‘I quite liked Peter Swales because he wore a wig, a blazer with an England badge on it and high-heeled shoes. As a man he really impressed me’
– Malcolm Allison on the former
Manchester City chairman
Malcolm Allison was out of Selhurst Park, out of a job and preparing to leave Britain. But being Big Mal, he wasn’t planning to go quietly. On the day of his departure from Crystal Palace, he announced at Mayfair’s White Elephant Club that he was heading to America for a three-week coaching trip, taking in Florida, California and Texas. He didn’t sound like a man in a hurry to return. ‘I’m going to America to weigh things up, but it will be goodbye to English football. I won’t miss England a lot. It’s a sad country at the moment.’
Declaring himself disillusioned with everything from the high rates of income tax to the low level of expertise within his sport, he claimed that too many clubs were ‘dilapidated’ and described the game as ‘primitive’. He said of his fellow coaches, ‘The ignorance of a proportion of them is beyond belief.’ Allison was quickly brought down to earth, however, when his journey was delayed by the absence of the appropriate visa. ‘He has not made it clear why he wants to go to America,’ said a US embassy spokesman, who had clearly not read Allison’s rant in the newspapers.
In the end, once his summer jaunt was over, it was not America that offered him a route back into full-time coaching, but Turkey, the football nation that had caused him such embarrassment while at Manchester City. Galatasaray, while not the European power they would become a couple of decades later, had enjoyed three successive Turkish championship successes under English coach Brian Birch, one of Manchester United’s original ‘Busby Babes’ of the 1950s. After Birch moved on in 1974, club president Selahattin Beyazit persuaded Don Howe to take the job for a while – until he joined the staff at Leeds – and then appointed former Reading boss Jack Mansell. When Beyazit was looking for a new man for the 1976–77 season, he asked Howe if he could recommend any English coaches.
As Howe hesitated, Beyazit said, ‘I will tell you the names I have been given,’ and announced Allison and Arthur Cox, the future manager of Newcastle and Derby, who had been on the Sunderland coaching staff when they won the 1973 FA Cup. Howe replied, ‘You have got two good blokes there. They both know the game but they are different personalities. When Malcolm is in work mode he is intelligent and will work hard for you, but he does like to put himself about – he likes a drink and he likes the ladies.’
Beyazit explained that his mind was made up and duly appointed Allison, with Cox as his assistant. One of their earliest assignments was a 2–0 defeat in a pre-season friendly at Huddersfield. The team, which included eight Turkish internationals, also underperformed at home, condemning Malcolm to more misery at the hands of Fenerbahce, vanquishers of his European Cup ambitions. Galatasaray qualified to meet their Istanbul rivals in the final of a tournament set up to help earthquake victims in the eastern Turkish city of Van, but were thrashed 6–1. Allison’s tactics were roundly criticised, but when the teams met again in a league game, Malcolm revived his Stretford End tactic of standing in front of the opposition fans and indicating the score by holding up his fingers. This time, he played safe and indicated four goals – only to be beaten once again.
According to James Lawton, Allison seemed far from happy in Turkey. Unable to get his favourite cigars in Istanbul, he asked his agent, Richard Coomber, to pick up some Havanas on his way out to Turkey. ‘Whatever you do, don’t forget them,’ he said. Allison was disturbed that Coomber made no mention of any package after he picked him up from the airport. Eventually, during the drive into the city, he asked, ‘You did get those cigars, didn’t you?’
‘Sorry, Malcolm, I completely forgot,’ was the reply.
Lawton continues, ‘Malcolm told me, “I was so fucking frustrated I almost drove the car off the bridge.” I thought that was highly significant. It was as if nothing else could go wrong – things just weren’t working out at that time in his life.’
In an interview he gave in 1982, Allison reflected on his feelings of isolation during his stint in Istanbul and future foreign assignments. ‘I wouldn’t complain if you described me as a man of independent spirit. But that kind of freedom has its price. In Portugal, and especially in Turkey, the price was loneliness. I was happy while I was working with the players there. I am always happy when I’m working. But I often used to sit in my luxury villa or fashionable restaurant and yearn for the folks back home.’
Allison’s unhappiness meant that Howe was soon receiving another call from Beyazit. ‘You were right about Malcolm. He does like a drink.’ With the club poised to make a managerial move, Howe suggested his former Arsenal full-back Bob McNab, Malcolm’s old ITV colleague, who was flown to Turkey for an interview. McNab recalls, ‘I told the owner I was uncomfortable because they still had Malcolm as coach but he said, “Don’t worry. He is not going to be here long.” Then I heard that I couldn’t stay in the hotel Malcolm was staying in. He must have been in a mess, drinking a lot, because he was lonely out there. There were about 55,000 Galatasaray fans at the game I went to and Malcolm came out on the far corner of the field and walked all the way round with his arms up in the air. The crowd went bananas; they seemed to love him. I decided it wasn’t for me, but Malcolm left anyway – I think it was his off-field activities that cost him his job.’
The next stop for Allison as he hawked his skills around the globe was a return to the United States, where the North American Soccer League was planning to build upon the foundations laid by Pelé’s three successful years at the New York Cosmos by expanding to 24 teams. Various cities and their opportunistic business communities had been dazzled by the achievement of the Cosmos in attracting crowds of more than 70,000 to the new Giants Stadium. They saw the road to ‘Soccer Bowl’ paved with gold.
Memphis, Tennessee, was still mourning the death in August 1977 of its most famous resident, Elvis Presley, when Allison landed to take on the job of building the Memphis Rogues. He would never take charge of a single game, leaving the club ‘by mutual consent’ five weeks before the start of the NASL season, having signed no players for the new club. McNab, who was involved in the NASL as player and coach in the late ’70s, remembers, ‘He only kept that job about three months. I spent a lot of time with Bobby Moore in America and he always claimed the Rogues got the first credit card bill and saw that Malcolm had been putting fortunes on it, even though he hadn’t signed anyone. That was why he went.
‘Bobby used to love him. Malcolm was left-handed and when he got the credit card out his signature was like a printing machine going up and down. Bobby used to call it “the snake”. I’d see him and he’d say, “Malcolm had the snake out last night. He found a card with something on it so I let him pay.”’
Allison, despite his outburst of almost two years earlier, was soon back in England and returning to his first League club, Plymouth Argyle, setting in motion a pattern of unsuccessful encores on his old stages. The phrase ‘you can never go back’ might have been made for this phase in Malcolm’s career, with one disaster following another.
On 16 March 1978, he was named as ‘consultant manager’ at Home Park, working with Lennie Lawrence, who had been in temporary charge for a month following the resignation of Mike Kelly. Allison had instigated his own appointment at Argyle when he called on an old boardroom ally. Club secretary Graham Little explains: ‘He phoned me when he heard that the manager had gone and asked for the number of the chairman, Robert Daniel. He had been very friendly with Robert first time round and everybody at the club was delighted when he came back. I remember on his first day, he told the players they were having a practice match and the best 11 players would be in the first team. They all went out kicking each other.’
Argyle found themselves in 21st place in Division Three after a single victory in their previous 17 games, but they improved enough to finish clear of the drop in 19th place. Gary Megson, at the time a young Argyle midfielder, recalls, ‘Given Malcolm’s stature in the game it was a big coup for Plymouth to get him back.’ But he describes Allison’s return to the club as ‘a whirlwind’.
The late John Craven, a versatile player whom Allison had moved on from Palace, would soon be leaving Home Park to play under assistant coach McNab at the Vancouver Whitecaps. ‘John used to say that the practices were a joke at Plymouth,’ says McNab. ‘Malcolm was always trying new stuff. He was using them as a technical experiment. They would play one man in midfield one day and nine the next.’
The image of Allison as mad professor in front of a set of bubbling, coloured test tubes is supported by Megson. ‘There was a total transformation in the training and the way we played. He tried a lot of different formations and some of his ideas were probably asking too much of the players he had. I remember two different formations he tried and at the time we weren’t capable of playing them. He tried playing with two sweepers, a back four, one in the middle and two up front. The two sweepers were supposed to push forward but it didn’t happen and poor old Micky Horswill was left on his own in midfield. I think we won 5–0 away from home, though, and then he changed it. Another time we played a version of 4-4-2 but without any forwards. It was all interesting but there was a tendency to use us to try out new things.’
Megson retains fond memories, however, of the individual care Allison lavished on him – the kind of nurturing he had undertaken with the likes of Bobby Moore and Joe Corrigan. ‘I was a young lad who had played only a few games and he did me a world of good. If he had time for you he would make you feel a lot better than you were and he did a lot for me in a short space of time, including doubling my contract. Also I was having a problem with my back and he took me to Crystal Palace to sort it out. On the way there he took me to one of those private clubs and we ended up having lunch with Eamonn Andrews. So if he liked you, he made time for you. But I don’t think that held true for everybody.’
It wasn’t only young players who felt they were learning from Allison. Lennie Lawrence, an up-and-coming coach who went on to manage a number of clubs, including Charlton and Middlesbrough in the top flight, holds dear the experience of working alongside Malcolm. ‘He had come with a reputation after his spells at Manchester City and Crystal Palace and it wasn’t long before I saw why. I spent only nine months with him but it was the most enlightening period of my life. His coaching genius stood out. Allison was an innovator. He might not have been the best manager ever and he had many foibles but Mal was ahead of his time on the training pitch. Tactically, the man was brilliant. He introduced Third Division players to all sorts of weird and wonderful systems. His philosophy on training belonged to the twenty-first century.
‘If he taught me anything it was to keep the pressure off the players when they’re approaching a big game. He achieved it by being larger than life, wearing that fedora, smoking those huge cigars, being outrageous – making sure everybody noticed him. In fact people couldn’t take their eyes off him. That meant he absorbed all the pressure.’
During the summer of 1978, while Argentina were winning another World Cup for which England had failed to qualify, Allison attended a coaching course at Lilleshall with the likes of Howe, Terry Venables, John Bond and Ron Atkinson. During an evening in the bar, Howe, one of Malcolm’s admirers, warned him that he was squandering his talent and with all that he had to offer the game, should adopt a more dedicated lifestyle. ‘You’re right,’ Allison responded, launching into plans to bring his Plymouth players in for pre-season training two weeks early and promising to be up at 7.30 every morning. ‘I’ve got to start pulling myself together. I’m one of the best coaches there is and I’m going to prove it. I’m not going to have a holiday, I’m going to go to fitness camps and I’m going to do special weight training. This is a new Malcolm Allison.’
But the new Malcolm went missing sometime during the session on the booze. When Venables tried to wake him for training, it was the familiar Big Mal whose voice came back. ‘Piss off. I’m too tired to get up.’ He was two hours late for the session.
Meanwhile, he was back in the headlines in August after being arrested for being drunk at Paddington Station, where transport police had found him slumped on a seat. Taken to a detention room, he set out to prove he was not ‘drunk and incapable’. Instead of standing on one leg or reciting the alphabet backwards, his method was to smash a light fitting and two light bulbs. He appeared in court the following day charged with being drunk and causing £28 worth of criminal damage. As he left court, having been remanded to return in October, he lunged at one of the posse of photographers awaiting his exit before, as The Sun put it, ‘being whisked away by two blondes’. When the case was heard in October, he was fined £200, plus £49 in compensation and costs.
Allison’s behaviour had unsettled the Argyle directors first time around, but at least they had never seen him in the dock. This time, though, the club, with his great supporter Robert Daniel at the helm, adopted a more tolerant approach, knowing enough about their manager’s antics to be forewarned. ‘It came on the radio that he had been arrested and the attitude was, “Well, that’s Malcolm”,’ says Little. ‘We knew he had gone to London and been out with friends. Apparently when they took him back to Paddington, instead of putting him on the train, they left him sitting on a bench and he accidentally rolled over onto a woman, who screamed her head off.’
Argyle’s attitude was undoubtedly made softer by the decent start their team had made to the Division Three season, winning five of the first seven matches. But then they tailed off to sit in the middle of the table and were beaten in the first round of the FA Cup at non-League Worcester City.
To some, Allison appeared happy enough in his situation, having acquired a house in the Cornish town of Hessenford. Yet it was becoming clear to others that, while Plymouth might have been the perfect launch pad for Malcolm’s professional managerial career 15 years earlier, this time he was, as Megson states, ‘too big for the club’. Megson adds, ‘I don’t think Plymouth was right for him at that time. He continued living most of the time in London and we trained in the afternoons so that he could get down there. He took his girlfriend on the team bus and he always seemed to be attracted to a bigger club. It was a helter-skelter ride while he was here, but it was never a long-term thing for him.’
Maine Road had seen a number of changes since Allison’s departure. His trusty lieutenant, Tony Book, had become manager after short-lived spells in charge by Johnny Hart and the dour Ron Saunders, while Colin Bell was about to admit defeat in his battle to come back from the severe knee ligament injury he had suffered late in 1975. Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee were long gone – Lee to Derby to win another League Championship medal, and Summerbee to Burnley. In 1976, Book led a City team with few survivors of the Allison era to victory in the League Cup. Form in the First Division was solid, with a runners-up finish in 1977, one point behind champions Liverpool, followed by fourth place the following year.
Yet as 1979 was ushered in by an icy blast that blanketed the country, City were struggling along in 15th position in the table. Moves were afoot to bring the prodigal son back to Manchester. Book states, ‘It came about because two directors who were very staunch Malcolm fans went to the chairman and got it through. It was the last thing I wanted.’
Director Ian Niven, however, recalls that Peter Swales, who could never have been described as an Allison disciple, was the instigator of events. ‘I was amazed when the chairman asked him back. I thought Tony Book was one of the best managers we had. But one day at a board meeting the chairman brought up the subject and asked, “Do we think we should change the manager?” There was a vote and it was five to four in favour of a change. I voted not to change. There were no names mentioned for the new manager, but the next thing I remember was the chairman asking me to lunch and saying, “I am thinking of bringing Malcolm back. What do you think?” He knew I was a pro-Malcolm man and I said, “If you think you can handle him then you would have my vote.” I wasn’t all that happy, though, because of Tony, so I phoned him and asked if he could work with Malcolm. I was out of line really but I didn’t like the situation. Tony said, “You know me, Mr Niven. I can work with anyone.” We had another vote and it was five-four to appoint Malcolm. It was very rare that I remember having a vote on a new manager. Normally, the chairman would decide and would tell us who was coming.’
On 5 January, with City having failed to win in their previous 11 games, it was announced that Allison was back, despite Plymouth chairman Robert Daniel’s best efforts to persuade him to stay at Home Park. ‘City had a special attraction for me. I would have refused any other job,’ stated Allison, who would take charge of the coaching while Book remained team manager. Incumbent coach Bill Taylor, part of Ron Greenwood’s England backroom team, was soon on his way from Maine Road and Book could not help but feel undermined with his old boss sitting next to him. Malcolm was hardly going to seek his blessing for his schemes in the way he had with Joe Mercer. ‘He wanted to do his own thing,’ Book explains. ‘If you go back to the beginning, I am a bricklayer and he is the top man. All of a sudden I am the top man. It was never going to work – he came back and took over.’
As Ken Barnes, the club’s chief scout, puts it, ‘He was the one person Bookie would find it hard to stand up to. Especially as Swales and his pals thought Malcolm was some kind of magician who could do no wrong.’
Yet there was to be no dramatic improvement. City finished the season in exactly the same position as when Allison arrived and suffered a fourth-round defeat in the FA Cup at Third Division Shrewsbury. The most promising aspect of the latter stages of the season was Allison’s familiar unearthing of young talent in defender Ray Ranson and midfielder Nicky Reid.
‘The team was almost exclusively internationals, so I was thrilled to bits to get a chance,’ says Reid, who was blooded in the highly charged atmosphere of City’s unsuccessful UEFA Cup quarter-final against Borussia Moenchengladbach. ‘Under Malcolm I went from somebody who was desperate to be a footballer but did not know if he was good enough to having the belief that, yes, I could play. Other managers I played for would speak in a derogatory way about you in the papers, saying you couldn’t do this or that, but Malcolm was always very positive and showed belief in you.’
Further clarification of Allison’s position at the club was forthcoming on 16 July when he was officially given the title of manager, with Book now listed as general manager. That summer saw plenty of changes on the playing side, too. Established, popular figures like Brian Kidd (to Everton), Mike Channon (return to Southampton), Asa Hartford (Nottingham Forest) and Gary Owen and Peter Barnes (both sold to West Brom) were transferred out of Maine Road, while Bell, who had managed to play ten games the previous season, finally announced his retirement.
Says Niven, ‘I did have a go at Malcolm about Peter and Gary, who were popular with the crowd and were two of our brightest young stars. We didn’t want the money for them; we wanted the players. He said something about their size, some stupid remark about having too many midgets. Many years later he said to me he’d made a mistake.’
Goalkeeper Joe Corrigan was one of the few old heads remaining in the dressing-room. ‘Malcolm was a different person when he came back to City,’ he states. ‘I don’t know why the decision was made to bring him back because things were going well under Tony Book. Malcolm had completely changed his attitude about the way he wanted to play. A lot of players didn’t quite agree with and understand what he was trying to do and most of the senior players were sold.’
Allison embarked on a spending spree that would forever characterise his second spell at the club. He announced his intentions by paying £765,000, the second-highest transfer fee in British history, for Michael Robinson, a relatively unknown centre-forward who had played fewer than 50 professional games for Preston North End. Ken Barnes had previously recommended that City should go after the player if he was available for £150,000. A price of £300,000 was agreed for Wrexham forward Bobby Shinton and Allison paid what was considered the ludicrous sum of £275,000 for Steve MacKenzie, a 17-year-old midfielder who had yet to play a single game for Crystal Palace. Winger Stuart Lee arrived from Stockport for £80,000 early in September, but sneaked into Maine Road almost unnoticed having signed on the day that the most debated transfer of Allison’s reign was completed.
Yorkshire-born Steve Daley had proved himself a valuable member of the Wolves midfield in the second half of the 1970s, without ever suggesting that he was in the game’s elite. Yet he became the subject of a British record transfer when City completed his move for £1,437,500 – which comprised a basic £1,100,000 fee plus VAT and other levies. Added to the extravagances on Robinson and MacKenzie, the general opinion of the football community was that Allison had gone mad. Ken Barnes says of Allison’s signings, ‘They either weren’t good enough or they were nowhere near worth the money he paid out for them. I think he lost the plot . . . he got so caught up in it all, it got stupid.’
Allison always maintained that it was Peter Swales who was behind the Daley deal. His version of events has a fee of £550,000 being agreed several months earlier with John Barnwell before the Wolves manager suffered a serious car accident. When negotiations were picked up with caretaker boss Richie Barker the demand rose to £650,000. Allison and Book thought the deal was dead until Swales approached Book before a game at Southampton and said that he had signed him for £1.1 million, plus tax. On hearing the news, Allison told Book, ‘I’m not interested. It’s nothing to do with me.’
Allison remained angry enough with Swales – who had previously assured his manager that he was ‘the financial genius’ – to say a decade and a half later, ‘I’ve often been accused of spending millions on players who flopped for Manchester City. But I never spent that money. I had a meeting with the chairman and told him of a young striker called Ian Rush who was playing for Chester. They wanted £350,000 for him. I said we should buy Rush, play him in the reserves for a couple of seasons and develop him. Swales told me in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t going to pay that sort of money for a reserve. He wanted instant stars and instant success.’
Book’s explanation of how he, Allison and Swales constructed the transfer deals supports Malcolm’s memory. ‘The three of us talked about what players we wanted – guys like Robinson and Daley. When we got the figures in we said to the chairman, “Forget about it.” They were asking figures that you couldn’t believe. Malcolm was going to go along by bringing in youngsters and all of a sudden the chairman says he has done the deals. He got the figures the way he wanted them – he could pay for the players over a length of time, which Preston and Wolves allowed. We knew we were paying over the odds.’
Daley himself says, ‘I think City were bidding against themselves. I don’t think there were many teams involved in that level of bidding. The club you’re leaving want the most they can get for you and the club you’re going to, if they want you that badly, are going to pay the money.’
Swales later explained the motivation for his extravagance to the BBC. ‘I had in my brain in those days that I wanted to be bigger than Manchester United, which really was a bit silly because I should have let them get on with their own business.’ And he added, ‘In those days, of course, you could pay over any number of years and that encouraged you to take ludicrous gambles. You mortgaged your future, but they were exciting days.’
Daley, hardly surprisingly, never managed to live up to the expectations created by the fee, even with Wolves quickly relieving him of the burden of being the country’s most expensive player by spending the proceeds of the sale, and a little more, on Aston Villa centre-forward Andy Gray. Forced to play much of his football out of position on the left of midfield, Daley would last little more than a season at Maine Road, scoring four goals in 44 League games, before heading to America to play for the Seattle Sounders. Lamenting the sale of star players that preceded his arrival, he says, ‘They were favourites of the crowd and to come in and replace them was hard. I never said I was worth the money, but it wasn’t a steady ship I joined.’
Striker Kevin Reeves, who joined later in the season for £1 million and therefore appreciated the situation Daley found himself in, says, ‘It is wrong to blame Steve. The fee wasn’t down to him. [Malcolm] replaced a lot of experienced players and because Steve was brought in as a midfield linchpin, he was under a lot of pressure to do well. Too much was expected of him in a team that wasn’t playing well and his form suffered and spiralled downward.’
Stuart Lee, a boyhood City fan who achieved his dream of wearing the sky blue shirt when Allison ‘bought me with the loose change from the Steve Daley deal’ adds, ‘The price tag killed Steve’s confidence. He was frightened.’
The first eleven with which Allison began the 1979–80 season retained only four players who featured in the final game of the previous season. At centre-half, the curly blond head of 16-year-old Tommy Caton was trusted to be wise enough to anchor the defence and he would play all 42 League games. Dennis Tueart, whose overhead kick had won the League Cup four years earlier, returned from the New York Cosmos late in the season, around the same time as Reeves’s arrival from Norwich. Yet City stumbled towards a 17th-place finish. Allison at least received some praise from Liverpool manager Bob Paisley, who said, ‘Critics can crucify [him] as much as they like, but he is one of the few positive coaches in the game. At least he is looking in the right direction at Maine Road. Malcolm is constructive in his outlook when too many are not.’ Paisley, of course, could afford to be generous as his collection of League Championships and European Cups mounted.
The lowest point of City’s season had come in the FA Cup. Drawn away to Fourth Division Halifax, they were dumped out of the competition by striker Paul Hendrie’s second-half goal after the underdogs’ manager, George Kirby, had employed the services of the well-known hypnotist Romark, who claimed to have been so affronted during a previous meeting with Allison that he placed a curse on him. Kirby also took the more earthly precaution of having hundreds of gallons of water dumped onto what was already a muddy pitch.
There does at least appear to be one constantly recurring redeeming factor of Allison’s managerial appointments around this time. No matter how unsuccessful the team was and how erratic his own personal behaviour and application of team tactics, individual players – especially the young and unsung – continued to feel they were benefiting from their coach’s knowledge, experience and attention and therefore, advancing as professionals. Stuart Lee recalls, ‘He always said that if anyone had any questions about the way things were going they should go and see him and he would explain everything. For example, he did a great job with Tommy Caton, who was a phenomenal kid at the age of 16. Malcolm coached and cajoled him through situations and made him a First Division player.’
Lee, who eventually left City for the United States, where he stayed to become a youth coach in Seattle, adds, ‘In kids’ football in the States now, we have a system of unlimited substitutions so if someone makes a mistake you can take him off and explain things to him right away. That is exactly what Malcolm did during training. He would pull you aside and tell you this and that instead of screaming “fucking wanker” at you. In the teams I had played in up to then, the coaches ruled by the players’ fear of losing their place.’
Despite such individual endorsement, however, there was no disguising the disappointment of City’s results and Allison knew that his job was in jeopardy if his team made a poor start to the 1980–81 season. No wins and only four draws in the first ten League games meant that Big Mal’s return to Maine Road was about to be brought to a premature and inauspicious end. One of the most remarkable aspects of his departure, which came after a 1–0 defeat at Leeds, was that the painful, final few days would soon be seen in all their dubious glory on television. The club had given Granada TV behind-the-scenes access, allowing them to film in the boardroom, the changing-rooms and all sensitive points between. The end product, a one-hour documentary entitled City!, is often excruciating to watch.
Swales seems to be enjoying the limelight. Pointed features topped by unnaturally dark hair, scraped and weaved across his head to the point of ridicule, he preens across the screen like a malevolent circus ringmaster. Allison, of course, was never one to shy away from a camera – even when it had evidently turned up to record his execution – but does seem to cast several uncertain glances in its direction. Maybe he is having doubts about the velour tracksuit top he has chosen to wear for most of the programme. For the viewers, the result is like spying on the most dysfunctional family going through emotional meltdown. By the end of the piece you are tempted to start looking for bodies under the kitchen floorboards.
Faced by a lot more media than just the documentary crew, the only time Swales seems to have lost some of his smarmy self-confidence is at a press conference called to announce Allison’s sacking. Unlike the sponsor-festooned setting for such modern-day events, Swales was at what appears to be a Formica-topped table in a gloomy, wood-panelled bar. His discomfort is evident when he tries to deflect the attention to Tony Book with an inane question about whether it was two hours or an hour and a half since he spoke with Allison. Reliable Book, instead of asking Swales, “What the fuck has that got to do with anything?”, looks at his watch like this is important stuff and attempts to mumble an answer.
Swales finally gets round to telling the media that he has asked Allison and Book if they would ‘resign from the positions of manager and coach – and that is what they have done’. Playing with his fingernails, he adds that Book has been asked to take charge of one final game, before turning to Book to ask, ‘Do you want to add anything to that?’ Lesser men than Book might have chosen this moment to deck the chairman rather than stoically reply, ‘No. We have accepted the chairman’s views,’ – which one suspects was stretching the truth when it came to Allison’s take on the day’s events.
Book then adds, ‘To be fair to the chairman, Malcolm and I always knew where we stood.’
Such absolution lifts Swales to hitherto unconquered heights of smugness. ‘I’m not trying to get myself off the hook here,’ he oozes. ‘But Tony made that statement, not me.’
Allison is seen sitting one final time behind his desk. ‘It is a very, very sad day,’ he comments, wearily but still with an air that he knows a performance is required by the camera. ‘I thought the joy was just coming, just developing, and I was going to get some of the pleasure. Now I am not going to get any of that pleasure. I would have gone to the end of the season. He wouldn’t have had to tell me; I would have told him. If I couldn’t see any light or any progress or that we were getting somewhere I would have told him. I would have said, “I am not going to make it.” But I know I was on the right lines. I know that it was going to happen.’
Perhaps the most fascinating and genuine minute or so of the entire documentary then follows as Allison brings up what he describes as ‘the most important book I have read’, The Master Game by Robert Ropp. ‘The most important thing in the book to me was when he said that the most dangerous thing any person can have is an ego. When I read it, I realised he was absolutely correct. I couldn’t be sitting here talking to you if I had a massive ego. I have just been sacked from my job. It means I am incompetent at my job. If I had an ego that would be the most destructive thing and therefore no way I could handle this situation.’
Another way of looking at it is that perhaps only a man with an ego as massive as that which Allison projected most of the time would have had the balls to sit there and let a documentary crew record those intimate moments of shattered self-esteem. It is almost as though we are watching Malcolm wonder out loud how he ever let Big Mal put him in such a situation.
Allison’s closing comment to the camera was that City’s players were ‘the best kids I have ever worked with’, although Ian Niven now recalls the disappointment that Allison had been unable to reproduce the results of a decade earlier. ‘He wasn’t quite the same chap. It wasn’t the same young Malcolm who got on the training field and probably the challenge wasn’t as great as it had been when he first came. I think we were overburdened by paying all these players their salaries and I think that was why the chairman went against his own feeling towards Malcolm. He thought Malcolm could build a new, young team like he did before.’
After a further defeat under Book’s charge, City’s new manager was announced as Allison’s old running mate, John Bond. The Norwich manager had been ‘interviewed’ in front of Granada’s prying cameras. ‘That was a load of crap,’ says Niven. ‘It was a big set-up. You don’t interview the manager in front of cameras and he never interviewed him in front of us. I said I didn’t want to go into the meeting, but Peter said, “We are having it, and you’d better say something.” So I thought I would stir things up and said something daft like, “Who is the genius, the God, who is going to replace Malcolm?”’
Other board members seemed happy to declare, ‘I will support whatever the chairman wants.’ And obviously the introduction of Bond was what Swales had craved for some time.
Bond remembers, ‘I’d had an interview six months previously with Peter Swales in the Royal Garden Hotel in London. Nobody knew about it, but he said they wanted me as their manager. City picked up a bit and Peter called me and said, “We won’t be making a change at the moment but rest assured that when we do we will be in touch.” They had just got beat at Leeds and when I got home my wife said Peter Swales would ring me at nine in the morning.’
According to Niven, one of Bond’s first notions upon arrival at Maine Road had been to offer Allison the chance to work under him. ‘He sat in the boardroom and said to Peter, “How about us both doing the job? Malcolm could stay with me.” Peter went white and I don’t think he answered. He was probably thinking, “I have just got rid of him, and now you want him back?”’
The state in which Bond found City surprised and saddened him. ‘Malcolm had been in charge of everything and it wasn’t right for him. Joe Mercer had been a great person for him to have around so that he could just do the football side. The club had nothing going for them and seemed a dead cert to get relegated. I watched the first game, when we got beaten at home by Birmingham, and I couldn’t believe my eyes. We were taking 20 passes to get out of our own half. It was quite easy to turn things around because Malcolm was fiddling about with the game more than he needed to. I sorted out how we were playing and bought a couple of experienced players.’
Stuart Lee understands Bond’s comment but feels Allison was simply trying to achieve things that were ahead of their time. ‘His insight was fabulous. He was trying to get players to play the way the foreign players are playing now, but he couldn’t always do it with players who were used to just hitting the ball from right-back to the left wing.’
Nicky Reid adds, ‘A lot of the training methods that he tried to bring in, and which were resisted by some of the players, are standard practice now – things like warm-downs at half-time and stretching protocols. He also experimented with formations like one up front and two wingers or the diamond formation, which are widely used these days.’
With a simplified playing system under Bond – and with signings such as Gerry Gow, the extravagantly moustachioed Bristol City midfielder, and Coventry’s Scottish winger Tommy Hutchison – City climbed the table to finish 12th, reached the semi-finals of the League Cup and made it to Wembley in the FA Cup, losing a memorable replay against Tottenham. Reid says, ‘Malcolm should have kept the likes of Gary Owen and Peter Barnes because our young team flourished when John Bond brought in three or four experienced players. Apart from them it was Malcolm’s team that reached the Cup final.’
In a remarkable turn of fate that smacked of one of the Football Association’s old codgers peeking inside the velvet bag while making the draw, City’s run in the FA Cup had started in January with a home tie against Crystal Palace, managed by none other than Malcolm Allison.
Less than two months after his departure from City, Allison had boomeranged his way into Selhurst Park. Once again, though, he found boardroom turmoil and recrimination swirling around him. It was chairman Ray Bloye who, having presumably got over the Fiona Richmond incident, installed Allison as manager of a team lying second from bottom in the First Division. Terry Venables had left early in the season to take the vacant job at Queens Park Rangers and Allison was originally made co-manager with Ernie Walley, who had been holding the fort and who Bloye felt needed experienced guidance. But it didn’t take long for Malcolm to assume sole charge of a team that included former England captain Gerry Francis and £1 million striker Clive Allen.
The Cup draw was a dream for headline writers and documentary makers alike and the managers didn’t let anyone down, taking shots at each other in the press. Allison went first, saying, ‘If John Bond is so good why hasn’t he won anything in his previous years as a manager?’ Bond responded with, ‘It’s because of his behaviour, which has little changed from our time together at West Ham in the ’50s, that I can never see Malcolm being a manager in his own right.’
Bond also told the City! film crew, ‘I think Malcolm always saw me as the worst part of the Allison, Cantwell, Bond partnership. He always saw me as the one least likely to succeed. If he thinks I am just an opportunist going around taking over something he has set up at City he is vastly wrong.’
Both managers allowed themselves to be filmed in the dressing-room before kick-off, Bond warning his players not to take any notice of the psychological games Allison had been playing in the press, Malcolm himself admitting candidly, ‘I need to win. I need to win.’
He didn’t. Drawing 0–0 at half-time, Palace conceded four second-half goals. In the documentary, Allison, wearing a white suit and drawing on the ubiquitous cigar while seated in the boardroom, is forced to listen to Bond explaining after the game that what Malcolm needs is someone to manage him. And despite Allison’s raised eyebrows, Bond is close to hitting the nail on the head for this period in Big Mal’s career when he says, ‘There is absolutely no doubt that he has the capacity and the ability to make players better, but I am not sure, honestly and truthfully, that he has the capacity to make teams better if he has the ultimate control.’
Allison fires back, ‘I have found that man to control me. Me.’
If only.
After the defeat in Manchester, Palace chairman Bloye restated his intention not to offer a contract to Allison, explaining that he would continue to work on a week-to-week basis. By the end of January, the reason for his reluctance to tie the club too tightly to Allison was clear when he sold £600,000 worth of shares, his 75 per cent holding in the club, to Wimbledon chairman Ron Noades. Allison had been expressing his belief that he might be offered a five-year contract by Palace, but Bloye knew that the new owners had no wish to be saddled with such a burden. ‘Malcolm will stand as much chance with the new board as he did with the old one,’ he offered cryptically. Allison, in fact, stood no chance at all and was immediately displaced by Dons manager Dario Gradi. A spokesman for the Noades consortium expressed an increasingly commonly held view when he said that the new chairman could not work with Allison because of their differing views on ‘how management control should be exercised’, adding, ‘Mr Noades said he had the highest regard for Mr Allison’s ability as a coach.’
Allison had been in charge for 55 days, won only one game and been unable to improve Palace’s position. His most significant contribution had been to bring in some cash by selling striker Mike Flanagan and defender Terry Fenwick to Venables at QPR. This time, however, there would be no post-Allison improvement and the club, for the third time in a season in which he had been involved, were relegated.
Plymouth, Manchester, Palace. The comeback tour had been an unmitigated disaster. Happily for the legacy of Allison, most City supporters have either forgotten or forgiven the extravagance and eccentricity of Malcolm’s second spell at the club. Colin Bell, after whom one of the stands is named at City’s new home in the converted City of Manchester Stadium, says, ‘People just remember those first seven years and talk about the success he had. It overshadows the second spell.’
And one of City’s highest-profile fans, Noel Gallagher of Oasis, said in an interview in 2000, ‘City fans have this thing that as long as you look good in the kit or sat in the dug-out, then it doesn’t matter what you’re like. Howard Kendall didn’t look cool and neither did Brian Horton, whereas Malcolm Allison did. He turned up at Monday morning training in a white Rolls-Royce with a bottle of champagne and some actress in the back of the car. That’s football management.’