Men in White Suits Read online

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  In Men in White Suits, Simon Hughes meets some of the most colourful characters to have played for Liverpool Football Club during the 1990s. The resulting interviews, set against the historical backdrop of both the club and the city, deliver a rich portrait of life at Anfield during a decade when on-field frustrations were symptomatic of off-the-field mismanagement and ill-discipline.

  After the shock resignation of Kenny Dalglish and Graeme Souness’s ill-fated reign, the Reds – under the stewardship of Roy Evans – displayed a breathtaking style led by a supremely talented young group of British players whose names featured as regularly on the front pages of the tabloids as they did on the back. Indeed, such was their celebrity status, the Daily Mail was the first newspaper to tag Evans’s team the ‘Spice Boys’.

  Yet despite their flaws, this was undoubtedly a group of intriguing individuals: mavericks, playboys, goal-scorers and luckless defenders. Wearing off-white Armani suits, their confident personalities were exemplified in their pre-match walk around Wembley before the 1996 FA Cup Final (a 1–0 defeat to Manchester United). Once the Evans era was over, a very different cycle began under Gérard Houllier and his French revolution.

  In stark contrast to the media-coached, on-message interviews given by today’s top stars, the blunt, ribald and sometimes cutting recollections of the footballers featured in Men in White Suits provide a rare insight into this fascinating era in Liverpool’s long and illustrious history.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Foreword by Jamie Carragher

  Introduction

  CHAPTER 1 Jan Mølby, 1984–96

  CHAPTER 2 Nick Tanner, 1988–94

  CHAPTER 3 Ronny Rosenthal, 1990–94

  CHAPTER 4 Jamie Redknapp, 1991–2002

  CHAPTER 5 Jason McAteer, 1995–99

  CHAPTER 6 John Scales, 1994–96

  CHAPTER 7 Patrik Berger, 1996–2003

  CHAPTER 8 David Thompson, 1993–2000

  CHAPTER 9 Erik Meijer, 1999–2000

  CHAPTER 10 Graeme Souness, 1978–84 and 1991–94

  CHAPTER 11 Roy Evans, 1963–98

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Also by Simon Hughes

  Copyright

  For Rosalind, who will now have to read this.

  FOREWORD

  Alex Ferguson once claimed that his greatest achievement in football was knocking Liverpool Football Club off its perch at the top of the English game. The comment was accepted as an undisputed fact even though it isn’t really true.

  In the early 1990s, Liverpool went from champions to mid table in a few years and it had nothing to do with United’s emergence. It wasn’t as if Liverpool and United were going head to head for titles over a couple of years and United suddenly raced away over the horizon and into the sunset, leaving Liverpool behind.

  Liverpool slipped away and United took advantage of the space at the top. Instead of beating Liverpool to titles, United finished ahead of unfashionable sides like Aston Villa and Norwich City. Liverpool’s fall was self-inflicted.

  Although in terms of results and league positions Liverpool’s decline began under Graeme Souness, you could debate all day long where the problems started.

  I joined Liverpool on the YTS a few months after Graeme left Liverpool in 1994 and Roy Evans was installed as his replacement. While training with the reserves, I could see there were a lot of issues with players who had been signed by Graeme and that Roy now wanted to get rid of. Players like Julian Dicks, Don Hutchison and Mark Walters had all been cut from the first-team picture but, because they were on big contracts, Roy was finding it difficult to move them out. He made them train with the reserves, and as they knew they had no real future at Anfield they were understandably demotivated and didn’t always set the best example.

  One pre-season, I remember Dicks attempting long-distance running around the perimeter of Liverpool’s Melwood training ground and getting lapped. The perimeter is huge. He’d be cutting the biggest corner you’ve ever seen to try to catch up and nobody would say anything.

  As a teenager, you don’t know any different, so you laugh along with it all. You begin to think that this is what it must be like when you’re a Liverpool first-team player: the allowances you are afforded. I’m not saying I wanted any of that but the management clearly could not afford to have disillusioned players at the club.

  Around the same time, the young players in Liverpool’s first team were given the ‘Spice Boys’ label. Lads like Jamie Redknapp, Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman were unlucky and suffered as a result of the behaviour of other squad members who were focusing on going out and having a good time rather than trying to persuade the manager they were worthy of a place in the team.

  In reality, those who were tarnished by the Spice Boys tag, including Jamie, Robbie and Steve, as well as others like Phil Babb and Jason McAteer, were not big drinkers who sat in a pub all day. They might have gone to a nightclub and met girls but that did not mean they were getting drunk. They were not the hell-raisers everybody on the outside thought they were. Lads of a similar age at other clubs were all doing the same thing but at Anfield it seemed to matter more because Liverpool narrowly missed out on the title in successive seasons. Look at Ryan Giggs and Lee Sharpe and others at United. They were in the same social circle but weren’t judged in the same way as Liverpool’s Spice Boys.

  I was invited to pre-season training at Melwood for the first time aged sixteen. I’d only just finished my GCSE exams. Robbie was the player every lad in Liverpool wanted to be. Then there were John Barnes and Ian Rush – living legends. I was doing the same running as them, the same ball-work as them and playing in the same small-sided matches. I’d go home and tell all my mates about it. It was brilliant. During sessions, I wouldn’t say much. I’d just listen closely to what everyone around me was talking about. There was lots of piss taking and you had to learn how to give it and take it.

  It was a big jump to make. I’d always played twelve months ahead of my age group. When I was ten, I was playing with and against eleven year olds. When I was eleven, I was playing with and against twelve year olds. Suddenly, at sixteen, my teammates and opponents were often twice my age. I was competing with fully grown men. But we were all game. Nowadays, if you sign for Liverpool at sixteen you usually remain within your own age group, progressing into the under-18s then the under-21s. Then, it was a free-for-all. You had to get involved. Nobody made it easier for you because you were the youngest on the pitch.

  I didn’t know what to expect, because I was inexperienced and new to it all. What I could see was that Barnes was the best player in training every single day and had a fantastic attitude. Rush was different because he was a striker and strikers tend to save themselves for the game at the end of the week. You could never question Rushy’s attitude but he didn’t run around all day. That was just his manner and always had been. Both players set the right example.

  I played with Rush in the reserves and he was ruthlessly efficient. He always did a shift and led the way. I later made my first-team debut in central-midfield with Barnes. What a player. Unbelievable. As an Evertonian, I had stood in the Gwladys Street end only a few years earlier, watching him bend one in for Liverpool during the 4-4 FA Cup tie that proved to be Kenny Dalglish’s last match in charge before resigning as manager. Suddenly, I was running alongside him in midfield.

  Liverpool’s way of thinking was drilled into me by brilliant youth coaches like Steve Heighway, Hughie McAuley and Dave Shannon. The same attitudes existed at first-team level, where Roy, as the manager, was
assisted by Ronnie Moran. The training was exactly the same as it had been since the days of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley. The famous wooden shooting boards were there and every session finished with a five-a-side match. There was no suggestion that things should change, even though other clubs were going through big transformations at this time.

  I remember Roy bringing in an extra coach with experience in rugby to help with aerobic sessions. His name was Andy Clarke. Ronnie was in charge of training but nobody had had the courage to tell him that Andy was coming in to try to improve our warm-ups. Although Ronnie would eventually agree it was a good idea, on Andy’s first morning he was still none the wiser and you could feel the tension. Because things had been done a certain way at Liverpool with a lot of success over so many years, there was resistance to change. Ronnie had quite a temper and it’s fair to say he instilled fear. Over the next few months, Ronnie called Andy ‘Tippy-Tappy’ because he liked to use a rope ladder for short sprints.

  There is no doubt that Liverpool needed to move with the times and modernize. But some of the old ways still worked. If the first team had won on a Saturday and did not have another game until the following weekend, the players were given the Monday off. The coaches would still be at Melwood. Roy, Ronnie, Steve, Hughie and Dougie Livermore would team up and select the best reserve players to be on their side, along with the first-team fellas returning from injury. David Thompson and I would regularly be chosen alongside figures like Jan Mølby and we’d play against the rest of the YTS lads. There would be no positions. I’d find myself at right-back then suddenly at leftwing. The young players would do all of the running for the coaches but in turn they guided us. There would be nuggets of golden advice that I carried with me throughout my career. Ronnie had been a left-back and knew a lot about positioning and tackling. While the game was going on, he’d help me understand what was happening in real-time. I’ve had managers since who want to stop sessions every couple of minutes to explain how they expect football to be played. This was learning on the job and it made the development process a lot quicker than if a coach had constantly been blowing his whistle, breaking up play.

  Immediately after my full first-team debut against Aston Villa in January 1997, I did an interview with a newspaper. I didn’t want to come across as big-headed and so I said, ‘I know John Barnes will be back next week as well as Michael Thomas … I’m sure they’ll return to the team.’ I was just trying to be humble and say the right thing. A few days later, Sammy Lee came over and asked me why I’d said that. ‘Never make it easy for a manager to leave you out,’ he told me. ‘Make it as hard as possible – you’ve played, scored and performed well.’ That always stuck with me. It was my first big lesson.

  Deep down, I had confidence in my ability. I believed I should get selected more often. I remember going to Roy’s office at eighteen telling him I should be in the team. I told him I was better than John Barnes, Jamie Redknapp and Michael Thomas. I wasn’t being big-headed or cocky. That kind of inner confidence was necessary to get ahead. If you’re a teenager and want to play for Liverpool, you need to have character. You need to embrace confrontation. I might have been kidding myself but you had to think like that to survive and progress. I was never nervous playing for the first team.

  I wasn’t the only player knocking on Roy’s door. In the modern game, players seem to accept squad rotation a lot more. In that 1996–97 season, every Monday there would be five or six players queuing up outside the manager’s office. I saw this happening and thought, ‘Well, if they’re doing it, so am I.’

  It would always be a constructive discussion. Roy loved it. He wasn’t a soft touch and wouldn’t shy away from difficult conversations. It might have been different with senior pros but he gave me the impression he wanted players to come and talk to him. Initially, I’d tell Ronnie or Sammy that I was frustrated and they’d look at me as if I was daft – ‘Go and speak to Roy.’ It stopped resentment building up amongst the squad and helped morale. There is nothing worse than a player whingeing in the corner of the dressing room because he isn’t happy but doing nothing about it when the person who can help change things is just a few feet away.

  When most people think about Liverpool in the 1990s, three games spring immediately to mind. The first is obviously the white-suit FA Cup final, which I will come to shortly. The others are the 4–3 wins over Newcastle United at Anfield. Those latter games supposedly epitomized the Liverpool team: brilliant in attack and terrible in defence. Yet before the Newcastle games in 1996 and 1997, both of which fell in the final three months of the season, Liverpool held the best defensive record in the Premier League, conceding fewer goals than any other team. In those seasons, Liverpool completed their campaign with the second and third best defensive records – just behind the legendary Arsenal back four that was evolving under Arsène Wenger.

  Liverpool did not have world-class defenders. But the defence as a unit was not as terrible as many make out. It was the manner in which they conceded goals that led to the dubious myth – David James flapping against rivals like United, or the team somehow losing matches they really needed to win. It suggests to me that at key moments there was either a lack of leadership or even confidence that they could see it through.

  Had Liverpool beaten a major rival to a trophy in the mid nineties, giving the players that unique taste of victory, history might have been different. There is no doubt, in my opinion, that during the 1996–97 season Liverpool should have won the league for instance. That year, we played some of the best football seen at Anfield in the last twenty-five years.

  I later played under Gérard Houllier and Rafa Benítez in teams that were more aggressive and dogged. They probably had a better understanding of how to grind out a victory. But Roy’s side were unbelievable at times that season. Liverpool went to Old Trafford and Manchester United did not get a kick of the ball. Robbie Fowler would score hat-tricks, McManaman was unstoppable in midfield and Liverpool would be smashing opponents three or four nil quite regularly. After I made my debut, I was on the bench a dozen or so times, but I was always inside Anfield, watching whether I was in the squad or not.

  Yet the breathtaking football was not enough to secure the title and the following season we fell away. It had been argued that the team needed a ball-winning midfielder in the mould of Paul Ince. So Roy went out and signed Paul from Inter Milan. It was seen as quite a coup, because not many players that have been a success at Manchester United join Liverpool even by an indirect route. His signing was seen as the one that would propel us to another level. But Paul had played 4–4–2 at both United and Inter. It was the way he liked to play. This Liverpool team was set up with three at the back, with Steve McManaman in a roving, attacking midfield role. When Paul came into the side, the formation switched to 4–4–2. Steve was shunted out on the left of midfield. Even though we managed to finish third, our performances were not the same. It was an average team. The centre-backs were not strong or powerful enough to operate in a two and the full-backs could not really defend. To accommodate Ince, the whole shape of the team changed and things were not the same. Soon, Roy was on his way out.

  Houllier came in, initially as joint manager in July 1998 and was a lot more intense. He was very hands-on. He involved himself in every aspect of the way the club was run. Patrice Bergues was his most trusted lieutenant on the coaching staff and he was the nice cop. With Roy Evans and Ronnie Moran it was the other way around, with the manager being the good guy and Ronnie taking on the tougher role.

  Both Roy and Gérard were desperate for the result but Roy wanted to play good football as well. For Gérard, it was solely about the result. Rafa Benítez was the same. If we had to play long to win, we’d play long. Roy was happy if we won 1–0 but not entirely satisfied. He wanted 3–0 or 4–0. Ultimately, however, Roy’s approach did not win Liverpool the league title that everyone inside Anfield craved.

  It frustrates me that there are some players who played for Liver
pool in Istanbul when we won the Champions League in 2005 who were not very good but are defined by that success and remembered fondly. Unfortunately, a few brilliant players – Fowler, McManaman and Redknapp – are probably defined by the FA Cup final defeat to United in 1996, when the squad turned up at Wembley wearing those silly white suits. They can’t escape from it.

  If I had been a senior player at Liverpool at the time, I would have stopped this happening. As a senior player, you have to be thinking of the bigger picture. What if we lose? I can’t believe nobody thought about that. It was not as if Liverpool were playing a Mickey Mouse team. You’re playing Manchester United. You know about the rivalry. You know that every pass and tackle is going to be contested. Yet still you turn up looking like that.

  I still can’t believe it was allowed to happen. It was a massive mistake and it gave the wrong impression, feeding a reputation that still follows all of those players around today.

  Jamie Carragher

  INTRODUCTION

  ‘Something has shifted; there’s a new feeling on the streets. There’s a desire for change.’ Alastair Campbell, Labour Party Press Secretary, autumn 1996

  ON SATURDAY, 13 January 1990, when Liverpool played their first home league game of the new decade against Luton Town, 35,312 people turned up to watch a frustrating 2–2 draw. The Liverpool side that chilly afternoon included Alan Hansen, Peter Beardsley, Ian Rush and John Barnes, players that had contributed at different stages towards the collection of twenty trophies in the 1980s.

  In the months that followed, Liverpool would suffer the indignity of dropping to second on two occasions thanks to the efforts of a bold Aston Villa side managed by Graham Taylor. From the start of April, however, Liverpool were in cruise control, securing the First Division championship easily with two fixtures to spare.

  It says much about Liverpool’s lore that even though there were no more titles, the final home game of the nineties against Wimbledon attracted a considerably higher gate of 44,107. A 3–1 victory over Wimbledon strengthened Liverpool’s position in fifth, seven points off Leeds in top place. As had been the case in many of the previous nine seasons, Manchester United proved to be the only team consistently capable of chasing a lead and by May 2000 Leeds were toppled and United were champions by the huge margin of eighteen points.