‘GLENN HODDLE IS A BIG BELIEVER IN REINCARNATION.
I MUST HAVE DONE SOMETHING REALLY BAD IN A
PREVIOUS LIFE TO GET HIM AS MANAGER TWICE.
WHATEVER IT WAS, I HOPE I ENJOYED IT.’
After the hurt and disappointment of being left out of the England squad for France 98, you can imagine my deep joy when Glenn Hoddle became the new Southampton manager in January 2000. I’ve often felt that Saints were a footballing soap opera with each episode becoming more unreal. First we lost a very good manager following ridiculous allegations of child abuse and then in walked my old mate Glenn. No scriptwriter could have come up with that.
Having narrowly avoided the drop with three successive wins at the end of the 1998-99 season, we managed to maintain the momentum at the start of the new campaign winning three of our first five, which was quite remarkable for us. And we were comfortably mid-table when we went to Old Trafford on September 25 for a game which still gives a smile to all those who love to see Manchester United embarrassed.
It was bad enough for the champions when Marian Pahars put us in front with a sublime goal, cheekily nutmegging Jaap Stam before slotting in. I just laughed. As if that weren’t humiliating enough, it got worse for United with a moment to feature on any DVD about football bloopers. I had got injured in a 4-2 win over Newcastle but I came back for this match at Old Trafford. Dave Jones put me on at half-time but I didn’t even touch the ball for the first six minutes until I got it 25 yards out. I remember thinking I had to get it onto my right foot and smash one. That’s not quite what happened. I stubbed my foot on the ground just before I kicked the ball. I hurt my ankle and it turned into a really feeble shot. I turned away in pain—and disgust. I was worried about my ankle and annoyed with myself for cocking it up, until I saw our fans cheer. I had no idea the ball had gone in and, until I saw it on TV that evening, didn’t even realize their keeper had let it through his legs. Massimo Taibi had a ‘mare. It was a simple take but he somehow missed it altogether. He blamed his studs getting caught in the turf according to his translator, who was probably doing him a favour. What he really said was, ‘I’m a crap keeper.’ That was the beginning of the end of his career at Old Trafford.
That brought us level at 2-2 and typically we went behind again before Mikael Silvestre cocked up. Marian Pahars robbed him and squared for me. I was waiting for the pass and was ready for a simple tap-in, but he actually smashed the ball quite quickly. I instinctively stuck out a side foot and the ball flew in making a much better-looking goal than it should have been, and we hung on for a 3-3 draw.
Two days later the club was rocked to its core as Dave Jones was charged with child abuse. He had gone to the police station voluntarily and everyone, including him, expected it to be a case of providing them with information from his days as a social worker in a Liverpool care home. He had worked there for a while after he finished playing, before he got into coaching and management. The police had leaked his name to the press a few weeks earlier saying he was being investigated for abuse. None of us could believe it when he was charged with nine offences of indecent assault and child cruelty. Instinctively I knew he couldn’t possibly be guilty. You trust your instincts with a person, and Dave was as decent and honest a guy as you could wish to meet.
Never in a million years would Dave Jones have been capable of sexual abuse. And that view was reinforced by the way he conducted himself throughout what must have the most horrendous ordeal. I cannot think of a worse crime to be falsely accused of—and Dave felt the same. He said he would rather be charged with murder. Legal restrictions meant he couldn’t even defend himself in the press, although the local paper did take his side. They knew he was a decent, innocent man.
There was a stunned atmosphere at the training ground but Dave was very open with the players, and with anyone who spoke to him about the case. He said he was totally innocent, had nothing to hide and was looking forward to having his say in court, although I don’t think he really believed it would go that far. He answered questions honestly and easily, never got defensive or evasive and never cracked under the pressure, and I never had a moment’s doubt about his innocence. The fact that he was charged was bad enough—but for the case to go all the way to court was an absolute scandal. And it was no surprise that it collapsed the moment it got in front of a jury.
Two ‘victims’ pulled out just before the case went to court, one failed to turn up and, after four days of flimsy evidence, the judge had had enough and pulled the plug. It turned out that the Crown Prosecution Service had contacted a lot of the former residents at the care home asking if they had suffered any sort of abuse—adding if so they might be entitled to compensation. Half of them were in prison when they got the letters and suddenly saw the chance to earn easy money. What other answer were they going to give? And with Dave being a high-profile figure, they had the chance to make a name for themselves.
How the CPS didn’t see through that will always be a mystery. Dave must still be burning with anger and resentment. It cost him several hundred thousand pounds to clear his name, money which he didn’t fully recover through the court. Worse, his father died through a stress-related condition soon after Dave was charged. I hope the people who falsely accused Dave—and particularly those who relentlessly pursued the case when all the evidence pointed to his innocence—can live with themselves. It also cost him his job at Southampton. He didn’t let the court case affect him at the training ground—in fact he described working with us as his salvation. If that was the case, then things really must have been bad! Dave took it all in his stride but results on the field weren’t that good. Our form wasn’t helped by the fact that I was starting to pick up niggling injuries. I would play a few and miss a few. I played in a 2-1 home defeat by Chelsea on Boxing Day and then Dave played me again at Watford two days later, even though I had been struggling with a few knocks. It was too much and I suffered one of the worst muscle injuries I ever had. I ripped the back of a hamstring and the back of a calf at the same time. I went to see Mark Zambarda and he said he had never seen such a complicated series of pulls.
It kept me out for a long time, which wasn’t good timing as we changed managers in mid-January. We had slipped to seventeenth and there were fears of another relegation battle, though that was nothing new. As Dave said, it was business as usual. The final straw was probably a 5-0 defeat at Newcastle in a live Sky game. We had a lot of injuries, so all the crocks went down to the casino to watch the match on television. We were a goal down after just two minutes and, embarrassingly, I jumped up and cheered because I had drawn Duncan Ferguson in the sweepstake. I remembered myself and sat down but I got a lot of stick off the lads. It was a case of the team being hammered but hey, it’s not all bad; I won a tenner.
Another goal followed almost immediately and we were three down after 15 minutes, four behind on the half hour and statisticians were thumbing the record books for our heaviest defeat. The local paper was full of letters from fans saying there should be a change of manager with most calling for the return of Alan Ball. We then beat Dave Jones’ old club Everton 2-0, but it was too late to save him. He was placed on ‘gardening leave’ with chairman Rupert Lowe announcing it would free him to concentrate fully on his court case. In came Glenn Hoddle as a ‘temporary’ replacement, although it was never made clear what would happen after Dave was cleared, as we all expected. Would he get his job back? We couldn’t imagine Glenn meekly making way to allow Dave to pick up the reins. It was never said, but we all knew he was not coming back.
I hadn’t spoken to Glenn since he left me out of the World Cup squad. It wasn’t that I was blanking him, just that our paths hadn’t crossed—apart from one slightly surreal moment in the summer of 1999. I was having dinner with a friend at the Chewton Glen, a top hotel in the New Forest. Gradually the restaurant emptied until there was just us and a couple behind me. They were arguing and, at the sound of raised voices, I stopped my own conversation and listened in. The more I heard, the more I recognized one of the voices. I turned round and saw Glenn with his wife. He didn’t see me so I had a little chuckle and called the waiter over and said, ‘Can you ask that couple over there if they’d like a drink?’ It was my way of subtly letting them know I was there and had heard them arguing. When Glenn saw me, his face was a picture. He must have thought of all the people to have overheard, why did it have to be me? But he did accept the drink.
The next time I saw him was when he walked into our training ground as manager. I had mixed feelings. Obviously I was unhappy at the way I had been treated with England, but I still rated him as a good coach even though his man-management skills clearly left something to be desired. I actually thought it was a good appointment for the club. And because we were similar as players I was hoping that by working with me on a day-to-day basis, Glenn might bring the best out of me. I was ready to put the past behind me but I’m not sure he felt the same.
It was exciting for the fans to have a big-name boss, a former England manager who put the club in the spotlight. There is no doubt the players were excited. But it wasn’t long before I realized that Glenn and I weren’t going to see eye to eye. There were a few clues in training. People would make mistakes the whole time and get away with them but if I did something wrong he was very quick to get on my back. He didn’t do that with anyone else. Maybe he had higher expectations from me because I was the most naturally talented player, or maybe he thought I was ‘swinging the lead’ because I was injured when he arrived and it took me a long time to get fit. I don’t think he fully realized the extent of my problem. It didn’t help that my eventual come-back from that injury was as a sub away to Spurs in a game which obviously meant a lot to Glenn—and we lost 7-2—despite twice taking the lead. Whoops!
Anyway, Glenn singling me out for criticism went from bad to worse and I’d had enough. I turned round one day in training and told him to eff off. He couldn’t believe what I’d said. He was too stunned. Besides, he didn’t like confrontation. He’d shy away from it so he let it go. I’d have had more time for him if he had sent me off.
Working with him at Saints made me understand why he had a problem with me. He does have a large ego, and many times during my career I was compared to him because of the way we both played. We were often spoken about in the same sentence but I don’t think he liked that. He felt he was in a different league to me. Talk about petty. He certainly loved to look the best player when he joined in coaching sessions—and in fairness, he often was. He might have hung up his boots long since, but it was obvious that he could still play. It reminded me exactly why I had idolized him as a player but there were times when I wasn’t sure whether our training sessions were for our benefit or his.
I probably lost more respect for him while he was at Southampton than I did when he was England manager. It should have been a fruitful partnership but I found him incredibly arrogant and extremely stubborn. It didn’t matter what we were talking about, he had his opinion and he was always right. And I never felt his heart was in the job. It was a stepping stone to a bigger club—and the Tottenham job was probably always in his sights. He needed Saints to get him back in the game. His reputation had been tarnished after the World Cup and his comments about the disabled. He didn’t seem to have learned anything from that or to have developed any kind of human touch.
There was an inkling or two that he was never going to be part of the community. It was a shame because tactically he was the best manager I ever played under. From knowing the opposition’s weaknesses to setting up his own team to counter that, he was top-class. I remember him physically moving defenders on the training field to show them exactly where they should be for set pieces. He knew how to change things on the pitch if the match wasn’t going well, and he certainly tightened up our defence.
Being a manager encompasses many things. It isn’t just about coaching and one of the biggest ingredients is the ability to man-manage people and get the best out of them. You need to be able to get players to want to play for you and, as good as Glenn was as a coach, he was just as bad at man-management. Now there’s nothing wrong with being aloof, because you can still get the players’ respect, but arrogance doesn’t work. Hoddle wasn’t a particularly warm person and he never really dealt with people on a human level, whether it was players, club staff, fans or the press. I know he probably felt very bitter towards the media after the way he lost the England job but the local press in Southampton were obviously on the club’s side. Their job was to promote the team wherever possible, but he treated people as though they were inferior.
But for all that, he certainly had a positive effect on our performances. The players’ touch got better and the training sessions definitely improved the lads’ ability on the ball. Chris Marsden developed a lot under Glenn and Dean Richards flourished. He forged a strong partnership with Claus Lundekvam and we suddenly looked a lot less vulnerable. We had picked him up on a free transfer and ended up selling him for £8m—to Glenn when he was at Spurs.
Glenn brought a lot more professionalism and sports science to the club, particularly in terms of diet and nutrition. He sent me to see a French doctor to speak about diet. All I remember is that I was advised to eat poached eggs on toast before training. Sadly they weren’t on the menu at McDonald’s, which had become my regular stop-off in the morning. At one point we got a dietician who asked me to write down everything I ate for the next fortnight. I was too honest for my own good and wrote down everything, the burgers, the chips and the fry-ups. Her jaw hit the ground when I showed her the list. She questioned how I was still alive let alone playing at the top level. I did try the poached eggs on toast for a fortnight but it didn’t make a bit of difference, so I went back to what I liked.
Results did improve and we saw out the rest of the campaign free from the threat of relegation for once. The last game of the season was at home to Wimbledon who needed a win to stay up, a reversal of the situation five years earlier. Glenn didn’t like the way Wimbledon played. He felt they didn’t belong in the Premier League and thought we would be doing everyone a favour if we sent them down, so we were under orders to show no compassion. I was injured but the team won 2-0 with Wayne Bridge curling home a free-kick for his first goal for the club. Wimbledon went down and have never recovered. We finished fifteenth, the same position we’d held for the final 10 games of the season. It was normal for me not to move—but not the whole team.