We sit down together and discuss things carefully and in detail. Sam has his say and I have mine. And then toe reach a decision and agree that I am right.
My self-confidence and, yes, my ego knew no limits. I knew that we at Derby were on the way to becoming a major force, part of the elite of English football. On a personal level I was well aware of my notoriety and popularity as a national figure on television. Even though I possibly annoyed and upset as many viewers as I impressed, I'm certain very few reached for the 'off button while I was on the screen. I loved all that!
I loved what we had created at that old, unfashionable club, too. All the confidence I had experienced as a goal-scorer of exceptional ability was flooding through my veins again. I realised I could be as a manager what I had been as a player – the best in the business. It was a feeling that I simply could do no wrong. The players we had signed – Dave Mackay, Roy McFarland, John O'Hare, Alan Hinton, Archie Gemmill, Colin Todd and the last of the arrivals, Henry Newton – were all of the highest class. Taylor had an unrivalled eye for talent, and no-one could match my recruiting skills. Our ability to blend them into a balanced, exciting and successful team was proven for all to see. The record books showed Derby as League Champions and semi-finalists in the European Cup. Nothing could halt the march.
That's the way it seemed and that's the way it should have been – but for a combination of my ego, Taylor's pride, and the stubbornness of an old man who wanted to be seen to be running his club and regaining control of his outspoken, outrageous manager.
When Sam Longson brought Taylor and me from Hartlepools he had a vision. He wanted Derby transformed from the ranks of the run-of-the-mill, the humdrum, into something special, a club that could challenge the powerful élite for the glittering prizes and back-page headlines. Let this be a lesson to all young, would-be managers. Beware the 'friendly grandfather'. Beware the ambitious chairman who will 'give anything' for success. Beware the knife behind the smile!
In the beginning, there was no relationship in football closer that the one between Longson and me. It went beyond the normal chairman-manager partnership. It was a genuine, close friendship, between an old man and a brash young upstart, in whom he saw an opportunity to fulfil his dreams. There was a theory, and I cannot deny it, that Longson – the father of three daughters – regarded me as the son he never had. He certainly treated me as if I were of his own flesh and blood. He'd often call at our house, dropping off a leg of lamb and the mint sauce to go with it. He took my Mam and Dad to his holiday home close by the beach on Anglesey. He drove me thousands of miles in his cars – the Rolls-Royce or the gorgeous, sporty, silvery Mercedes. He allowed me to treat his Merc as my own. I didn't even need to ask, because the keys were always available and the open invitation was constant: 'If you want it, take it.' He gave me money, he gave me booze, he would have given me anything I wanted.
The first thing he gave me was a room in the Midland Hotel soon after I first moved down to start the job. Initially, I was 'billeted' in the more modest York Hotel across the road. One morning I saw the Indian cricket team leaving the Midland, and their skipper, the Nawab of Pataudi, wandered across to have a few words. It was him who recognised me – honest! I told Longson: 'If the Indian touring team is staying at the Midland, how come your new manager is at the bloody York? I want to be where they are.'
I was moved straight away. It was there that I met Billy Wainwright, the hotel manager who became one of my closest friends, travelled throughout Europe with the team, and remains in regular touch today, although he has retired to his home town of Sheffield. The Midland Hotel became our second home. Mackay stayed there, McFarland lived there for a long spell, and the entire Derby side spent Friday nights there before home games. We even arranged for a barber to call in on a regular basis, to give a trim to those who needed one. I couldn't abide players turning out with untidy hair on a Saturday.
Longson once took Wainwright and me into Burberrys in London and bought me a beautiful, three-quarter-length suede coat. I'd never had a suede coat in my life. I trusted Billy's judgement on such things – he was always spotless and immaculate – and when he told me that the coat was 'top quality', that was good enough for me. I wore it for many years.
Taylor, as usual, was first to spot possible problems. He began telling me that I was getting too close to the chairman. 'The old bugger will do you if you're not careful.' I didn't understand his reservations at first. Everything was going so well. The team was brilliant, we knew we could make further signings, and we thought that it could only get better. Sam was treating me like a son. For my part, I was opening doors for him. I was taking him to matches and because he was with me, people would ask: 'Is that Sam Longson, chairman of Derby County?' That kind of thing grew on him. He enjoyed the notoriety.
We were on tour in Germany once, and West Ham were also there. Sam and I were sitting in the stand when he nudged me and said: 'Will you do me a favour?'
'Of course,' I said, 'what is it?' thinking he wanted me to nip out for a cup of tea.
'Will you introduce me to Bobby Moore?' I took him to the West Ham dressing-room, spoke to their manager, Ron Greenwood, and set up the meeting. I asked Sam if he'd like to meet Martin Peters and Geoff Hurst as well – seeing that we were in the company of World Cup heroes – but he said he only wanted to meet Bobby Moore. I don't think he'd heard of the other two!
Gradually I became more and more of a television personality. At first I would notify the board in advance of any planned appearances on the box. I didn't see the need – what business was it of theirs? And, in any case, the exposure was good publicity for the club – but Sam assured me it would keep things on a nice even keel. Taylor, meanwhile, was egging me on to do all the television I could. He was the best 'egger-on' in the business, just so long as he wasn't involved. He would say: 'Go and do the telly and take the chairman with you.' At the same time, remember, he expressed fears that we were getting too close.
On one particular occasion, when Barbara and I were invited to the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year Awards, we took Sam along. Taylor, who normally wouldn't venture as far as the local pub, came with us, bringing Lillian too. The late Graham Hill, Damon's father, who had I think finished third in the voting, later offered Barbara a lift back to the hotel. When she explained that we were with friends, Sam broke in, saying: 'I'll go,' and jumped into Hill's car. That was the man. And that was the life I had enabled him to lead. It was a relationship that seemed unbreakable, but then how many football managers have said that through the years? And finished with the sack?
Not only did my success allow him to rub shoulders with the rich, the not so rich, and the famous, but I also built him a new stand – the Ley Stand, opposite the players' tunnel at the Baseball Ground. Not only did we pay for it, with money generated through the turnstiles – we wouldn't have had it at all if I had not bargained with the managing director of Ley's steel factory. The plans revealed, apparently, that we didn't quite have enough room for the new structure. To accommodate the stand we needed another eighteen inches, encroaching into Ley's property. Crisis! So I went round there, alone as usual, and told the big boss what we needed. 'It's looking a bit run-down out there,' I said. 'I'll take down your old corrugated fence, replace it with a new one, and move back your pylons. After a week, you'll never know it's been done.'
I'd never been in a factory since my early working days at ICI but, again, my self-confidence outweighed any uncertainty and the direct approach such a feeling inspired must have startled anybody who got in my way. 'I'll have to put it to the board,' he said. 'Will there be any compensation?'
'F**k compensation,' I said. 'The eighteen inches of ground is no use to you whatsoever. We'll name the stand after your factory and give you season tickets.' I think it was what they would now call a 'package deal'. In any case, it did the trick. I went back to Longson and told him he could get on with building the new stand.
Trouble was lurking just around the corner, though. I gave him those few inches, but eventually he took a yard. I don't think there was one specific thing that soured our relationship, but my 'spies' began to notice and report back little instances which told that the old man was going cool on me. He had become something of a local hero in his home town of Chapel-en-le-Frith, basking in my reflected glory. What we had achieved at a relatively small-town club in the space of three or four years was unheard of. Longson found himself surrounded by 'friends' he didn't know he had. But they all began to ask the same question: 'Who runs Derby County – you or that big-headed manager of yours?' That sowed the seeds of concern in Longson's mind. If truth be known, the old so-and-so had an ego as big as mine.
Somebody else, somebody closer to home, helped ruin the relationship as well. Taylor! He began telling the chairman: 'It's time you realised how well Brian runs this club.' He was right. I did run it. I swept the terraces, I signed the players, I took the training every day, did the mail and walked the pitch every Sunday morning, plotting what was to be done next. I virtually lived at the Baseball Ground, and when I wasn't there I'd be visiting local hospitals, speaking at Rotary Clubs, and suchlike. Or appearing on national television, bringing the club the kind of publicity and exposure it had never known in its history. But instead of heightening Longson's appreciation, Taylor's words had the reverse effect. Longson began to believe that we had too much power and, to a certain extent, he was right. I had let it go to my head.
Something else was going wrong. The relationship with the club secretary, Stuart Webb, was cooling too. Football managers should be careful about the people who fill three specific jobs within their club – the secretary, the coach driver, and the lady who does the laundry. All are in positions where they know things, hear things. You have to be sure they are people who are totally trustworthy, who will not 'blab'.
Webb, or 'Webby' as he was known, had been recommended by Jimmy Gordon. We didn't know where to go for a secretary, being new to the game, but Jimmy said there was 'a lad at Preston who's supposed to be good'. I interviewed him with the vice-chairman, Sidney Bradley, who later asked me what I thought. 'He's quite impressive as far as I'm concerned,' I said, 'and I think we should give him a run.' Webb also looked immaculate – always did. He was perfectly summed up, years afterwards, by the late Geoffrey Green, football correspondent of The Times. Glancing at Webb, adorned in green evening jacket at a presentation dinner, Geoffrey described him as 'that most perfect of polished penguins'.
Webby was never a major problem. It's just that he tended to play both ends against the middle. He used to put on a front as a friend, but he wasn't one. Taylor twigged him before I did. 'Don't trust him,' he would warn, when Webb had left the room. I grabbed Webb by the lapels one day and told him: 'I'll put you through that bloody wall if you ever cause me any trouble. You came here to join the secretarial staff – you were nowt. Now you're walking round with 20,000 pesetas in your back-pocket' – as he did, being in charge of the money when Derby went on tour.
The secretary's position is a difficult one. It's never easy for a manager to have the club secretary as a friend because he has to serve his board of directors. I saw the secretary as the one who should mark my card about everything and everybody – and no bloody secrets. I was as open as any book anybody has ever read – as open as the Book of Remembrance.
Webby was clever. I saw, first-hand, the lengths he was prepared to go to in order to keep directors happy. On one occasion we were on tour in Spain. I had taken our Simon and Nigel with us and we ended up at an hotel with no swimming facilities. I told Webb: 'Just you find a pool for my kids.' Typical Stuart – on the phone for a minute or two and he came up with the use of the most beautiful pool at a private club. My kids were first in. I lay on the side, chuntering about this and that, while Taylor sat there smoking his fag. We heard Webby say to Jack Kirkland, the director in charge: 'Do you swim, Mr Kirkland?'
'Yes, I swim,' the director replied, 'I'll race you.' Webby mumbled something about not being that good a swimmer himself, but the bet was struck for a fiver. I acted as starter. One, two, three – and in they went. Kirkland, who had only one eye, still had his bloody glasses on. If the pool was fifty yards long Webby had swum twenty-five by the time one-eyed Jack had done ten. Suddenly, politics jumped in as well. Webby was that shrewd he started to back-peddle, and Kirkland beat him on the touch. Taylor drew on his cigarette, nudged me and said: 'Webby could have done two f**king lengths there and still done him. We've got to keep an eye on the secretary.'
When Taylor called to Kirkland: 'I'd no idea you could swim like that,' I had to bury my face in a towel. Taylor was the best and the funniest at taking the piss with a one-liner without them knowing it. Within seconds Webby had dived back into the pool – to retrieve Kirkland's specs off the bottom.
Taylor always kept Webb at arm's length. One day when I buzzed Stuart in his office, he said he'd be along in ten minutes. Taylor grabbed the phone and told him: 'You get down here. Now! When the gaffer asks you to come, you get your arse down here or I'll come and drag you down.' He was with us in the space of seconds.
Webb's power gradually increased. He opened a travel agency. He organised travel for our club and several others. He began attending league meetings. It's a strange thing, but if you 'get on' a wee bit in football all the doors start to open. Two or three years beforehand, nobody knew he existed. Once we had started being successful, Webb became a personality in his own right. Many years later, of course, he recruited the help of Robert Maxwell to save Derby from bankruptcy. I haven't seen Webby for several years but Barbara received a warm, complimentary letter from his wife, Josie, when I retired. That was a nice touch.
It's odd how Kirkland, a cantankerous old sod who eventually triggered the parting of the ways, kept cropping up or poking his nose in. There was the day he summoned me to his office and said: 'I'm going to give you some good advice – and listen to it. No matter how good you are, or how powerful you think you are, Stuart Webb has the ear of the chairman.' I didn't understand. 'The chairman listens to his secretary, all chairmen listen to their secretaries. They get to know everything and they pass it all on.' Sound advice – which I learned to appreciate a lot further down the line when I worked with Ken Smales at Nottingham Forest: the most trustworthy secretary I ever knew.
Slowly but surely, Longson began chipping away. There was a bar in the boardroom that I used as my office. It was a perfect arrangement for entertaining the callers whose numbers increased in proportion to our success. I remember David Coleman sitting on the steps that led to a little office next door. He had an entire camera crew with him. It was a case of 'Have a coffee, fellas, or would you prefer a beer, a Scotch or a nice little brandy? Oh, this is the chairman, Mr Longson. Chairman – have you met David Coleman?' It was always like that. If not David Coleman then some other celebrity – and old Sam lapped it up. Trouble was, nobody was that interested in what he had to say.
Local journalists, like George Edwards, Neil Hallam and Gerald Mortimer, were regulars to the 'inner sanctum'. I've known some journalists arrive before ten and not leave before four. But after that 'Hello, chairman' there was nothing else for Sam. He had nothing to contribute, and anyway they didn't want his bloody name in the paper. There was no copy in the old man. Finally, the bar had to go – or at least my use of it did. Sam turned round and said: 'I think this club is becoming a sanctuary for journalists. You are doing too much entertaining.' He had the security grille pulled down. And locked.
I had become too big for him. He wanted more of the limelight for himself. He even offered himself for a place on the League Management Committee. Now that was a joke if ever I heard one! But never let anyone underestimate the power of those in charge of football clubs. When I joined Derby one of the first things Longson told me was that directors had to stand down at the age of 65. The second he reached 65 – he changed the rule!
He became more and more envious of me. He was forever chuntering in the background: 'I was the one who signed him. I was the one who gave him his big break. I was the one who allowed him carte blanche.' There had been many a controversy since our arrival, not least the fiasco over the proposed signing of winger Ian Storey-Moore in 1972. He was on his way to Manchester United for £200,000 when we stepped in. We almost kidnapped him – Taylor and I were past masters of the cloak-and-dagger transfer – we tapped more people in our time than the Severn-Trent Water Authority!
United thought they had him nailed but we shipped him to Derby, and hid him away like Salman Rushdie before unveiling him as 'our new signing' to a packed house at the Baseball Ground. Even I hadn't bargained for the kind of shit that hit the fan over that. You couldn't mess with Manchester United, the great Matt Busby's club, in those days. We were left waving goodbye to Storey-Moore as he departed for Old Trafford and our tails were very definitely between our legs.
A fine of £5,000 over the transfer cock-up followed a fine of £10,000 two years earlier for negligence in the books, which also cost us a place in Europe. Longson's tolerance was being stretched. He saw my flourishing television 'career' as a threat to his own ambitions among football's hierarchy. He was being badgered by fellow chairmen, and other idiotic hobnobs who cling to the game: 'You'd better get a grip on that manager of yours.' For years he had pushed me and encouraged me to go on TV, but suddenly he announced: 'You're spending too much time on telly. Your job is here.' He insisted that my television appearances be reduced, and permitted them only when the board agreed. He even wanted to inspect newspaper columns before they went to print. He didn't have a hope in hell. In any case, they were only excuses to force Taylor and me out of the club. And they worked!
We beat Manchester United 1-0 that October. Unusually, Barbara and Lillian were there, although I don't think my wife had been to ten games in the previous ten years. In the Old Trafford dressing-room later, Taylor said: 'Winning here doesn't happen very often, so we ought to go upstairs.' I was reluctant. I've never been one for mixing in boardrooms, home or away, but this time I went along. There were plenty of others milling around, and we were greeted by the then United chairman, Louis Edwards, who said: This must be the first time you've been in here,' immediately cracking open a bottle of champagne. The five of us stood around exchanging pleasantries until, after finishing one glass, Taylor began to shuffle. 'Time we went back down,' he said. 'But we've only just bloody come up,' I said, 'and you're the one who insisted on it.' Pete took another look at his watch and then, by an absolute fluke, caught Kirkland's eye.
What happened next went unnoticed at the time, but it was certainly noticed later. When Kirkland crooked his beckoning finger at Taylor he was effectively squeezing the trigger. Pete wandered back into our company but didn't say a word. It was on the coach, on the trip home, that I learned what had happened. He came and sat next to me and asked: 'Do you know what that bastard said? He said he wants to know exactly what my job is. I've got to go and see him, Monday.'
Pete and I met at the ground prior to his meeting with Kirkland. His first words to me were: 'They're coming on strong, aren't they?'
'Yep, it was inevitable,' I replied. 'They think we've become a bit too big for our boots.' After his rendezvous with Kirkland, Taylor's chin was on his chest. 'I don't think there's any place for me here, now. As usual, like Ernie Ord did at Hartlepools, they're trying to get at you through me, but this time I'm getting it as well.'
Taylor had to sit through the humiliation of detailing his duties for the benefit of a stupid man who didn't have the first clue about football management. He was degrading a man whose record was unequalled. Peter Taylor had nothing to prove to anyone but a complete fool. How do you tell somebody exactly what you do for a living? I've lost count of the occasions when I've returned home in the evening, only for Barbara to ask: 'What have you done all day?' I couldn't tell her – not every moment of it, anyway. Phone calls, training, interviews, directors sticking their noses in, spending two hundred thousand quid. All I could tell her was that I'd never had a minute to spare.
Kirkland's questions were not only unnecessary – they were totally out of order. He was new on the board and there by invitation. Longson had given me the excuse that it was better to have the enemy inside the club rather than outside, stirring it. Until then he had been stirring it for the board as well. 'I'll get him in and that will shut him up,' Longson said. It did – he stopped criticising the directors once he became one of them. Then he turned his nasty attention to us.
During the same week Mike Keeling, a director who had become a friend, met me with the club's president, Sir Robertson King, at a pub on a back-road near Turner's laundry. He was a trustworthy man, one of the old school, one of the gentlemen of the game. Tweed suit, waistcoat, walking-stick – a monocle would not have been out of place. He was settled into retirement and would dawdle along to the match on a Saturday afternoon. An accomplished speaker, the ideal president. He had said to Keeling: 'Bring that dear boy to the local and we'll have a little chat with him, Michael.' Leather chairs, discreet alcoves, the local was reminiscent of a gentleman's club. He told me to think very seriously. 'There is no way you should resign,' he insisted.
In all honesty I wasn't ready to leave Derby. I knew things were going well, I believed we were building an empire to match anything in the English game. I was so full of myself that I believed I could handle Longson, given time. But Taylor's pride had been dented. That's what hit him harder than anything. You could do anything to Taylor – call him a thief, call him a womaniser, call him what you wished, but if you ever questioned his ability to do his job or showed him up, he'd go berserk.
An example. I was playing cards with Dave Mackay and Alan Durban in Spain and the clock was pushing close to a pre-arranged press conference. I was in the middle of a hand when Taylor tapped me on the shoulder and said: 'Are you ready? You're not even bloody washed.' I said I had washed, but he jumped in with: 'Well, you haven't shaved.' Still looking at my cards, I said: 'Hey ... piss off.' He lost all control, hauling me from the chair and screaming in my face: 'Never ever tell me to piss off.' His pride had been hurt. He couldn't bear to be shown up in front of anybody.
So when Jack Kirkland belittled him, Taylor's mind was made up. He was adamant – he was off. His pride was more intense than mine. When he caught me sweeping the terraces or watering the pitch on Sunday mornings he would say: 'You're crackers. Get in the bath – we can pull somebody in to do that job.' Those tasks didn't trouble my pride. On the contrary, if you've gathered sea-coal on a freezing beach on a wet Wednesday you can actually enjoy sweeping terraces on a sunny Sunday morning.
Taylor wasn't there when 'we' resigned at the weekly board meeting. As usual, he stayed at home and left it to me. The most momentous decision of his career, and he let me make it on his behalf. I quit for both of us! I walked into the boardroom and looked at those pathetic faces, chucked the keys onto the table, and said: 'Accept our resignations.' Sir Robertson King, to his eternal credit, spoke up: 'We'd like you to reconsider.' Guess what? In leapt Longson: 'He's resigned, and I propose we accept it.'
I never actually saw any voting take place because, by then, I was blinded by anger and maybe even hatred. I was thinking: 'I don't give a toss whether you vote or not – here are my keys, I'm out.' I was in there, oh, two or three minutes, but I do remember Stuart Webb shuffling. I had the feeling that he was thinking: 'Once they've gone, it's wide open for me.' It was – but perhaps I was being unfair.
I kept my car keys, because I had to get home somehow. From the Baseball Ground I went straight to Taylor's house where I told him I had quit. And that he had as well! Neither of us was compensated one penny. I'd recently signed a four-year contract and it had all been thrown through the window – a major mistake. If we had taken our time and I had tried to negotiate a pay-off I'm sure they'd have handed over a tidy sum to the pair of us, but Taylor always needed to do things now, this second, today. We were fools. We made the wrong decision. We should not have left Derby to the care of others and it was to be some time before we came to terms with what we had just done.
We had no fears about getting another job. I had the offer of a six-month contract from London Weekend Television – a lot more money than the £20,000-odd Derby had been paying me. But, with Taylor, first things first. 'What will you do?' I asked him over a cup of tea. 'I think I'll catch a plane to Majorca.' His first bloody thought was a holiday. Absolutely typical! In fact, he hung around at home for a week or two, before he set off for Cala Millor.
We should have known that the bust-up at Derby was far from over. From the ground, I had driven round the corner and filled up my Mercedes on the club account. Later I had some new tyres fitted. I kept the car for a few days until a policeman friend came to see me and said: 'Brian, I must mark your card. You do know you're not insured, don't you? Be careful – you could run into one of our lot who won't give a shit who you are.' Kirkland again. It was his idea to cancel my insurance. And it was the first sign that things were about to get extremely nasty.