Taking le Tiss

by Matt Le Tissier

  22

  LOWE DOWN

  NEVER IN MY WORST NIGHTMARES DID I EVER THINK

  WE WOULD DROP INTO LEAGUE 1…

  Having overseen Saints’s relegation once, Rupert Lowe forced his way back into the club and did it again. What on earth possessed him to return? He says it was because he loved the club and wanted to help—but to my mind the best way that he could have helped was by stay-ing away.

  We’d just found a bit of stability after a couple of traumatic and turbulent years. In Leon Crouch we had a chairman who was a bit rough and ready, and quite impulsive. He let his heart rule his head. But that heart was definitely in the right place. He cared deeply about Saints and was probably the only chairman I have known who has actually put his own money into the club. Even in the Spring and Summer of 2009 he persistently put his hand in his pocket to bail out the club, and without his major contribution Saints probably wouldn’t exist any more. I don’t think the fans really know the full extent of his generosity. He even got the support of the bank, engaging with them amicably (not arrogantly), and was well liked by the club’s staff because he talked to them on their level. For all his wealth, he had the common touch and he didn’t talk down to people or at them.

  We also had a top manager in Nigel Pearson, who was popular with everyone at the club. The finances weren’t great, but everyone was pulling in the same direction. Then Rupert’s return caused a massive upheaval. It looked like he was on a personal quest—and had a few old scores to settle. I know there were some staff, not on the football side, who feared for their jobs when they heard he was back. And, yes, they were among those made redundant. They were good people, long-serving employees who had worked above and beyond their job description because they loved the club and were determined to help it succeed. I know the finances dictated that cut-backs had to be made, but there are decent ways of doing it.

  On the football side, it looked to me as though Nigel didn’t keep his job simply because he was a Leon Crouch appointment. Rupert had obviously previously thought about bringing in Dutch coaches and now saw his chance. Though Jan Poortvliet and Mark Wotte were on lower wages than Nigel Pearson they can’t have been that much cheaper, especially as a large chunk of Nigel’s salary was a bonus for saving the team from relegation. Talk about a false economy. And what’s the point if it all ends in relegation and costs the club a heck of a lot more in the long run?

  Jan would be the first to admit he was surprised to get the job, and he was so desperate to take it that he paid his own compensation to leave Helmond Sport. I’ve never known a manager do that before. That left Rupert in a stronger position to implement his own ideas. I think he had long favoured the kind of continental structure where the club president signs the players and employs someone to coach them. How many British managers can you think of who’d accept that system?

  He also took great pride in the Academy which he set up, though I think that Lawrie McMenemy might argue that he had created a pretty good youth system which produced the likes of Mike Channon, Steve Moran, the Wallaces, Alan Shearer and myself among others. Anyway, Rupert thought that playing the youngsters was the way ahead and he made a point of telling people they’d rip through the division. And they did, straight out the bottom. In fact when Rupert told me his plans at the start of the season, he said he thought the kids were good enough to make the play-offs. But whatever their individual strengths, collectively they just weren’t up to it. They gave everything and put up a real fight but you can’t field seven or eight youngsters each week and expect consistent performances. There’s too much pressure. If you’re going to blood kids then you slip them into the team, say one or two at a time, and let them gradually learn from the more experienced players. And to make things worse, the new manager didn’t know the division. The Championship is a very physical league and you simply can’t play ‘total football’. The nail in the coffin was the very poor scouting system. How could a foreign manager who didn’t know the English game (a) find new players and (b) know the best way of playing the opposition? He didn’t know enough about them.

  I realize we had to unload some of the higher earners, either permanently or on loan, but we shipped out Stern John who had been among the division’s top scorers the previous season and Grzegorz Rasiak, a proven marksman, and so of course we struggled for goals. You could see early in the season that we were heading for relegation, but nothing changed. It was as though it would have been an admission of failure to start using more experienced players.

  To this day Rupert seems to have absolved himself of the blame but, as the person at the top, he has to take most of the blame. He was there for longest and, from the moment Gordon Strachan left, everything started to unravel. It was a mistake to appoint Steve Wigley and then to replace him with Harry Redknapp and not let him manage his way and bring in Clive Woodward when the club couldn’t afford it. Then in came Michael Wilde but he didn’t deliver and was forced out. The new board promptly rejected a potential take-over from SISU. But why? SISU took over at Coventry and look where they are. Saints would jump at the chance to be in Coventry’s position.

  Leon Crouch tried to steady the ship but made the mistake of not involving Michael who, as the largest shareholder, still held a lot of power. To be fair, neither Leon nor anyone else could ever have envisaged that Michael and Rupert would actually team up. And the down-fall of the club lies mostly in the boardroom politics—the egos, the infighting, vindictiveness and petty bickering. But the various managers also have to take some blame because they are the ones who picked the team—with the possible exception of Jan Poortvliet. And you can’t forget the players who failed to perform, particularly against Manchester United who were well below their best and there for the taking on the day when we were relegated in 2005.

  Never in my worst nightmares did I think we would drop into League 1, especially after the narrow escape when Nigel Pearson kept us up. I thought that that’d be a great wake-up call, but in 2008-09 we lurched from disaster to disaster, culminating in administration and a 10-point deduction by the Football League. They automatically impose that penalty on any club going into administration. If it happens before the last Thursday in March then the points are lost immediately; if the club goes into administration after that date then the points are deducted at the end of the season if they avoid relegation. If they go down anyway then the penalty takes effect at the start of the following campaign. It’s a strange rule, a case of

  having your cake and eating it. But then the Football League are a law unto themselves.

  RUPERT SEEMS TO

  HAVE ABSOLVED

  HIMSELF OF THE

  BLAME BUT, AS

  THE PERSON AT

  THE TOP, HE HAS

  TO TAKE MOST

  OF THE BLAME.

  Like most Saints fans I breathed a sigh of relief when this year’s deadline passed. All season there had been talk of financial troubles so I kept an anxious eye on Sky’s Sports News on Thursday March 26 waiting to see if there was any announcement. I thought maybe things were not as bad as everyone said as the deadline came and went. But within a week it all kicked off. The club didn’t go into administration but its holding company did. Technically that shouldn’t have brought a 10-point deduction because the Football League’s own rules state that that deduction only applies to clubs and not their parent company. But the penalty was imposed, condemning us to certain relegation and the possibility of starting the 2009 season with a 10-point handicap. Even now I can’t understand why Rupert waited until a few days after the deadline to place the company in administration. He must have known the finances were shocking. It would have been better to take the hit and start the next season with a clean slate. I can see that he thought we might stay up but that was a hell of a gamble. He was risking the future of the club. I know he was trying to secure more funding and seemed confident he could get it, but it was never going to be easy in the Credit Crunch. I couldn’t see any reason why he di
dn’t take the 10-point deduction a week earlier. I could see then that we were going to get relegated.

  And what happened? We dropped into the third tier of English football for the first time in 50 years, Rupert and the other directors resigned and the whole future of the club was plunged into uncertainty. At that point I was like any other fan. I watched from the outside, helpless and desperately worried. Then, at the end of April, I got a call from a good friend, Tony Lynam. He popped round for a cup of tea and told me he was putting together a consortium and asked if I’d be interested in a place on the board if he could find the right backer. I told him I’d do anything to help the club, and left him to do all the hard work. Only ‘hard’ isn’t the word for it.

  Tony worked tirelessly for the Pinnacle group, doing long, silly hours because it was such a complex deal and there were so many stumbling blocks. But time was against us and the situation became even more serious when the players and staff weren’t paid in May. Leon Crouch again put his hand in his pocket to pay them for a second successive month, which bought us more time. Meanwhile, other groups became interested and it all got very hectic, but a £500,000 non-refundable deposit secured us a three-week exclusivity to do due diligence and complete the deal. At that point I thought we had crossed the line. I was ready to give up my job at Sky and my after-dinner speaking. Hell, I’d even have given up the occasional round of golf, that’s how serious I was.

  I spoke to the prospective new owner for the first time on June 8 and he seemed like a genuine bloke who’d got the bit between his teeth. He was happy to stay in the background and he wanted me to be chairman. That really took me aback. I’d always dreamed of being a footballer but I never thought I might one day be chairman. Many emotions raced through my mind but mainly panic. There was excitement at the challenge, worry about the insecurity and the pressure, confidence that I could make a difference and determination to show how the job should be done. I was flattered by the offer and by the reaction of the fans, who made it clear that they were right behind us.

  I wasn’t worried about them turning on me if things went badly because if I couldn’t do the job properly I’d let someone else take over. I wouldn’t arrogantly cling to power. And it was a big decision for me because I had such a good lifestyle. I had a steady, secure, one-day-a-week job with Sky which I really enjoyed. That was enough to finance my golf and other expenses. I even got a text from Phil Thompson saying, ‘It’s good for Saints but bad for us—honest!’ And I considered giving up my role as a brand ambassador with Sporting Bet because it might lead to a conflict of interest.

  It seemed as though it was All Systems Go—until the Football League threw in a major obstacle. I think they realized they were on slightly dodgy ground with the 10-point deduction which, in my opinion, broke their own rules, so they tried to railroad it through. They said they would only approve the take-over and grant us a League licence if we confirmed in writing that we wouldn’t appeal against the decision. But every club should have the right of appeal. The Football League exist for the interests and benefit of their members, and we were looking for help. We weren’t asking for the 10 points back—just for the right to query the decision. Every other club losing points had been allowed to appeal, so why should we be treated any differently? The reason is they were scared of losing.

  Their chairman Brian Mawhiney wouldn’t bend and that was incredibly frustrating.I still resent the fact that he laughed during the Sky interview when he announced the 10-point penalty. I have never disliked a man I have never met as much as then. It was almost as though the Football League had their own little world of rules, exempt from the laws of the land. It was a case of ‘These are our rules and this is how it is going to be.’ That sort of arrogance drives me crackers, and it actually put me off wanting to be a chairman if it meant regularly dealing with people like that.

  But I was so desperate to do the job that, in the end, I said to the rest of the Pinnacle group that we just had to bite the bullet and accept the points deduction. Eventually I talked them round, but the document presented by the Football League was something we just couldn’t sign. It also revealed the possibility of future sanctions, including further points deductions. We couldn’t be party to that. We had to pull out. And then the Football League promised there would be no further sanctions. Suddenly Pinnacle were back in the running but, by then, a Swiss consortium and another English group had made up ground and were rivalling us. In the end the Swiss group gained control. By all accounts, Markus Liebherr, the new owner, is pretty minted. The good thing is that the club was saved from going out of existence and hopefully Saints will at last find the stability that has eluded them for so long.

  23

  THEY THINK IT’S ALL OVER

  ‘I SEEM TO HAVE WORKED HARDER IN RETIREMENT

  THAN I EVER DID WHEN I WAS PLAYING.

  THAT CAN’T BE RIGHT…’

  In the end I was actually quite looking forward to retirement. I knew I was going to miss playing and the day-to-day banter but the previous two or three years had been riddled with injury. Repeatedly trying to get back from one muscle strain, only for another to flare up in its place, really drained my enthusiasm. The medical room and the gym were never my favourite places, and they sucked the energy out of me. I could no longer reach the heights I had previously done on the field, and I didn’t want to take money under false pretences or to drop down the leagues with people turning out to see the name and not the player. A lot of my former teammates finished up with a couple of low-key seasons at nearby Bournemouth, but that wasn’t for me. I only ever wanted to play in the top division and I am proud of that record. I didn’t mind people teasing me about my weight and being lazy, but I didn’t want to become a figure of fun on the pitch.

  I did do the Match on Sky1 where a team of ex-pros play against celebrities. It was good fun to have a kick-around in front of 50,000 but I was very disappointed I was only on the bench in the first series, especially as I had trained for a whole day beforehand. But £2,500 for two days work wasn’t bad.

  The following year was tougher; they wanted us for four days but they did increase the payment to £10,000 so I was well up for that. I even ran about in training and was rewarded with a starting place. But it all went wrong just after half-time when I again made the mistake of venturing into my own penalty area. I’m not sure why, although a friend had pointed out beforehand that you’d get good odds on the celebrities scoring a penalty in the match. He suggested my tackling was so poor that no one would suspect anything if I mistimed a challenge in my own box. But after the spectacular failure of my betting scam against Wimbledon, I wasn’t up for that and actually thought I might be able to help defend a corner. The ball was whipped in and smashed me straight in the face, exploded the end of my nose and blood burst everywhere. I needed treatment on the touchline but there was no way I was going off with a bloody nose, I’d never hear the end of it. The physio managed to stop the bleeding but, as I ran back on, I pulled a calf muscle and had to go off.

  The after-match party was pretty good. I wasn’t a great one for getting involved in drinking binges so I went and found a quiet seat on my own. I was soon joined by Robbie Williams, who came and sat on the floor next to me. I have a lot of time for him. I like his music and his attitude. He was a top man and we chatted for half an hour about football and music, although I’m not sure he shared my taste for Shakin’ Stevens. I did go and see Take That in concert with two of my aunties and I must have been the only straight male there.

  I enjoyed playing Masters football, the annual tournament on Sky for ex-pros aged 35 and over. We never did very well but I did have the distinction of being the first player ever to be sent off. We were playing Chelsea and, for some reason, our former defender Ken Monkou decided to turn out for them rather than us. I flicked the ball over his head and, as I went round him, he stuck out an arm and ‘clothes-lined’ me. My chin collided with his arm. It was the most blatant foul you could get but r
eferee Kevin Lynch decided to wave play on. Given that it was a family event with lots of children in the crowd, I’m not proud to admit I forgot about the game and followed him all over the pitch questioning whether he had a father and making reference to his receding hairline. He didn’t even send me to the sin bin. Straight red.

  I also agreed to play for Eastleigh at non-league level, but that was more as a publicity stunt to help the club. I had a lot of friends there including several former teammates, so I signed on to help their profile. It came about after I agreed to play a one-off match at Andover. Eastleigh had already cruised the league title without me so it isn’t as though they needed me, but their manager Paul Doswell explained that Andover were struggling and asked if I’d play to help them get a decent crowd. I agreed and sure enough they trebled their normal gate. I was expecting a low-key, easy night but after 10 minutes we had my former Southampton teammate Phil Warner sent off. That meant we were down to 10 men, one of whom was 16 stone and very out of condition. We lost 6-1.

  Eastleigh’s assistant manager was David Hughes, who had been a very promising, talented midfielder at The Dell. He could have been a first-team regular for many years but for a succession of injuries at a cruelly young age. Unlike some players he really battled to try and get fit enough for the Premier League but his body couldn’t take it. Honestly, if he was a horse, he’d have been shot. He persuaded me to sign on the following season to try and help kick the club forward, and I was just doing a mate a favour. It felt a bit weird but I didn’t take it too seriously though I scored three goals in six games.