and with no disrespect to the players in the Fourth Division, found it easier to play against them after playing in the First Division. They weren’t as sharp or quick to react, and as a goalkeeper I found I was able to read the game far, far easier at that level and although I let in one or two, my form held up very well.
Dave Smith was on at me to stay, telling me of his masterplan to bring Southend up the divisions, but I was always honest with him. I saw my future in the First Division, albeit not with Villa, or at least with a team in the Second Division that had realistic prospects of promotion. I was really enjoying my spell at Southend, and the sea air reinvigorated me. After being down in the dumps at Villa, I was back to my happy-go-lucky ways, and was enjoying life and football again. Southend was less than an hour’s drive to London and I would hook up with a good friend I had there called Barry Silkman, who played for Crystal Palace. As fate would have it, he would be the key figure in finding me a permanent new club after Villa.
Budgie - The Autobiography Page 7