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WHY SOUTHAMPTON picked Chris Nicholl to replace Lawrie McMenemy I will never fully understand. Yes, it was the safe option, but he was not up to the job and he did well to last as many years as he did. It was only because Southampton had no history of sacking their managers that Chris was in charge for six seasons, in my opinion well beyond his true shelf life.
Chris was an English-born Northern Ireland international, a formidable defender who took a perverse pride in the number of times he had broken his nose playing football. His nose certainly bore the scars of many a battle and as a player you very much wanted him on your side. He was frightening to play against because he was hard in the tackle, strong in the air and rigidly disciplined. Whatever the occasion he gave 100 per cent and no opponent came off the pitch having had a comfortable afternoon. After playing for us at the end of a long and successful career which also included Aston Villa he left to learn about management and coaching at Grimsby, a good place to cut his teeth since the club had also produced McMenemy.
Maybe Saints’ directors thought Chris was the next Lawrie, having served a similar apprenticeship, but things don’t work like that in football. They were two very different people for a start. Where Lawrie enjoyed the media spotlight and spoke with fluency and style, Chris was introverted and suspicious. Where Lawrie was prepared to take chances with some of the game’s biggest egos and reputations, Chris preferred to recruit from the lower divisions players he knew he could control.
In fairness to Chris, when he became manager in 1985, what we were not aware of at the time was that he had been told to cut the large wage bill he had inherited from Lawrie. It wasn’t crippling in the way it damaged the club 20 years later but the parsimonious directorship could see the danger signs and told him it had to be reduced. That of course meant removing the star names and replacing them with cheaper alternatives, at the same time keeping Southampton in the First Division and competing with clubs who could afford to pay large salaries. Any manager would have found that difficult.
Having spent two years examining players in the third and fourth divisions he reckoned there were plenty of decent players there thirsting for a chance to step up. They would also not cost as much in wages. This was his theory and with some of the more expensive players getting on a bit in years, his task was always going to be difficult. The directors had at least given him a much-respected number two in Tony Barton, who had led Villa to European Cup glory, and I always found the softly-spoken Barton a much more sympathetic character and far easier to approach. In contrast, Chris struggled to get his ideas across and could be reluctant and withdrawn.
None of which made it easier for him to cope with some of the players Lawrie had left behind. Chief among those was the highly talented but personally erratic left-back Mark Dennis. The papers referred to him as ‘Mad Mark’ and ‘Psycho’ because he was always being sent off in the days when it was comparatively hard to get a red card, and his off-field escapades and domestic dramas were gleefully reported. Mark was a brilliant footballer and an amiable lad but he was not easy to handle and Chris had no clue how to do that in a fair and sensitive way.
Daft as a brush is an expression which comes to mind when talking about Mark, a real joker and a man without malice or deliberate ill-intention. Mark had a habit of not coming into training and some of his excuses didn’t bear close scrutiny. Once or twice his car ‘broke down’ and one occasion he said he was lost. Poor old Chris had his hands full, trying to think of a way to get the best out of him and keep him in check and disciplined. They were total opposites as people. Chris tried dropping him, telling the world he was injured, and trying to sell a player with his list of misdemeanours was always going to be extremely hard. As a result, we needed another left-back and before I knew it, Chris was asking me as club captain to do the team a favour by dropping back from my position as an attacking midfielder.
I couldn’t refuse. But I wasn’t happy either at being the fall-guy for Mark Dennis not being able to sort out his life and for the manager not being able to bring him into line. Over the next year or two I was being asked to play more and more in that position or as a sweeper and I felt I was being wasted. I prided myself as a professional footballer in being able to play any position on the pitch if required. Playing for Middlesbrough at West Bromwich on one occasion I was asked to go in goal when Jimmy Stewart went off injured. John Neal felt I could handle a ball and for 30 minutes I kept a clean sheet until such time as Stewart could come back after treatment. John Wile and Cyrille Regis, two outstanding headers of the ball, were against me and must have fancied their chances but I got away with it.
But back to Dennis. I may have been predominantly left-footed but I could have played anywhere on the right. I just felt that, while I could coast along at left-back, my strengths as a goalscoring midfield player were not being used. Opponents must have been pleased to see me back there, especially as I was not the best tackler.
Over the next year or so from his arrival in the summer of 1985, Chris allowed, or was forced to allow, Mark Wright, Andy Townsend and the last of our superstars, Peter Shilton, to move on and they were never adequately replaced. Even Mark Dennis went eventually in 1987, briefly to QPR and then Crystal Palace, the major part of his career over at 26.
Chris Nicholl’s answer was to delve into the divisions outside the first, backing his judgement that some unfulfilled and undiscovered talent lay there waiting to be unearthed. The best of those that he brought to Southampton was Glenn Cockerill, a busy and determined midfield player from Sheffield United, but some of his other recruits were not consistently up to it. Gerry Forrest from Rotherham was a good right-back and wasn’t the worst of his signings by any means but like a lot of players coming into the top flight at an advanced football age, he lacked a little self-belief and confidence. In effect he was replacing Mick Mills, who had left in 1985, and it wasn’t fair to expect a guy with his background to fill the boots of a former England captain.
Others like Gordon Hobson, who followed Chris from Grimsby eventually, were out of their depth although he did get a few goals. The problem for us all, particularly the manager, was that Southampton crowds had grown used to seeing the best and as players we had grown used to playing with the best. So to see someone like Hobson up against high-class defenders every week was frustrating and worrying. In the two years I spent with Chris as manager it became increasingly clear that we were bringing in second-rate players and those of us left from Lawrie’s regime grew to be unhappy and unsettled.
The first statement he made to us as the new manager of Southampton contained the phrase ‘I’m not Lawrie McMenemy’, which soon became apparent, and, ‘I’m not a pretty face because I always gave everything for the team. You must all give 100 per cent in the same way.’ Devoid of charisma or any kind of public relations acumen, the new gaffer struggled from the start to get his ideas across to the players.
There was one wonderful story to illustrate the confusion and lack of coherence in training when Chris decided we should play a game of shadow football in which we were playing ‘against’ no one, a simulation ploy aimed at getting us to be thinking about the way we played. Colin Clarke was with us by then. Clarke kicked off, passed the ball to Hobson, Hobson to Case, Case to Francis Benali and Benali back to goalkeeper Tim Flowers. The problem was Flowers was putting his cap in the net and didn’t anticipate the Benali pass so the ball trickled over the line into the goal. One-nil down against no one. It took us a further 30 minutes to ‘equalise’. The writing was firmly on the wall. Chris, a deep thinker who kept a lot to himself, quietly despaired.
At least there was Barton. We all spoke to him more than we did to Chris because he knew how to handle players, which Chris did not. Management is an art and Lawrie, for one, and Barton, for another, understood that every player was different and that some of us had problems away from the training ground. Mine certainly hadn’t disappeared and there was always Mark Dennis lurking in the background like a needy child.
We still had some good players aboard when 1985/86 kicked off. Shilton was still first choice, Townsend, Case, Wright and Kevin Bond were there, Nick Holmes, Steve Moran, Joe Jordan and Danny Wallace were still around and, before my conversion to defence, I played in all but one game, scoring 15 league and cup goals to make Nicholl’s decision later to withdraw me from an attacking position all the odder in my estimation.
It was Southampton’s centenary season so it was an additional honour to be captain at such a landmark but in truth the club was in a state of flux and never more was this evident than in our opening six winless matches, four of them lost. The club was coming to terms with Chris Nicholl who in turn was coming to terms with his new team. It was not a pleasant introduction.
Cockerill was Chris’s first big signing and he made his debut on Luton’s notorious plastic pitch where we were walloped 7-0. Playing on artificial surfaces is difficult at the best of times, requiring an adjustment, but on the day we were lucky it was only seven. At the end of the game the manager was a rattled man. I had planned to make the short trip from Luton to Heathrow to catch a flight to the North-East to visit my daughter but Chris put a stop to that. ‘You’re coming back with us because we’re having a meeting at The Dell on Sunday morning,’ he told me. I had no choice but to obey.
Glenn Cockerill took a lot of stick from fans in that game, although it wasn’t his fault by any means. Glenn went on to prove himself a good player but throughout my time at the club with him he was the butt of abuse because the supporters saw him as Mr Average, which shows how spoilt they had been over the previous decade.
Luckily we had a mid-season revival, culminating in a 3-1 win over Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest in the last home match of the year in which I had the satisfaction of scoring twice. Our away form was poor all season and in the end we were grateful to finish 14th, not the sort of position Southampton were used to, and there was a nasty sting in the tail. Keith Granger only ever made two league appearances in his entire career but he will be remembered by Saints followers for letting in 11 goals. He shouldn’t even have been playing because he was our third choice behind Shilton and Phil Kite.
Kite had dislocated his shoulder in training and as we came to board the coach for Everton, newly crowned as league champions, it was announced that Shilton would not be joining us because he was unwell. Keith, our youth team goalkeeper and not ready for this sort of occasion, was hastily drafted in to the team as rumours circulated about the reason for Shilton being ‘unwell’. If he knew, Chris was not telling us. But the reason was bound to emerge eventually among the players and it did – Peter had been on a ‘bender’.
Nothing went right for us at Goodison Park in his considerable absence with Peter Willis, a referee I knew well from the North-East, refusing to change his mind after allowing a Derek Mountfield goal to stand although the Everton defender had clearly used a hand. Keith’s confidence ebbed from that very moment and 6-1 let us off a bit lightly. Shilton was still ‘unwell’ two days later when we ended our season at White Hart Lane and were on the wrong end of a 5-3 thrashing. As for Keith, I’m not sure he was ever the same goalkeeper, so traumatic had the drubbings been for him.
Our saving grace was the FA Cup. The draw for the third round is always eagerly awaited and imagine my pleasure when we were drawn to play Middlesbrough in the third round at Ayresome Park. I hadn’t been back much since moving south but there were still some familiar faces among the stewards and backroom staff who were keen to be reacquainted with me even though we beat them. The reception was as hospitable as ever but the team was not the Middlesbrough I remembered and cherished and we won 3-1 with a hat-trick from Wallace.
Wigan were our fourth round opponents and it was a particularly good match for me in winning 3-0, Cockerill getting the first from my corner and then I added two more, the second of which came from a rebound after my penalty had been saved.
Millwall made life difficult for us in the fifth round. We needed two matches and penalties to see them off in the Milk Cup and they were no easier to put away here in the FA Cup. It was goalless at The Dell and Wallace got the only goal in the replay at The Den. Brighton at the Goldstone in the quarter-finals was straightforward enough, a 2-0 win, leaving us to play Liverpool in the semi at White Hart Lane.
There was, of course, great excitement in the city at the prospect of Wembley being only one match away and rightly so. But we were never going to win this one and for that I must blame Chris Nicholl and his team selection. We had our bad luck, I can’t dispute that, but we made life difficult for ourselves long before the kick-off. There was nothing Chris could have done about Wallace’s injury, sustained at Brighton, and then Mark Wright broke his leg during the match but we didn’t help ourselves either.
If Liverpool had a weakness at the time it was in the air at the back and we still possessed in Jordan one of the best headers in the game, just the man to exploit it as long as we could supply the crosses into the box for him to attack. It was an obvious tactic, certainly, and no doubt Liverpool were mindful of the threat Jordan would pose. Wallace did play, without being anywhere near his best, but Jordan didn’t. For some unknown reason and to our great surprise, Chris dropped him, a decision which must have delighted Liverpool when they saw our team sheet half an hour before the kick-off. You would have to ask Chris why he did this, ask him what he thought would be gained from leaving out our biggest threat. He might say that Joe had only played spasmodically and had not yet scored a goal but Joe thrived on the big occasion, knowing that in his declining football years this was a challenge to be met.
Losing Wright in a collision with Shilton and Craig Johnston was obviously a major setback at 0-0 but who did Chris ask to fill in his place in central defence? Me. I said I was versatile but at 5ft 7ins I was nobody’s idea of a towering centre-half and of all the people asked to replace Wright I would have thought I was the last. More to the point, we had therefore lost another attacker by me being withdrawn so that we had no option but to sit back and invite Liverpool to attack us, hoping forlornly to hit them on the break.
Bond made a mistake in extra time to let in Ian Rush but in winning 2-0 Liverpool were always the better team. We lost because we put the wrong team on to the pitch and got what we deserved. For Chris Nicholl, reaching a semi-final in his first season of top level management was something to put on his CV but as the season drew to a close he was presiding over an increasingly unhappy camp, although I don’t think he knew it. A lot of players no longer wanted to play for Southampton, the residue of the team Lawrie left behind were either coming to the end naturally or wanted to get away to further their careers. All the while Chris was looking for ways of removing the more expensive players because our wages were considered too high.
I was among those. I may have been captain but if he could have sold me, he would, of that I’m sure. I had a year left on my contract at this stage but I began to wonder what might happen after that. I thought to myself, what’s best for David Armstrong? I was on a good salary, Maureen and the children were happily settled in the south and, for all the problems we left behind in the North-East still prevalent, we had a contented and peaceful home life. The last thing I wanted to do was to disturb all this and move for its own sake just to get away from Nicholl and a declining team.
Two players kept Southampton safely in mid-table the following season, 1986/87. That is maybe a bit of an exaggeration because Matthew Le Tissier was not then the outstanding player he was to become in a few years’ time. But the other one was testament to Chris’s knowledge of the football in the lower divisions. From Bournemouth came Colin Clarke, a prodigious scorer in the Third Division who had impressed our manager during the World Cup finals in Mexico playing for Northern Ireland. Against world-class defenders he saw enough in the powerfully-built Clarke to suggest he might make the transition to the top level, and he did. Clarke announced his arrival with a hat-trick on his debut in a 5-1 win over QPR at The Dell and went on to get another later in the season against Newcastle, also at home.
Le Tissier, aged 18, showed his potential with another treble, against Leicester, and Hobson got a hat-trick against Manchester City. That makes it sound like we had a super season, but for all Clarke’s 20 league goals we finished 12th and I don’t look back on it with any particular affection. This was partly because of the injury I got in November when I collided with David Rocastle and partly because I ended it playing full-time at left-back.
I got only the one goal against Liverpool in September, my lowest season’s tally since I was a kid at Middlesbrough, and I think I knew deep down it could well be my last at The Dell from quite early on.
The highlight was a two-legged semi-final in the Milk Cup against Liverpool, a draw at home followed by a 3-0 defeat at Anfield but there were many more low points. We actually lost only two of our last 13 league games, the majority after I had been converted to left-back, but I don’t think anyone was deceived into thinking that this might be the start of a new career for me. I wasn’t. In fact by the time I played in my 268th and final match for Southampton in May 1987 in a 1-1 draw with Coventry I was already in dispute with Nicholl and the club.
One or two stalwarts were on their way or had gone by the time all this took place. Jordan had moved on, Dennis was no longer being chosen and heading for QPR and then Nick Holmes played the last of his 444 matches for the club in February.
I began to feel a bit isolated. Nick was a fantastic club man, an animal on the left side of the pitch, quiet and mild-mannered off it, and dedicated to the Southampton cause. If you had to select an example of how a professional should perform and behave you would choose Nick and there was never anyone fitter.
My problem with Southampton was monetary but was also about my pride, which was badly hurt. At the time of my injury no midfield player in the country had scored more goals, more regularly than me. Absolutely none. Yet 16 of my 22 league appearances that final season were spent at left-back, a job a young lad could have done just as well although Mark Dennis could have done it better than both of us. Mark had fallen out with the manager and was finished in his eyes but rather than buy a replacement, he put me in the number three shirt and told me to get on with it.
I used to say to Nicholl, ‘The only way to win matches is to score goals. I have always been able to do that. Why keep me away from attacking positions?’ But Chris had no real response because he struggled to express himself or to provide a rational reason for placing my square left peg in a round hole. It was illogical, unreasonable and in my view a waste of an experienced attacking midfield player. Lacking all kinds of managerial skills, the ability to keep everyone satisfied for as long as possible, all he did was make enemies. I felt abused, my loyalty taken for granted, as this ridiculous situation persisted until the bitter end, and it was a bitter end.
If he was worried about my fitness, he had no cause at that stage and I proved it on a post-season tour of Singapore where I played in every game without any physical reaction. All the time I was hoping the club would come up with some kind of financial offer to keep me for a seventh season and beyond, although I wouldn’t have wanted to spend any more time than was necessary at left-back. When it came, I couldn’t have been more disappointed. Chris took me aside, explained the financial problems the club were going through, which by then I knew about anyway, and then said he wanted me for next season on a pay-as-you-play basis on top of a small basic. This was his half-hearted effort to get me to sign a contract in which I would have dropped my salary by between £15,000 and £20,000 a year. I worked out that I couldn’t have earned any more than about £35,000 at the very most and of course in my social predicament it was completely unacceptable.
It was a huge drop and Southampton obviously knew I would reject it, which I did. I believe I had reason to feel let down because I had given wholehearted service for six years, some of the best in the club’s history, and my only injury blemish had been in that final season. Statistics were on my side. While I was out of the team in the middle of the season we had slipped into the relegation zone by the end of February but when I came back we picked up and went on that fine late run. Just a coincidence? Maybe.
To be honest, I found Southampton’s attitude insulting and patronising. It would have been better if they had simply given me a free transfer and thanked me for my contribution. I would have been unhappy but I would have understood it and moved on. But to make an offer, which was so poor, expecting it to be rejected, was hard to fathom. If I had a history of injury frailty I would have seen their point of view, but 268 games in six years speaks of consistency and durability.
By turning down Southampton’s offer I was available on a free transfer anyway but it was a sad and needlessly confrontational end to my otherwise very contented and sometimes thrilling career with the club. I don’t know if it was Chris Nicholl’s idea to make me that offer or if it came from higher. I think it was designed to make Saints look good in the eyes of their supporters. The club could say they had come up with a deal which I, as club captain, had turned down. It made me look like the culprit. Since neither the club nor I were ever going to make public the details it looked as if I had departed in a huff. I suppose in the light of what happened a few months later at Bournemouth they could say they were proved right, that I had a weakness, but until that injury at Exeter I had been doing fine.
So, out of principle, I quit Southampton with a heavy heart and a sense of grievance. I still thought I could play in the First Division and, as I had done at Middlesbrough, I had enjoyed a great relationship with the fans. For that reason alone, I considered I was being forced out with business unfinished. Here comes the irony. When I eventually signed for Bournemouth I agreed a contract which provided me with less money than Southampton had offered. But, as I say, there was a principle at stake and I couldn’t see how I could ever work for Chris Nicholl again.
This was a shame because, for a start, I was looking forward to helping the young Matthew Le Tissier develop. Matt was my apprentice when he first came over from Guernsey, cleaning my boots, and you could see from day one that here was someone exceptional. He made his debut at 16 and in my last season he was just beginning to show the sort of qualities which should have won 50 England caps, not the paltry handful he got.
When it became clear various England managers from Terry Venables to Glenn Hoddle and Bobby Robson were suspicious of his ‘laid-back’ style, I was convinced he should go somewhere he would be better appreciated. There was a rumour that Michel Platini, then the French international manager, wanted him to play for France, which through his Channel Islands connection he could have done. I went to see him one day to get a ball signed and I told him that if I was in his position, with options available, I would defect to the French. They were among the best teams in the world at the time and he would have suited their style, as Platini must have realised. I think that with a bit of adjustment he could have become a big player for France and while he listened with respect to my argument, his heart was with England and they repaid him by ignoring him.
When you look at Matt’s record in the Premier League there was a spell of a few years when no one got more goals consistently than Matt and it was not as though he was getting them while playing for one of the major clubs. Southampton owed him a massive debt for keeping them almost single-handedly in the Premier League for so many years and I’m not sure many other players could have done what he did. He was a fantastic, unfulfilled talent and I am amazed that those managers concerned never looked beyond that rather cumbersome, slow-footed approach and saw the way he would glide past defenders without appearing to accelerate before unleashing those magical long-distance shots. I would have thought he might have made a World Cup or European Championship squad or two just for his unrivalled ability to take penalties.
Did he suffer from staying with Saints too long? I think he should have tested himself with a bigger club, and I say that as a friend, but he loved the club and even after what they did to me at the end, so did I.