Taking le Tiss

by Matt Le Tissier

  would be the ones to go down simply because of my high regard for Alan Ball. I didn’t want him to be relegated but, obviously, if it was a choice of City or us then I was desperate for us to survive. In the end it was City who went down in slightly bizarre circumstances, and with Bally taking a lot flak for a bad miscalculation.

  Nowadays Sky Sports are all over the final-day fixtures, keeping everyone updated almost as soon as the ball hits the net while mobile phones and text alerts keep fan bang up-to-date. Back then information was a little more sketchy, with supporters taking portable radios to the game to keep in touch with the other scores. Word would filter through to the players but, quite often, rumours would sweep through the stadium and the crowd’s reaction could be quite a distraction. We expected to beat Wimbledon but it was one of those games where we never looked like scoring, so it was just as well that we heard City had gone 2-0 down at home to Liverpool. If it stayed like that then we were safe no matter what happened at The Dell. But with the Merseysiders having nothing to play for and keen to protect players for the Cup Final, they took their foot off the gas and City fought back to 2-2. Suddenly we were in deep trouble. We didn’t know whether to stick or twist. We could go all-out to try and win our game to guarantee safety but risk leaving gaps at the back knowing that if Wimbledon scored we were down. Or we could focus on holding what we had and hope that City didn’t score again. It was horrible.

  The crowd were edgy and that got through to the players, but we were saved by strange developments at Maine Road where the rumour spread that we were losing. In the confusion Alan Ball sent word to his players that a draw was enough for them, so Steve Lomas took the ball to the corner flag to waste time when in fact they needed another goal to stay up. With the way the game was going they might well have got it if they had pushed against a disinterested Liverpool side, but they played out a 2-2 draw. It finished a few minutes before our match so we knew we just had to see it out at 0-0 to stay up. We did but it was sickeningly close. I felt so sorry for Alan afterwards when I heard how he had got his facts wrong but I was still relieved that we’d stayed up. But then it was all put into stark perspective as rather more grim news reached the dressing room.

  A couple of days earlier Dave Merrington’s wife Pauline had been rushed to hospital with a brain haemorrhage, but he’d never said a word to us about it. He didn’t want to add to our stress so he kept quiet about it, that’s the kind of guy Dave is. He wanted to shield us from all distractions so we had no idea she was even remotely ill. She was in a bad way and it would have been entirely understandable if he had stayed with her. Instead, he left her bedside on the morning of the match not knowing whether she would still be alive afterwards. He came to The Dell, guided us to safety and then rushed back to the hospital without joining in the post-match celebrations or even doing the usual press conference. Thankfully Pauline pulled through and Dave’s reward for that selfless sacrifice? He was sacked!

  14

  SUBBED BY A FISH UP A TREE or PEOPLE CALLED RUPERT SHOULD NOT RUN FOOTBALL CLUBS

  ‘IT IS SOMETHING I WILL NEVER LIVE DOWN. I WAS SUBBED

  FOR THE NOW INFAMOUS UNKNOWN CHANCER BY THE

  NAME OF ALI DIA. THE SHAME OF IT…’

  I was stunned when I heard Dave Merrington had been axed as manager. I was shocked at the way he had been treated after so many years of loyal service. OK, it hadn’t been a great season and maybe it was a step too high for him. But he hadn’t had a lot of money to spend and it had taken him time to adapt to his first real job in management. He was very much Old School with a belief in discipline and hard work. Those of us who had come up through the ranks really rated him, but maybe he found it harder to win over some of the more recent signings. Whatever the footballing merits of the decision, after all his years of dedication, it seemed a very harsh way of doing things, especially given the situation with his wife. I will always regret not being able to produce my very best form for him but it’s great to see him regularly at St Mary’s, working as a pundit for local BBC radio where he speaks with all the trademark honesty he showed as a coach.

  Dave’s departure meant we were now looking for our fourth manager in two and a half years. Next in line was Graeme Souness, a close ally of Lawrie McMenemy who remained Director of Football. In some ways I was quite pleased because I thought it showed ambition, and if someone of his stature was prepared to come to Southampton that had to be a positive sign. It looked as though we were ready to take the step to the next level. It was a high-profile appointment, particularly by Southampton’s standards. Souness had plenty of experience and I knew he’d tried to buy me in the early nineties when he was Liverpool manager, so I was quite upbeat. Mind, he hadn’t had a great managerial career, though he’d enjoyed some success at Rangers where they always had a 50-50 chance of winning the league.

  He joined us from Galatasaray where he’d hit the headlines for marching into the centre circle after a Cup Final victory, away to their hated rivals Fenerbahce, and planting a club flag in a hugely provocative gesture. That took real bottle. It showed nothing would faze him but then to get to the top of this profession you need a touch of arrogance—and he had more than a touch to be fair. I also knew what a fantastic footballer he had been and that is how I tended to judge people. He was one of the best of his generation in his particular role, and he had looked after himself well. I have got to say he was still in great shape. He spent a lot of time in the gym and loved to join in training just to show he could still play a bit. He was still an aggressive so-and-so. I couldn’t get the ball off him. The sad thing is our manager was probably our best player.

  He came with quite a fierce reputation and I must admit I wasn’t looking forward to it. But he was much more placid than I expected. I don’t know if that was because of the heart operation he’d had a couple of months before. He was on medication which may have calmed him down although he was still incredibly sure of himself. He had that arrogance you normally get from players who know they are good. He had a great sense of his own worth—and probably with good reason. He had a presence about him which commanded respect from the minute he walked into the room. And his reputation meant a lot of our players were probably in awe of him. I certainly was—at least until he dropped me. Then, like any player who is left out, I thought he was a muppet, until he put me back in again.

  I got on OK with him until an incident towards the end of the season. We were having a bad run, I had lost my place and Souey called a team meeting in the canteen. He went round each of the players in turn and—in front of everyone—asked them, ‘Do you think Tiss does enough for the team?’ All the lads said ‘No’. I’d like to think that a lot of them were just too scared to oppose him and said what he wanted to hear. Souness certainly didn’t ask Francis Benali because he’d have stuck up for me. I was absolutely stunned that the manager would do such a thing and in front of everyone. After all I had done for the club; I felt I deserved better than that. I have no idea what he was trying to achieve. Maybe he was trying to fire me up but I lost a lot of respect for him.

  I came out of that meeting absolutely fuming with him and with my teammates who hadn’t stuck up for me. I still think it was a really strange piece of man-management to single me out like that. While Bally made me feel special and got the best out of me, Souey just made me resentful. I came away steaming with anger and with my chin on the floor. I couldn’t believe he’d done that. If he had a problem with me, it would have been better to take me aside and explain that was why he was dropping me instead of picking on me in front of everyone. I didn’t talk to anyone. I just went home, gutted that none of my so-called mates had stuck up for me. That was the lowest point I can remember under Souness.

  He hit the ground running and made sweeping changes to the coaching staff, and I have to say they didn’t improve things. Like most managers he brought in his mates, but these were people who didn’t fully understand the club and its traditions, and the importance of bringing th
rough home-grown players. Phil Boersma, Ray Clarke and Alan Murray came in but it seemed to me they didn’t have the same dedication, commitment and coaching knowledge as those they replaced. But he did bring in Terry Cooper who was a great character to have around. He had a wise head and spoke a lot of sense. I liked him and I was surprised he didn’t manage any higher. He had a good sense of humour and was very good company. He also had a very cushy number later on as the club’s chief European scout. He lived in Tenerife and just jetted off wherever. Terry played a key part in the signing from Bristol City of Richard Dryden, or ‘Trigger’ as he was known after the somewhat dim character in Only Fools and Horses.

  He was a great lad but not the sharpest tool in the box, and that image wasn’t helped by his West Country accent. He was the stereotypical journeyman player in the nicest possible way, an honest hard-working pro who spent all his career in the lower divisions but suddenly got a crack at the top flight. He arrived with a ringing endorsement from Mark Lawrenson who was then a pundit for ITV in the Bristol area, and who apparently said if Richard Dryden was in the Saints team at the end of the season then he would present the show stark naked. He was—and he didn’t.

  ‘TRIGGER’ WAS

  SO THICK THAT

  HE ACTUALLY

  REVELLED IN HIS

  NICKNAME,

  WHICH WAS

  WELL DESERVED.

  ‘Trigger’ was so thick that he actually revelled in his nickname, which was well deserved. He once drove to the supermarket and then spent 20 minutes looking for his car, and was just about to report it stolen when he remembered he had taken his wife’s car, not his own. And when he was in digs he wasn’t allowed to use the phone so he had to go to the call box down the street. One night he walked back and found the car was missing from the drive so he rang the police and reported it stolen—and then realized he had driven it to the phone box because it had been raining. It was still parked there. The clever thing would have been to keep quiet but he told everyone and got merciless stick. ‘Trigger’ might not have been the most high-profile signing but he was solid and dependable and never let us down, good value for the £150,000 fee which was worth paying just for the entertainment value.

  Souey had good contacts and picked up some quality players on the cheap. We went on pre-season tour to Scotland and were joined by a slight figure by the name of Eyal Berkovic. It was obvious right away that he could play but the only question was whether he could withstand the physical demands of the Premier League. Souey was keen to play him in a pre-season friendly at Dunfermline but the club didn’t have international clearance. Souness suggested sneaking him on as a sub towards the end, and gave the local press strict instructions not to mention him. He was asked what they should do if the Israeli midfielder scored and he told them to credit it as an own goal. As it happened he put Berkovic on midway through the first half—and sure enough he scored. The problem was it was a solo run, taking the ball round the keeper and slotting into an empty net. Around 200 travelling fans were bemused to read the description in the paper—probably the best own-goal ever.

  Typically Southampton didn’t want to commit themselves to signing him, and left options open at the end of the season which meant we lost him to West Ham, with Souey’s departure giving him the perfect get-out. He was a cracking player but his command of the English language seemed to vary according to whether he liked what was being said. He rarely seemed to understand requests to help with the club’s many community projects, but knew all right what was being said when we were given time off.

  Other signings included Uli Van Gobbel, a man-mountain Dutch defender who had plenty of strength but not enough stamina. The only time he ever went on a run was when he retired; he fled from Holland after he was jailed for four months for buying cars on credit, then selling them without paying the car company. Souey obviously had a lot more money to spend than Dave Merrington and, apart from signing Graham Potter, he used it wisely, digging out a couple of gems from Norway.

  He arranged a special practice match at Staplewood to give a trial to two strikers by the names of Egil Ostenstad and Tore Andre Flo. Both were outstanding. Egil quickly signed and went on to be a big success but the Flo deal got complicated. His club Brann Bergen had to pay something like 50 per cent of any fee to his former club Tromso and, according to the Saints board, they kept putting up the price. I think once again it was a case of the club not wanting to fork out too much money and failing to back the manager—a costly error given how well Flo did for Chelsea, who nipped in to sign him.

  Egil proved himself a deadly finisher and got some vital goals before being snapped up by Blackburn who seemed to take most of our good players. For a while it seemed like we were their feeder club with Alan Shearer, Tim Flowers, Jeff Kenna, Kevin Davies and Egil Ostenstad all moving there with varying degrees of success. Egil did really well for us but I always wondered how much better we might have fared if we had signed Tore Andre Flo as well. That would have been some partnership. Egil was an excellent signing and had a great first season despite the fact he must have been knackered. He had played a full campaign in Norway and then came over here and had virtually another full season with us. It is a shame he didn’t stay longer but he turned down a new contract and seemed to stop trying as hard in his third season, before moving to Blackburn where things didn’t really work out too well for him. But we did land a top-class Norwegian in Claus Lundekvam, who went on to become Souey’s legacy to the club. We snapped him up from Brann Bergen for a bargain fee of just £400,000. He stayed for 12 years.

  I remember it well. I had been away on England duty—Glenn Hoddle still liked me at that time. I came back to the training ground and walked into the dressing room to find a tramp had wandered in. I was about to offer him a cup of tea and show him out when he introduced himself as our new signing. But he turned out to be one of the best bits of business we ever did. He was a phenomenal centre-back although no help whatsoever in terms of goal-scoring, in fact I’m surprised he didn’t get booked for time-wasting whenever he went up for a corner. But in defence he was superb, strong in the air, good on the ground and calm under pressure—sometimes too calm. In the early days we’d be screaming for him to belt the ball in the stand but he insisted on bringing it out of defence, earning him the nickname ‘Silky’ because of his skill on the ball. He revelled in the nickname and even named his boat Silky. Sometimes that tendency cost us the odd goal but he quickly learned when to play the ball and when to launch it.

  We also called him ‘Dave’ because he looked like Rodney who was called that name by Trigger in Only Fools and Horses. Claus loved that series and could recite episodes virtually word for word. It was a sign of how well he adapted to life in England. He completely got that humour, our banter and the drinking culture. The best tribute I can pay him is that he was the most English foreigner we ever had. His partnership with Michael Svensson was one of the best in the Premiership, right up there with Tony Adams and Steve Bould or Steve Bruce and Gary Pallister. It was such a shame when injury forced him to retire in 2008 but I was proud to be chairman of his testimonial committee.

  It came as a complete culture shock though when Silky made his debut in a 2-2 draw at home to Nottingham Forest. I equalized in the last minute as we came back from two down but Claus was breathing out of his backside, and looked stunned by the pace and power of the game. That was one of only two points we gained from our first seven matches as another poor start left us firmly in the relegation zone—unchartered territory for Souey.

  Our first win came at home to Middlesbrough. I scored two in a 4-0 success, the first direct from a corner. And yes, it was intended. I often used to shoot from a corner knowing I could whip the ball in with enough bend so that even if I didn’t score directly there was a strong chance it’d fly in off a defender or one of our strikers—or anyone except Claus. That victory gave us a lift and we drew 1-1 on TV at Coventry where I got one of my top 10 goals with a 30-yard shot which c
urled away from a flat-footed Steve Ogrizovic. Eyal and Egil made their debuts from the bench and we let in a last-minute equalizer. Then we thumped Sunderland 3-0 before Manchester United turned up, fresh from a 5-0 drubbing at Newcastle, with most neutrals predicting we would suffer the backlash. After that match Magpies’ manager Kevin Keegan said it would be a long time before another side put five past United—so we hit them for six.

  United finished seven points clear of Newcastle that season to win the title at a canter, but we smacked them 6-3 at The Dell, and they couldn’t even blame the kit. In fact a lot of people mistakenly think this was the ‘grey shirts’ match because it was such a remarkable score. It was certainly one of the best games I ever played in. The only slight blemish was that Roy Keane got sent off on 21 minutes for a crunching tackle, which he later admitted was designed to jolt his teammates out of their comfort zone as we were already 1-0 up through Eyal Berkovic.

  After 34 minutes I got the ball about 30 yards from goal, wriggled past a couple of challenges to create space and I remembered that the previous week Philippe Albert of Newcastle had lobbed Peter Schmeichel from a very similar position. I had watched that game on television and just took a gamble that Schmeichel would be off his line again. Without even looking I sent a perfect chip over his head for 2-0. David Beckham pulled one back but Egil Ostenstad made it 3-1 just before the break. David May scored just after half-time which made it a bit nervy but, seven minutes from time, Eyal hit a cracking volley for 4-2, quickly followed by Egil’s second for 5-2. By now it was getting silly as goals were flying in all over the place. Paul Scholes netted for them and in the last minute Egil completed his hat trick, and yes it was a hat trick. The bloody silly dubious goals panel took it off him reckoning it was an own-goal by Gary Neville, even though the shot was virtually over the line before the diversion. I bet they wouldn’t have reached the same conclusion if it had been a United goal. It was a top-quality hat trick in my book—and Egil still has the match ball to prove it.