Taking le Tiss

by Matt Le Tissier

  CELEBRATION

  PLAZA, THE

  NIGHTCLUB WE

  HAD BOUGHT

  TOGETHER. NOT

  THE WISEST

  BUSINESS

  DECISION WE

  EVER MADE.

  The plan was for us to kick the ball straight into touch at the start of the game and then collect 56 times our stake. Easy money. The only possible problem was if we didn’t get to kick-off. I was captain at the time so I had a chat with the Wimbledon skipper and asked which way they wanted to kick. He said they liked to kick towards their fans. I told him I was happy to let them do that provided we could kick-off. Thankfully he didn’t ask why otherwise I might have had to give him a 10 per cent cut of the winnings, but he thought he was getting a good deal. The plan was set up nicely. The ball was to be rolled back to me and I would smash it into touch. It seemed to be going like clockwork. We kicked-off, the ball was tapped to me and I went to hit it out towards Neil Shipperley on the left wing.

  As it was live on TV, I didn’t want to make it too obvious or end up looking like a prat for miscuing the ball, so I tried to hit it just over his head. But, with so much riding on it, I was a bit nervous and didn’t give it quite enough welly. The problem was that Shipps knew nothing about the bet and managed to reach it and even head it back into play. I have never run so much in my life. If there had been Pro-Zone analysis back then, my stats would have been amazing for the next minute as ‘Flash’ and I charged round the pitch desperately trying to kick the ball out of play. Suddenly it was no longer a question of winning money, we stood to lose a lot of cash if it went much longer than 75 seconds before the ball went out. I had visions of guys coming to kneecap me. Eventually we got it out of play on 70 seconds, the neutral time which meant we’d neither won nor lost. Ironically we won the match 2-0 with me scoring the first, but I hadn’t backed myself to get the opener. And I’ve never tried spread-betting since.

  We lost only one of our last eight games, and that was 2-1 at Manchester United where we’d actually led 1-0 and had a perfectly good Neil Shipperley goal disallowed, and to this day I have no idea why, despite watching it again and again on the TV.

  I won my third and last Saints Player of the Season trophy that year. I’m very proud to be the only person to have won it three times. It’s a record which is unlikely ever to be broken as I can’t see any player now staying for three seasons.

  That 1994-95 season was the closest I ever came to playing in every match. I missed just one, a 0-0 draw away to Everton when I tore the tendon from my big toe to my heel. I didn’t realize what that meant. From then on I had to run on the outside of my foot and, because of that, I later got problems with my calves and Achilles. I had to wear insoles which made my calves shorter and, later in my career, I ended up getting a lot of calf strains which eventually led to me having to pack up.

  I was desperate to get 30 goals for the season so I played the final fixture, a 2-2 draw at home to Leicester. The moment I scored I was off, in pain. The rest over the summer did it good and I was looking forward to the new campaign. We had finished tenth, 11 points clear of relegation in a season when four went down. We lost only 12 matches out of our 42, just two more than Liverpool but we drew too many. We had 18 draws which might have been good for Bruce’s pools coupon but not for our league position. And we scored 61 goals, which was more than Leeds in fifth, but conceded 63 which was more than Norwich and they got relegated.

  We had a good young team, we were playing exciting, attacking football and we had a top manager whom I could relate to and one who really rated me. And then came the bombshell…

  13

  FINAL DAY COCK-UP

  ‘FOR THE SECOND TIME ALAN BALL HELPED SAINTS PULL OFF

  A MIRACULOUS ESCAPE TO STAY UP ON THE LAST DAY OF

  THE SEASON. THE PROBLEM WAS THAT HE WAS MANAGER

  OF MANCHESTER CITY AT THE TIME!’

  I was on holiday in Menorca, doing the usual British tourist trick of reading the English papers for as long as possible at a news stand before being told to buy them or ‘Get outta here’. But that day I actually paid the extortionate price for a paper because the headline said that Manchester City wanted Alan Ball as their new manager. The link was City chairman Francis Lee who was a close friend of Alan’s. I was absolutely gutted, but I really thought there was no way Saints would let him go. He had transformed the atmosphere among the players and the fans and had got us playing some great stuff. How wrong can you be?

  Next day I picked up a paper and found he’d gone. I was gobsmacked. Devastated. I knew it would be really hard to find another manager who had the same belief in me as he did. For the first time in my career I had had a manager who had total faith in me. I had known I was going to play every week, and play the way I wanted. That might have been selfish but it worked for the team too. Things were going so well and I couldn’t understand why the club gave Alan permission to speak to City. He was unhappy about it too. Talk about sending a message that he wasn’t wanted. The Southampton chairman, Guy Askham, argued that if they had refused permission then City would have approached him directly. But if that had happened then City and Bally would have been in the wrong and the board would have sent all the right signals to the Saints players and fans. By giving him permission to speak to City they were virtually saying they’d be happy to let him go. They should have fought to keep him. Alan had shown no desire to leave and they could easily have said ‘No’. Alan wouldn’t have kicked up a fuss, he just wanted to feel valued. If Saints had shown faith in him, he’d have stayed put.

  He was the lowest-paid manager in the Premier League on just £60,000 a year. Given what he had done for the club, they should have offered him a three- or four-year contract on improved terms. Personally, I don’t think that the club really rated him and they jumped at the chance of getting compensation with almost indecent haste. His track record was nothing special and he was a volatile character so it probably suited them to be able to pocket some cash and get rid of him without losing face—or so they thought.

  The fans were open-mouthed, especially because that decision led to a period of instability which eventually cost the club its place in the Premier League. Three managers in 30 years had put the club on a sound footing, and suddenly here were the board changing managers after just 18 months and setting a trend which took the club on a downward spiral. Ultimately it was Bally’s decision to go, but the board must take a lot of the blame. They tried to redeem the situation by appointing Dave Merrington as manager. Some said that as he had been my mentor in my youth team days, he might continue to get the best out of me as Bally had done. He was also popular with the fans. Others said he was the cheap option, and the players agreed with that one. Like Bally, he was the lowest-paid manager in the Premier League by some distance.

  I COULDN’T

  UNDERSTAND

  WHY THE CLUB

  GAVE ALAN

  PERMISSION TO

  SPEAK TO CITY.

  HE WAS

  UNHAPPY ABOUT

  IT TOO.

  Personally I was quite happy with the appointment. Dave had been a big influence on me as a youngster and I knew that he believed in me, so perhaps things would work out OK. Looking back, I probably didn’t give it enough thought because this was a totally different scenario now that Dave had to deal with experienced top-flight players with big egos rather than young players he could mould and cajole. I think he found it hard to make that step up. He had done a fabulous job at the club for many years as youth and Reserve team coach so, with his service, he probably felt he had earned his chance. And that was probably true. But it was a step too far because his strengths were much better suited to developing young players than dealing with established stars.

  The first thing Dave did was to bring back Dennis Rofe, a larger than life character who was good to have in the dressing room. His heart was in the right place and, as his right-hand man, he was good at geeing up players. He sometimes
went a bit far with the officials (like I’m one to talk) and he could get a bit heated with the players but it was only because he cared and, on the whole, he did a decent job.

  The opening day of the 1995-6 season gave me a lot of reasons for optimism even though we lost 4-3 at home to Forest. I got a hat trick—although looking back it was two penalties and a free kick—and I only scored seven goals in 37 league games that season as we got sucked back into relegation trouble. The ultimate irony was that on the final day of the season we stayed up at the expense of Bally’s Manchester City.

  The Dell had been redeveloped with a severely reduced capacity so Dave Merrington didn’t have a lot of money to spend on strengthening the side. His only real signing was Barry Venison, who struggled with a recurring back problem—and an even more painful sense of fashion. It was a real slog of a season with the only light relief coming in the cup competitions. We started the League Cup with a tie at Cardiff, which was somehow inevitable under the circumstances. Despite scoring 45 goals in 64 games under Alan Ball, I had been dropped from the England squad and there had been newspaper speculation that I might actually switch my allegiance to Wales. Because I came from the Channel Islands I was eligible to play for any of the Home Countries, and having played only friendlies for England meant I could still opt for another country. I was asked about it by the media and said it had always been my ambition to play for England and no way would I play for Wales. And then of course we got drawn against Cardiff whose fans are fiercely nationalistic. I took a serious amount of abuse from them at Ninian Park but, fortunately, I had one of my better games and scored twice in a 3-0 win. At the end I felt very smug but went over and applauded their supporters just to show I wasn’t upset by it, and they responded with a nice round of applause.

  We beat West Ham in the next round and were drawn away at Reading who then played at Elm Park. It was pouring with rain as we turned up at The Dell for the team coach only to be told that the game was off because of a waterlogged pitch. Excellent! A night off. Except…it was a hoax call. For some reason no one at the club thought to check it out. We all went our separate ways and, in the days before mobile phones, it wasn’t easy to round us all up once the truth dawned. It meant we didn’t get to the ground until about half an hour before kick-off. It was still raining heavily, our preparation was nonexistent and we lost 2-1.

  The FA Cup brought a major highlight because we were drawn at home to the Hampshire inferiors, Portsmouth. It was the first time we had played them since 1988 when they won 2-0 at The Dell. I came on as sub that day so this was my first real experience of a competitive south coast derby. I still recalled that Pompey fan trying to hit me after Alan Knight’s testimonial so I was very glad we were drawn at The Dell instead of Fratton Park—or Nottarf Krap as it is backwards.

  The atmosphere around the ground was electric right from the start, quite different from anything else I had ever walked out to. The rivalry was incredibly fierce. It really geed you up. Jim Magilton was definitely on fire and scored twice as we won 3-0. I set up his second when I was given the freedom of The Dell. I picked up the ball 10 yards inside our half and ran to their area where my shot was parried for Jim to tap home. I was credited with the assist for the third when I squared for Neil Shipperley to slot in, but I have to come clean and admit I was going for goal. I was desperate to score against Poopey and my toe-poke across the box was actually a shot, but I was happy to accept the credit.

  We were drawn at home to Crewe in the fourth round and a Big Freeze meant virtually every game in the country was off. Our pitch was perfectly playable but the match was still postponed on the say-so of the safety officer. The fire hoses and all the toilets were frozen with blocks of ice preventing them from flushing, which just goes to show you can’t beat the cistern. I couldn’t see the problem. If there had been a fire and there were 15,000 people dying for a pee, they could surely have put it out themselves.

  We were taken to a replay and were coasting at 3-0 up before they pulled two back and the last 20 minutes were frightening as the home side mounted wave after wave of attacks. We began to think it might be our year until we drew Manchester United away in the quarterfinals and lost 2-0.

  Things weren’t great in the league, despite the fact I was happy to be working with Dave again. I was struggling for goals and as a result I asked Dave to take the captaincy off me. I had been skipper for two years, during which time I had played some of my best football, but I’m not a shouter by nature. I tried to lead by example and when I was playing well I felt I could captain the team, but when I went through a bad spell I didn’t want that responsibility and hoped it might free me up to play better. I think the fact I had been dropped from the England squad also affected my form. There was part of me that thought if 45 goals in 64 games are not good enough then what’s the point?

  It also didn’t help that Dave changed the shape of the team a bit. With things not going well I think he felt he needed to keep things tight. I played a bit deeper and didn’t feel I was getting into great forward positions. I don’t think the team created that many chances because I don’t remember missing too many sitters—but it was April before I scored my first goal in open play. I’d netted two free kicks and four penalties but that goal came against Manchester United at home in the infamous ‘grey shirts’ game.

  We were hovering on the brink of relegation when the champions-elect came to The Dell four games from the end of the season. We had only won seven matches all season but that afternoon, for some reason, we really turned it on. The atmosphere was electric and we ripped into them from the start. Ken Monkou lashed in from close range on 11 minutes and 12 minutes later we were in dreamland as Neil Shipperley put us 2-0 up. Two minutes before the break Peter Schmeichel decided to drop a cross at my feet, and I reacted quickly to hook in from a tight angle to make it 3-0 at half-time. We couldn’t quite believe what we’d done. It was one of those days when everyone seemed to be on top of their game. Normally to win a match you need seven or eight of the 11 to be on decent form. You can afford to carry one or two, usually me. But to beat United it needs everyone firing on all cylinders, and we blew them away.

  At the start of the second half the United players came out in a completely different kit. In the first half they had worn their all grey strip, but after the break they changed to blue and white stripes. To be honest I never noticed, even when the crowd laughed. We held out strongly but conceded a consolation two minutes from time to the annoyance of one fan who had backed a double, with Ken Monkou scoring first in a 3-0 win at huge odds.

  There were no organized post-match press conferences in those days, reporters just grabbed players for interview in the car park. I was surrounded by journalists wanting my views on United changing their shirts and I had to say I really hadn’t twigged. Graham Poll was the ref and our club secretary Brian Truscott gave him a lot of abuse for allowing United to change their kit because it wasn’t allowed.

  Fergie said afterwards that his players couldn’t pick out the grey shirts against the crowd which just seemed like an excuse—and not a very good one. The fact is we played them off the park. It took a little bit away from our victory because of course the press focused on the change of kit rather than our performance. Although he isn’t noted for being magnanimous, I thought Fergie could have been a little bit more gracious, especially as I got him his job.

  MOST OF THE

  LADS SPENT THE

  MORNING IN THE

  LOCAL

  LADBROKES…IT

  MIGHT HAVE

  LOOKED AS

  THOUGH WE

  WEREN’T TAKING

  THE MATCH

  SERIOUSLY.

  We lost at Newcastle and then went to relegation rivals Bolton for the penultimate match of the season. Lawrie McMenemy wanted us to play safe and go for a point but Dave wanted us to go all out for the victory which should make us safe. Most of the lads spent the morning in the local Ladbrokes and, to the casual observ
er, it might have looked as though we weren’t taking the match seriously but, as we arrived at the ground, there was a hard look of determination in every face. We won 1-0 when I latched onto a suicidal pass from Jimmy Phillips and scored what proved to be the last ever goal at Burnden Park as Bolton moved to the Reebok afterwards. We celebrated wildly on the pitch at the final whistle thinking we were safe until news came through that Man City had won at Villa of all places, while Coventry had won at Wimbledon.

  It meant that our fate was still in our own hands on the final day, we simply had to equal or better what Man City did. We were at home to Wimbledon who had nothing to play for but they were notoriously competitive, while City were at home to Liverpool who not only had nothing to play for but were in the FA Cup Final the following week. Of all the last-day escapes, this was the most horribly tense and the closest we came to going down during my time at the club. We had put ourselves in a decent position knowing we only had to match City’s score—and there was still the chance Coventry could slip up at home to Leeds. Nothing against Coventry, but I was hoping they