A Little Reflection – Summer 2003

From The FOX Summer Special 2003…

Twelve years ago Brian Little walked into Leicester City and completely turned the club’s fortunes around. Nine years ago he left for a job he couldn’t refuse in one of the most bitter episodes of the club’s history. The FOX thought it was about time we caught up with him…

FOX: If we can take you back twelve years when you took over at Leicester… the supporters at the time felt that the club, both on and off the pitch, was a real mess. Was that your first impression at the time? BL: Not really. I think after a couple of years in the lower leagues at Darlington my first impression of Leicester was “Yes, this is more like it.” It was more like what I had been used to as a football player. I was then at Middlesbrough with Bruce Rioch and Wolverhampton so I had never really been away from clubs that size. My two years at Darlington were quite different for me.
Irrespective of where Leicester had been the year before I still felt like I was coming back to big time football. At that time I was very motivated and very focused on what I wanted to do and the challenge didn’t frighten one little bit. I knew they had been through a bad time, but I didn’t go too far back. I watched the video from the season before and couldn’t believe the amount of stupid goals they had given away!
FOX: What were your priorities when you first arrived at Leicester?
BL: I think to try and let people know that I was in charge. I felt that was very important. I’d been working as a coach for quite a few years by then. At Middlesbrough Bruce Rioch was very much ‘Bruce’ to the players. They didn’t call him the Gaffer but they knew he was the Gaffer. He taught me an awful lot about that sort of thing. I went to the training ground I thought it looked more like a leisure area. There was a pool table and I moved that out straight away. There were silly signs up around the walls about passing the ball around and keeping it and I took them all down. I got the walls painted and changed as much around the training area as I could before anybody turned up.
Then the players arrived and I could tell they weren’t too pleased about the pool table not being there!
On the playing side – I’d worked at Darlington where we had won two championships and not conceded many goals – I thought what we needed to do was go out there and not give very much away.
This wasn’t the easiest thing to do because from the minute I walked in people were on about the Frank Worthington days and the Glory Days and the way Leicester played football. 
I suppose Ron Saunders who had instilled in me that if you are a hard side to beat then you are going in the right direction. If you are genuinely the best team in the league then you can play the best football but the modern game was then rapidly becoming a very result orientated business. Even though I wasn’t that sort of a player I definitely knew the value of being hard to beat.
After looking at that video I knew I had to get a team together that would give a lot less away than they had the season before.
Martin George had said to me I don’t really know what we expect you to do this first year but we need to be not in the bottom half of that table.  I wasn’t really worried about changing the style but I sensed very early that it might upset one or two people. There was always this thing about how we used to play and how good we were and we were a Cup side….
I sensed I was going to go against the grain a little bit. But I wasn’t really worried. I knew that I had to create a side that would be competitive. I understood it and I took it on board but I also had to close my eyes to it and say judge me at the end of the season as opposed to early on. I had to bring in players from the lower divisions due to the finances so it wasn’t easy to build a stronger, more competitive team that in time people might begin to appreciate. I still wanted to play with ambition and enthusiasm when we had the ball but there was a definite priority to try and concede fewer goals. Hence you don’t have to score so many to win. That is a Ron Saunders-ism which is quite strange for me to come out with! I can’t remember how many arguments he and I had over the years. 
FOX: You very quickly put together your own managerial team, essentially Allan Evans and John Gregory, who as a threesome stayed together for a long time. Are you still in touch with them?
BL: Yes. Allan lives in Plymouth now, he’s got his own driving school. His wife always wanted him to do that. We used to have debates with Gillian about it. She definitely wears the trousers in that house. Allan was the toughest of the three of us in terms of how we played football but Gillian’s the boss! Allan is a genuine all-round good guy in the home, washes up, feeds the kids, hoovers up. I don’t think Gillian ever really wanted Allan to work in football after he stopped playing, at least that is the impression she gave at the time.
I spoke to John about a month ago. We keep in touch.
I think we worked well together. I knew Allan and John weren’t the best of pals, but they were two different characters who both had something that I wanted to bring to the club.
Very early in our time at Leicester there was a day when I had to pull the pair of them together and say: “Look I know you aren’t the best of pals but if you’re not going to work together then we might as well say goodbye to each other straight away.” From that day it was absolutely spot on in terms of their work. Years on it was no surprise that when I left Villa and John came in, Allan left. They couldn’t work together without me. But I needed that, the way they were and their personalities and their strengths.   
FOX: You were always fairly active in the transfer market. The teams you put together at Leicester were without big names, was that a conscious effort or simply because you couldn’t afford them?
BL: I was never in a position to afford any big names. It was just a case of looking at people and deciding whether they would fit in with the way we wanted to do things. We always tried to get people who could double up as well, play a couple of roles. We took midfield players to play wing-back for example. We took centre-backs who might be able to step up and playing a holding role in midfield. We very rarely got hold of somebody who could only play in one position. But things were determined by what they would cost and what sort of wages they would want. Leicester, in terms of my board meetings were probably the most efficient, that’s the polite way to put it, I have ever experienced. Board meetings would go on all day and if any ideas were thrown up then there would be sub-committees put together to check out the ideas. It was long-winded but, to be fair, it worked so I can’t really criticise. I really just dealt with Martin and I knew what the scope of it was. Pretty much he and I made decisions on the playing side and then it would be run by the board and rubber stamped by them.
I wasn’t the awkward sort who would say ‘I want him even though I know we can’t afford him.’ I respected how much we had to spend and didn’t put them under pressure. We operated inside the budget that was set for me. 
FOX: Who were your best signings for Leicester do you think?
BL: Oh crikey. I have to go through them again. Who came in my first year? I took Fitzy – Paul Fitzpatrick, Kevin Poole, Colin Gordon, Steve Thompson… It’s a funny one really because I don’t any of them stuck out particularly. It was always more of a collective effort.
If I think of Fitzy then I see him in my head and there were that many things wrong with his game it was untrue. Colin Gordon… he scored a couple of goals, he was okay, Big Iwan did alright.
When I bought a lot of these players I knew what their strengths were but I used to look at their weaknesses and decide whether I could put up with them. I knew I wasn’t buying the finished article, I don’t think I ever bought a player who had a bit of everything. They all did something, but they all frightened me at times. I always knew they weren’t quite what everyone would want but we could get enough out of them to achieve what we were trying to do.
The three seasons I was there we were looking to make the play-offs and we did it every time. I don’t think you could say we were ever buying to achieve automatic promotion. We were never quite in that category. We were buying to try and get in the play-offs and then see what happened.
I can’t single one out! Thommo was great, Iwan, I liked him a lot. He did well for me and was what I wanted in terms of a centre-forward for what I could afford.
I start to think of David Speedie now. And Ian Ormondroyd and Phil Gee coming in for Paul Kitson.
FOX: That move worked ultimately…
BL: Yes it did work. It was something that left me open to criticism. But it was needed to get things going again. We had to let Kitson go I thought. At the time there was a hoohah about it with people saying he was the next Gary Lineker and all that. In fairness to me it was a brave one, pretty controversial. He was a young player who had come through the ranks and I think at the time that’s what the Leicester people were wanting. To see their younger players coming through is always good to see. I knew what Big Ian’s weaknesses where, and Phil as well. Phil was a lovely lad and I knew he would be great in the dressing room whereas Paul was a pretty moody character.

FOX: Was Tommy Wright a big loss when he moved on at the end of your first season?
BL: That was Tommy’s decision. At that time he was after a contract that the club weren’t prepared to go to. He’d had such a good season and scored a lot of goals but sometimes football teaches you that you have had the best out of somebody. The feller who does it better than anyone else is Mr Ferguson who wins the championship nearly every year. He gets rid of players and you’re thinking ‘You can’t do that!’ but he does.
Sometimes in football you need to change the team every couple of years to keep the motivation going. I think Tommy, deep down, was looking for something we couldn’t give him. I remember thinking it was the right thing to do at the time and every now and again you have to be brave enough to hang your hat on it.
FOX: If we can just go back to the Kitson/Ormondroyd/Gee deal.. that kick-started the season and took us back up to the play-off places all culminating in that fantastic 5-0 result against Cambridge… 
BL: I still think that is one of my favourite games, I was thinking about it as I drove over here. I always felt that night games at Filbert Street were good and that was the best. Especially in view of the fact that earlier in the season the 5-1 defeat at their place was probably the biggest disappointment that I’d had. I remember sitting on the team bus getting absolutely pummelled by a group of people standing outside. Rightly so I suppose. But at the end of that season when we ended up turning that result around it was very satisfying. I see Steve Claridge quite a lot and he always talks about that game, saying it was his worst memory of playing for Cambridge. They had a good side that year. Going back to Ormondroyd and Gee it was a gamble but we just felt we didn’t have anything in our armoury to make us a different team. I thought we played some pretty good football, entertaining, exciting, end-to-end, but I thought we needed to make the opposition think about us a little more. Even if it wasn’t as good a player it was different type of player. I knew that Kitson was a good player but I think it would have taken us longer to achieve anything as a team with him. I was trying to find a quicker route to success.
FOX: In your career as a manager there can’t be that many times when things drop exactly into place as they did in that Cambridge game…
BL: No, that’s why it is still one of my favourites. Another one was the Coca Cola Cup Final when Villa beat Leeds 3-0. We murdered them that day. From the first ball we kicked to the last we were in complete control. Cambridge was the same. It was 1-1 at their place in the first leg and it was a hard game. Be we destroyed them in the second leg. It would be great to watch that again just to remind me.
My time as a manager has taught me to enjoy those games. As a manager you might have one game in a season when you know you have won before the end of the game. There are so few games when you are relaxed and feeling totally in charge. More often than not you can be three nil up with five minutes to go and you still feel a bit nervous.
It was a great occasion, everything was just right about it, and to get to Wembley that first year gave us all a chance to be part of the Leicester thing really. 
FOX: You mention night matches, it seemed that in the last third of the season in the spring we were unstoppable in those night matches…
BL: I always felt that. I look back at my time at Leicester and although it is difficult to remember individual games I always think of those night matches at Filbert Street as being something very special. I always say that to people. I don’t know what it was. The atmosphere was great, especially when they still had the old wooden stand with everyone stamping their feet and the players seemed to respond to it.
FOX: You took Leicester to the play-off final three years in a row. Which of those three sides was the best?
BL: That’s a difficult one. I did a run through those games with SKY recently… I still think the first time we weren’t ready to go up. The Swindon game I still can’t believe they beat us to be honest. To have gone back the third year and achieved it says a lot about that group of players. I think we were very unlucky the second time against Swindon. I must have sat for an hour and a half sitting on the edge of a bath and I was totally and absolutely gutted.
Steve Walsh was on that SKY programme with me and he was saying that he couldn’t believe the team that I picked. That was the first time I’d heard him say that. He just didn’t think it was the best team. It probably wasn’t our best team but I had to pick a team that could win that game. Man for man Derby were better than us so I had to pick a side that could win in that one-off situation. I got labelled after that game, especially at Premiership level, as a long ball manager. With it being the play-off final live on TV a lot of people saw that game and assumed that was the way I played it. I don’t think I did. I was a result orientated manager.
I don’t think I could have gone back a fourth time if we had failed again. I’m not quite sure what we could have done to get them going again the year after.
I suppose we played our best stuff in the Swindon game, we were a better footballing side. Whether that means it was a better team overall I don’t know. We had become a different team by year three, certainly stronger and more experienced but not as mobile as we should have been.  
FOX: You said that you sat on the edge of the bath for a long time after the Swindon game… what did you do after the Derby game?
BL: I drove my car down to Wembley so I had to drive back. I got stuck in the traffic with all the fans and it was a really happy trip. I was going to drop my wife and kids off at the hotel next to Wembley before the game but when I got there it was stacked with supporters and a bit rowdy. So I drove them to the hotel we were staying in. After the game we went back to Sketchley Grange in Hinckley. I didn’t drink because I was driving that night so there was a celebration going on and I was very relieved inside but I wasn’t totally relaxed. I’m a bit like that. When things are going really well I tend to switch a button inside me and watch everything that is going on without really joining in. I just sat, looked, listened and learned and then drove home from Sketchley Grange at whatever time of the morning it was.
FOX: In your book you said you had never watched the Swindon game again. Have you watched it since?
BL: I’ve never watched it all. I’ve seen the goals lately. I saw the goals for the first time in a long time last month doing that play-off finals programme. Seeing the goals made me think, ‘Oh My God!’ They were disappointing goals to concede.
I remember John Gorman jumping up and down in front of me that much that I felt like hitting him to be honest. I worked with him since and he’s a lovely feller but he was so much in our faces that I was thinking, ‘Oh I really could you know’… and that’s not like me at all!
It was a real sickener. I don’t think we had lost to Swindon that season and I think we genuinely had every confidence that we would win. There was an air of uncertainty about Swindon – nobody was sure if Glen Hoddle would be leaving. There was almost a feeling that it was our ‘turn’ after the season before. And if you look back on what it did to Swindon, they got absolutely brutalised and I don’t think the club has ever recovered from that to be honest. I felt we were more ready for the top flight that year.  
FOX: You mentioned supporters reactions to various signings.. we’ve heard subsequent managers at Leicester, as well as yourself, talking about letters they receive, an apparent lack of patience and an intolerance in certain situations.  Are Leicester fans any worse than any other set of fans you’ve come across?
BL: I think generally football fans at different clubs are the same. I don’t know if any other managers would admit this but often if I got a letter that I thought was a bit too strong then I would go round to people’s houses and knock on the door. I did that about four times at Leicester. I would knock on the door and then stand there. It was always a case of ‘Oh, come on in Brian, I didn’t really mean it.’
At Villa it was different because I was never allowed to see any letters that weren’t anything other than complimentary. The secretary of the manager dealt with those. I didn’t want to change club policy. Perhaps I should have done, I don’t know.
I think Leicester fans, in my period there, tended to look backwards to that seventies period which was always a bit difficult for me. I think I probably overcame that in the end in terms of where we got to. I think I am right in saying, some people might disagree, that I started this more modern trend of Leicester becoming a side that were a more results orientated unit. How many times Martin O’Neill got the sixties and seventies sides thrown at him I don’t know but I used to get it all the time. Why aren’t we playing with wingers etc etc. 
I don’t think Leicestre fans are different. They love their football club, there are a lot of them. The nice thing about it is that ten years on from when I was there there are twice as many going to the games so the club has grown. To see 30,000 down at the new stadium is absolutely brilliant. But at my last job at Hull there was a hardcore devoted to the club and there will come a time when they are getting 20,000 down there.
FOX: There was one incident at half time in a match at home to Grimsby when a supporter spat at you…
BL: Yeah.. somebody spat at me in the face as I turned round. I think we were losing to Grimsby at half time. There are a lot of things I can put up with, but that isn’t one of them. And I think we were third or fourth in the league at the time. It really knocked me about a bit. Sometimes things stick in your mind. I’m not making excuses for what happened a year later but I remember saying to someone after it happened, ‘You know if I get a chance to leave this club I’m going to go.’
As time went on that maybe got put to the back of my mind but it really did upset me. 
FOX: You didn’t come out for the second half…
BL: No. I just sat in my office. I did the half time team talk and then went and sat on my own in my office. I was quite close to walking away then. I am a very temperamental person by nature but managed to control it in my early days of management because I was so focused on wanting to be good at what I was doing. But even to this day I have to work hard at controlling that.
FOX: We remember the story of you jumping on the bus in Birmingham when they took you to get your haircut…
BL: Well, I am like that, with a bit of a sort of rebellious streak inside of me. If something isn’t how I want it to be and I believe I’m right then I have always been capable of walking away from absolutely anything. I read something Allan Evans said where he thought he would have been able to talk me out of leaving Villa, but he wouldn’t have. Once I have reached a certain point I will do it and nothing will stop me.
That day at Leicester really, really, really hurt.
I sat for that forty five minutes and then went away for a day afterwards. I think there was a seed sown that day. It was the look in the person’s eye and the way he spat at me and the way he swore at me that really, really hurt.
FOX: We went up that season but your Premier League preparations seemed to be hampered by a back problem…
BL: Yes, I had major surgery in the Summer. After we had won the play-off final I was being told by doctors to have a complete rest and not go anywhere or do anything. I needed to go on holiday though. I love the sunshine and I never really gave myself enough holidays over the years in management based on this determination to do well. I went away for two weeks that Summer but had to come home early with a seized up back.  
I went into hospital and had a disc removed and spine fusion. I wasn’t very active after that.
Whenever the team had a little bit of a dip Martin George would come looking for me and say, ‘Are you alright? Is everything alright?’ He used to think the way that I worked had quite an effect on people and if I wasn’t a hundred percent into it myself then that would be one of the reasons things weren’t going so well. He felt I was pretty influential with everything that was going on. 
I never felt that I quite got to grips with things the whole of that season, half at Leicester and half at Villa. In terms of how I had managed and coached, I was very active on that front, I always thought that season was a quite major turning point in my career as a person. I became less active on the training ground. I had always felt that I wanted to be amongst the team and playing a little bit.  
It was very damaging for me as a coach.
FOX: Quite early in the season you also found yourself without Walsh, Speedie and Joachim, which can’t have helped…
BL: There were a few problems. Early in the season I thought we were playing reasonably well but, as others have found out since at that level since, when you are not as good as many of the other teams sometimes it is about grinding results out. You have to adopt some sort of policy when you are the underdog and really be hell bent on your team strategy. At that time I don’t think I was clear enough on what that strategy was. We went in quite bravely thinking we might as well have a go at them because if we sit back then we are going to lose. I’m not sure whether that was the right policy. I put that down to my mentality at the time, the fact that I‘d had the operation. It really wasn’t ideal preparation for the season. 
FOX: We’ve mentioned Julian Joachim, he crashed onto the scene and it was like having a million pound player suddenly arriving in terms of the difference he could make. There is certainly a feeling amongst Leicester fans that what we saw as an 18 – 19 years old never translated into quite the finished article we all expected…
BL: You could say that. I’ve not seen JJ for quite a while. Obviously I took him to Villa with me and I still always felt that he should have gone further than he did. Why that is I’m not a hundred percent sure. At Leicester I think we probably got as much out of him as anyone else has done since. What Julian is good at is being part of the modern Premiership club, in terms of being in that squad.
At Premiership level he is certainly the sort of player that you would want in your twenty. If you get the best out of him then you are laughing your socks off. I don’t know if Julian would admit it yet, because he is still playing the game, but perhaps when he retires he might think he could have done a little bit better.

FOX: When he broke into the first team at Leicester it was almost like a smaller scale ‘Rooney’ situation…
BL: Yes, the difference with Rooney is that it is ten years on and the media coverage at that level is ten fold. The media coverage was pretty big in those days but it is vast now. Julian Joachim would have been a name known around the world pretty quickly.
FOX: They show the Rooney goal against Arsenal again and again… Julian’s equivalent would be the one at Barnsley with the outside of his foot…
BL: Which was a better goal. It is down to coverage. I have watched a lot of Nationwide football in the last season and some of the things I’ve seen and some of the goals, if they had happened in the Premiership then they would have been rammed down our throats constantly.
FOX: Were you in charge while Emile Heskey was at the club?
BL: Yes, I was there during Emile’s first season as a YT. Tony McAndrew talked to me a lot about him in those days. It would be wrong for me to say I knew very much about him other than my people at the club thought that there was someone there with great potential. I feel as if I know him but I don’t know him. 
FOX: The season was only a few months old when Ron Atkinson was sacked as Villa manager and you eventually succeeded him. Could you take us through what happened there?
BL: I suppose everybody has a period in their life when they look back and think ‘Oh God, why wasn’t that done right?’
When Ron was sacked I was actually in Majorca. I think it was one of those international weekends and I just thought I needed a break. I was thinking of buying a home there at the time. I was sitting on a promenade and I think I would have used the phone on the corner I don’t think we had mobiles then. Anyway, I phoned home and I remember being told by Heather’s Mum that there were a few people who needed to speak to me. She told me that Ron Atkinson had got the sack and there were a lot of media people chasing me. She also told me a couple of people who weren’t media had left numbers and needed to speak to me. These were people with connections.
When I went to Leicester the job at Villa had been available. A friend of mine, they weren’t really agents or representatives then, spoke to Doug Ellis and asked: ‘Would you consider Brian?’
Doug thought I was too young then with not enough experience but if I did well he would be keeping an eye on me. So I sensed that three years on, when Ron went, that I might be asked. I remember sitting there in Majorca thinking: ‘Oh no, this is all I need!’
Its like anything in life. Sometimes the right job comes but it is never at the right time.
The whole thing really was an absolute shambles. From a personal point of view it wasn’t done right. From both club’s point of view it wasn’t done right. Looking back at it now it was a complete farce. I stayed away from Leicester for four or five years because I was disappointed at the way it turned out. But I go back now because it has settled down. To give a true recollection of what happened would probably be wrong because all you will get is my side. All I would say is that everybody should look at it and be disappointed with themselves because it really was uselessly handled. I still think that I couldn’t say no.
FOX: Would anything have stopped you taking the Villa job?
BL: One of the problems I had was that most of my friends and most of my family really wanted me to do it. I had all of that. They were all saying: “You’ve go to do this.”
I felt I had to do it. I wish I’d come out and said ‘Look ladies and gentlemen I’ve really got to go and talk to them and see if it is the right thing for me.” I should have come out and said that. But I didn’t.
It got to the point in the end where if they had have stopped me I think I probably would have left Leicester anyway in disappointment. I remember saying that to the board. ‘If you stop me going then I don’t know how I can continue to work.’
That stubborn temperamental side of me might have stopped my managerial career there.
I should have just said at the time: ‘Look, I want to do it.’ And I think from the way we spoke at board level I got the impression that they were allowing me to do it. Everybody did it wrong but I would accept my share of the blame. Other people, both sides of the fence, did not get any criticism and maybe should have. The only person who came out of it getting pummelled was me. I don’t think I’m a bad lad in all fairness. Other people kept their heads down and avoided the flak. Even later on they didn’t hold their hands up and say: ‘Hold on we were a bit naughty there.’
It was a bad episode. I had three great, fantastic years at Leicester and for me to have to blot that out for four or five years and be shunned away from the place was pretty hard to take. I think it has a bearing on how I am as a person now. I’m maybe less motivated. I don’t know if I need certain things anymore.
FOX: The leaked letter to the Sun seemed to turn the heat up on you even more…
BL: That was part of a letter I was prepared to write to the club saying look I’m not going to go to Villa but I don’t want to work for Leicester anymore. If you don’t want me to go there I understand but it means that much to me that if I can’t go I will pack in altogether. I was prepared to do that. Certain paragraphs were left out. It was a bit of an extract.
It was how I felt and I was prepared to put it in writing to them. It was published and where it came from I’m not prepared to say. That might be one of those heads that were in the sand. It was a bit of a dirty trick in fairness.
FOX: Fate being what it is your second match in charge of Villa brought you back to Filbert Street…
BL: Yes. Its funny, I spoke to Steve Cotterill at the play-off final, he was one of the guests there. He obviously left Stoke and made the decision to go to Sunderland. He said to me: “Do you know I got a letter off somebody and they were really giving me stick.” I said: “Listen son. I went back to Leicester with twenty odd thousand ‘Judas’s’ written in front of me. You’ve had one letter off a Stoke fan! Don’t you worry about it. You haven’t lived.” He said: “I like talking to you, you keep things in perspective.”
It was hell. I remember getting in my car that morning from where I lived in Barrow near Loughborough. The phone went and somebody said: “Have you seen the back page of the Sun?”  I stopped at the first newsagents and got it… it was horrible. I say honestly to this day that it had an effect on me as a person. I don’t know if I can be bothered any more. I’d love to be a football manager but if you can’t put up with that side of things then maybe I shouldn’t be, hence me doing Sky. I think I would still be a good manager but there is an edge missing from me now based on those experiences.
When I left Villa I was a bit chewed up and in my personal life I have been divorced and I’ve got a new family now. I put a lot of that down to football. My experience at Hull where I went back to the very bottom to show people that I could manage again. I was never out of the top five and I got sacked again things like that have an effect on me to this day. When I look at some of the things that are written about people in football now I wouldn’t want to put my young family through that. I am a victim of my own success in some respects but because of my temperament I don’t think I’m prepared to go through all that again.
Returning to Leicester that day was definitely the worst day of my footballing career. Nothing could come near it. I say this now with total honesty, not just because people from Leicester will read this, but I love Leicester City. I still do, but that day hammered me, I tell you. It was horrible! 
FOX: In a way was it a back-handed compliment…
BL: I suppose looking at it years on now, it was.
I went to Leicester five or six times last season and walking to the ground I still get the odd shout of real dissension towards me and the odd bit of flak, but in the main people come up to me and say: “Hey you shouldn’t have gone the way you did but you did a great job.” That’s fair enough. I hold my hands up and say you are not wrong. But then they are pretty complimentary about me starting this new phase of Leicester City. I think I managed to get rid of that 60s and 70s attitude at the club. I think Martin built on my foundations and took it on to the next stage.
If I could wish something away in my life, it wouldn’t be my divorce even, it would be that two weeks around Leicester when I left in the wrong way and went back and got hammered. I would definitely take that out of my life. 
FOX: Later on in that season Leicester came to Villa. You were talking earlier about never relaxing until the final whistle…
BL: Oh that was crazy! Villa were 4-1 up with fifteen minutes to go and we let them in for the draw.
It was a lesson for me. I suppose underneath I smiled about it. If we had won that day then my Villa team would have been climbing away from trouble but we ended up having a really dicey end to the season. I put a lot of that down to that Leicester game. It took a while to recover from that and we had a real fight to stay up in the end. I still do smile about it though.
FOX: I was actually in the Villa end that game sat behind the dug-out with a Villa friend of mine. At 4-1 I remember Shaun Teale either back-heeling it or nut-megging someone and then turning to the bench and having a laugh with them right in the middle of the game. Had they taken their eye off the ball?
BL: They were a strange bunch. My first Villa season was a hard one because there were a lot of things that needed ironing out. They were a good side with some really good players but they were completely different characters to what I had dealt with before. I was talking to someone the other day who is doing a Villa managers book and he asked me how did you handle this side? It was a difficult dressing room for me to handle. As I have already said I wasn’t feeling one hundred percent myself anyway that season. Anything that went wrong it was always someone else’s fault and not their’s. And they always had a laugh and a joke about defeat as opposed to looking at themselves in the mirror and analysing what had gone wrong. It was a step into a slightly different world and it took me a long time to come to terms with it.
FOX: Do you have any professional ambitions left?
BL: When I left Hull I genuinely thought that was the end, as I said, because of certain experiences. Now I think I should still be in football and I made a couple of wrong moves in my career. I don’t think going to Villa was a wrong move it was just handled wrong. Going to West Bromwich Albion was probably the worst move I made in my career because I was always looked upon as a Villa man inside West Brom. I don’t think I was treated very well by the board there who sold players without me being told and wouldn’t let me buy players. When I left they bought four or five players that I had recommended to the club, so I think I was pretty hard done by there. Going to Hull just confirmed to me that I could manage a football club at any level. I took on a club in administration – and when you are talking about a Third Division club in administration you are talking about a club with absolutely nothing – and took them into the play-offs. I was expected to do better next year but we were never out of the top five, and I was sacked. The chairman acted so hastily it was untrue.
There have been very few jobs around in the last year. If I could find a club and I was one hundred percent committed to the job then I think someone would have themselves a good football manager.
I could have been back by now but it might have been the wrong move.
My young family is the most important thing to me now and I wouldn’t want to make the same mistake I did with my last marriage where football and the way that I worked had some influence on the way my marriage ended.
FOX: Finally how do you see Leicester City coping with the Premiership?
BL: It will be a very hard season but Micky Adams is very focused.
If I’d been a gambling man the day Peter Taylor left I would have bet anything I had on Micky Adams being appointed the Leicester manager. I’m not knocking Dave Bassett because he is a friend of mine, but if anyone was doubting that Micky could do the job then they should have put Dave alongside of him. I would say that Sunderland made the same mistake with Howard Wilkinson and Steve Cotterill. The younger men today – they are ready. They are motivated as I was. And Mark McGhee and then Martin O’Neill. I thought it was a stone cold certainty that Micky was the man for the job.
I think it will be more difficult for Micky this year than perhaps it was for Martin six years ago because the Premiership standard just seems to get higher and higher with each passing season. Teams like Charlton and Southampton and others have learnt a lot about how to stick in there. They’ve come to terms with it. For that reason I think that one of the big names will go soon. Looking at Villa, there is that much turmoil there at the moment. And Tottenham, what is going on there?
Staying in there is Leicester’s only priority this season, anything beyond that would exceed anyone’s expectations. But he’s a good manager. He’s a nice lad but very steely about what he does. And I like him. He knows he’s got to improve his team. West Brom didn’t want to spend anything last season and they never gave themselves a chance. I’ve seen a lot of Leicester this season and they have been really strong. I’ve said all season to a lot of people that Leicester and Portsmouth were certain to go up. But now they have to change the team and I think the players themselves would appreciate new faces coming in. Its not losing to Man United that is the problem, it is when you have lost against Charlton and then Southampton and then Bolton come to your place and go away with a draw – then you are under pressure. I watched Bolton at the end of last season and I thought they were a bloody good side, and yet they are right at that bottom level. We are getting very much like the Spanish and Italian leagues where those top teams seem to stay there all the time and there are teams that go up and down all the time.
But Leicester have got a good manager and with Dave backing him up it is a good combination.
They’ve got every chance. 

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Mark Wallington on Life With Leicester City

Excerpt from an interview that first appeared in The FOX No 157 – Oct/Nov ’07…

FOX: Do you remember your debut for City?
MW: Wooh do I?!  West Ham at home, 11^th March 1972?
I remember getting my hand trodden on by the centre-forward and I jumped up, not really to have a go, but just to say something. I realised it was Clyde Best, so I just said ‘sorry’.
I was extremely nervous because it was a huge step up to the First Division. I had been thrown straight in so I didn’t know any of the lads. But they wanted to help me settle in and they would do anything for me. I knew straight away it was a good club, with very good supporters.
Fortunately I kept a clean sheet and Nishy got two – they played him up front that day, but he could play anywhere really couldn’t he? 

FOX: You were obviously an understudy to Peter Shilton for a few seasons, was that a good thing for you. Did he take time out to help you?

MW: I was very appreciative of Peter’s time and the work that he put in on me was first class. I think he could afford to do that for one because I wasn’t a threat. He was so well-established, and he is one of the most confident self-believing chaps that you would ever meet. It was what I needed because I had missed out on all that professional training before and I needed to catch up very quickly: to work under the England keeper was super for me. But I knew at one stage I would be pushing him, because I also had great self-belief and great self-confidence. I wasn’t there to be his understudy forever. After I had been at the club about a year I began to hear whispers that he was unhappy and later he made it clear that he wanted to move on and Leicester wasn’t big enough. I’m not sure that Stoke was any bigger was it?
Perhaps they had some money at the time, they signed Geoff Salmons and Alan Hudson and Jimmy Greenhoff. Then they got Shilts, but it wasn’t the Liverpools or Manchesters that I thought he would have gone for.
So I had an inkling that things would open for me and Shilts was good enough to tell me: “Look Mark, I think I might be moving on so work hard at it, prove you can take over, don’t let them sign anybody else.” And that was the attitude I had.

 FOX: There was always a feeling with Jimmy Bloomfield’s team that they should have achieved more, would you agree with that?

MW: Yes, I do, because the ability in the team, they were some of the best players that I ever had the privilege of playing with – as individuals. Playing against the top sides they seemed to draw it out of us, but we couldn’t always turn it on against the lower sides. I think we were playing to our best maybe one in three games, always much better when we were allowed to play. I felt that if we met a more physical side then they could ride us a bit. Possibly we didn’t have the mixture quite right. I always thought, and Jimmy would say this too, we were always two players short.
I mean we had four internationals out there, and there was myself, Steve Whitworth, Dennis Rofe, all England under-23s, Jeff Blockley, Frank Worthington, Keith Weller, Birch, Stevie Kember…  we had the experience and a phenomenal amount of ability out there but if one or two dropped out we didn’t have the strength in depth.   

FOX: There also seemed to be a feeling among fans that Jimmy didn’t have a tight rein on the players.. is that how you saw it?

MW: I thought he did, he had a lot of respect from the players. Jim would always give the benefit of the doubt to a player – he would never see bad in anybody. No matter how poorly someone had played he would always say: “Well at least he put in a lot of effort” or “At least he’s got a good left foot”. He always saw the good in people. After he departed I began to appreciate what a very good manager he was. He wasn’t a bawler and shouter, he was a first rate man: very conscientious about his work and always wanted to play the right type of football. He was a lovely bloke.

FOX:  There were many classic performance under Bloomfield, and we will come on to some of those later, but it was also a side quite capable of taking a good stuffing from time to time. Do you remember the 6-2 at home to Birmingham?

MW: Did we score two that day? I thought it was 6-0. There was a reason behind that – the preparation was absolutely awful. We were told the match was off, around quarter to two, no chance said the ref. At quarter to three we were sitting around in our suits and someone comes in and says: “The match is on.” We all said: “WHAT?!”
We hadn’t been out for a warm up, we hadn’t done our studs, we hadn’t done this, we hadn’t done that. Suddenly it was on. Birmingham had been out there and had their footwear sorted. We were mentally off the ball.

FOX: Perhaps the presence of the TV cameras ensured it went ahead?

MW: I would think that was the reason it was played. Perhaps some persuasion put on somebody somewhere!

FOX: Were you disappointed when Jimmy Bloomfield left Leicester?

MW: Yes…

FOX: Were all the players?

MW: No. I’ve got to be honest there I think we were disappointed that we hadn’t achieved more and we were also disappointed that we never got those two or three players we needed to strengthen the squad and push on. Some players thought it was time they went, and maybe lost a little bit of respect for Jimmy towards the end. In retrospect it was a sad day for me.

FOX: Ironically Frank McLintock came in with a bit to spend but it didn’t work out…

MW: Absolutely. I like Frank McLintock – he’s a great bloke and was a superb player. But the step up from player at QPR to manager at Leicester over a Summer was too much. A lack of experience showed through and I think he still thought he could be a bit of a player and have a player’s mentality instead of being the Boss.
I know he wouldn’t make the same mistakes if he had his time again, but some of his signings, even the players were going: “WHAT?!”
But you’ve got to go with it haven’t you, and you try and support it, but you can imagine what a season that was for a goalkeeper!It was horrendous. Every time we conceded a goal, we knew we were going to lose, because we couldn’t score.
What did we get, 20-odd goals in the season was it?

FOX: Top scorers were Geoff Salmons and Roger Davies with four each…

MW: I mean that is horrendous in that class of football.
The minute we conceded you just thought: “OH NO!” and there seemed to be no end to it. I mean you can smile in adversity – you have to… one memory that stands out was a couple of things we worked out on the training ground.
Defending a free-kick, if we were going to catch them offside there was a signal.
If Brian Alderson stood in the centre-circle we were all going to push up.
If Brian stood outside the centre-circle then we would defend it.
But Brian, God bless his cotton socks, had this habit of getting a bit distracted during the game. As we were defending a free-kick Brian was standing there looking at the crowd, one foot inside the centre-circle, one foot outside. Two defenders went up, two dropped off, it was bloody mayhem!
Roger Davies came up with a cracking plan where he would do a special whistle when we were to push up. That might have worked alright on the training ground but if you were somewhere like Old Trafford with 60,000 people in there and his mouth was dry, you could sort of just about hear a raspberry sound: “Thruuuurpp!”
Another classic… I shouldn’t be telling you these. And I shouldn’t be laughing , but really… we had a free-kick worked out where one would run over the ball and then run down the side of the wall, the next man would run over the ball and go to the left, the third man would back-heel it and the fourth man would have a shot.
So we tried it, the first man gone right, the second man has gone left, the third one has run over it, the fourth one back-heels it… and there is nobody left.
I am stood in the goal with my white handkerchief out because there are eight of them running at me!
You shouldn’t laugh, but it happens.

FOX: Did you actually have any specialist goalkeeping coaches back then?  

MW: No we didn’t, but fortunately for me Shilts was very conscientious about working on and analysing his own game and that taught me an awful lot. The biggest and best critic you can have is yourself. At the time we had a coach, who was the reserve team manager, a lad called Dave Coates. Dave would spend hour after hour with us, Peter, myself and the younger keepers. If we wanted anything specific like, for instance, a shot to the left six yards out driven in low then Dave could put a ball on a sixpence and he would spend hours putting a ball just where we wanted them.
But a lot of it was self analysis and Peter used to coach me and we used to help each other. He was magnanimous enough to say to me: “Mark, do you think my position was right?” and we used to think an awful lot about the game. We got on very, very well. Obviously a lot of the benefit came my way but we did used to help each other out. 

FOX: Moving on to the Jock Wallace era, how did you cope with the sandhills?

MW: I didn’t! I was injured at that time. 

FOX: Weren’t you excused from training due to a skin allergy?

MW: Oh thanks lads, I’ve tried to forget all about that and you’ve reminded me. I need to take a minute now…
It was weird. It was during Jimmy Bloomfield’s time. I had been refurbishing a house at Syston, which was an old sort of Edwardian job, 1900’s, and it had got this old style plaster wattling. It was red hot and I only had my shorts on, all my pores were open… the dust got into my skin and my whole body just blew up! It was horrendous. I had to go to Harley Street in the end. It really was bad – I had to come home every day and sit in the bath with this emulsion in it and then have a coal tar paste lathered on. It was literally from head to toe, my whole body erupted with it. At the time I was in bed all week, training very lightly on a Friday and then playing on the Saturday.
I was playing for the England Under-23s as well. Can you imagine going and meeting up with everyone there: “You’re looking well Mark, why did you pour a cauldron of boiling fat over your body though?”
Psychologically it was awful too, because you are out in the public eye and being photographed all the time.
I must have been like it for about a month, then we went to Harley Street and they cleared it up in a week to ten days. It was put down to a dust allergy. 

FOX: Moving on to Jock, he was a very different character to Jimmy and Gary Lineker remembers being up against the wall with Jock’s hand round his neck. Did he ever blow up at you?

MW: Oh yes. And yet he is probably the man I have admired most in the game. He had incredible charisma, he was a man’s man. You could have the biggest blow up – and there were times when I thought it was going to get properly physical, seriously thought I might get headbutted – but I think he respected me because I would step up to him. But I found him a fantastic manager to work with. We had our ups and downs but he would always talk to me, ask me what I thought about this and that. I’m not saying he ever took any notice but he made you feel as though you were a part of it. He managed the whole club and always said that the washing lady was as important as his top centre forward. He taught me so much about life.
As skipper of the club one of my jobs was to check the apprentices bank books on a Monday. If there was too much drawn out then I would have to ask them what was going on. They’d say: “Oh I had to go out and you know…” and I’d say: “Well you’d better pretend you’ve forgotten to bring this in because I’m not taking that to him.”
He always used to say that at eighteen, 90% of those boys were not going to make it. But as long as they knew how to behave, how to dress, how to shave, and how to look after their money properly, we hadn’t let them down. He had as great a concern for those boys as he did for his first team. He was rough and he was gruff but he taught me an awful lot did Jock. We couldn’t understand a word he was saying for the first two years and we got promoted and then as soon as we worked out how to understand his accent we were relegated!
An absolutely brilliant bloke and I loved it at Leicester during his time.

FOX: He made you captain didn’t he? 

MW: I think he saw a bit of experience in me, and I could see everything from the back, and I was only too willing to take that on, I thought it was a hell of a privilege.
I tried to be captain like he managed, getting involved with everyone.
I remember at the end of my career I was playing for Lincoln and Jock was a consultant for Cambridge United. We played them at Sincil Bank and I didn’t realise he had made the trip up. I went in to the Player’s Lounge after the game and there he was with a big tumbler of whisky waiting for me and he said: “There you go big man!” It was brilliant to see him. He had that old gleam in his eye.
One of the saddest moments of my life was at the dinner for Jock at Leicester. Alex Ferguson came down and spoke. Jock was very ill by then and in a bad way, I don’t think he even recognised me. This was such a huge man who walked into a room and lit it up, he had such a way about him. What a great man. 

FOX: Jock got City promoted in his second season, but then we came straight back down. Was it a case of too little experience in the side?

MW: I think it was simply that. We thought we could run them. We were a little naïve, in fact we were a lot naïve.
We had a taste of that the season after when we played Tottenham in the FA Cup semi-final. We had reached that semi by hunting in packs, but when we went man for man against Ardiles and Hoddle, they were just going to drop the shoulder and ping a ball through and we are going to have three blokes out of the game. And I think it was the same in that First Division season. Tactically were weren’t quite wired up to it, and we didn’t have enough experience. Our youth and our running capacity and our general enthusiasm and exuberance weren’t quite enough in the end. Though it upset a few teams on the way, we beat Liverpool twice and FA Cup winners Spurs twice.   
We always seemed to do well against Liverpool. One of the best ones I remember up there, despite the senile dementia, must have been about 1984-ish. We were 2-0 up, I think Grobelaar had gifted us a goal and then Lawrenson gifted us another. We were two nil up with about a quarter of an hour to go and we were defending the Kop end. But Liverpool had this beautiful knack of turning the pressure on. They didn’t alter their style of play, they just made it that yard quicker, just up it a bit and moved the ball a little bit quicker than normal. And when the other side is fading in that last ten minutes after hanging on it really is a killer. They got back to two each. For the equaliser, Kenny Dalglish was coming in on the angle and I’m going: “Yes, yer bugger you aren’t going to beat me on my near post…” and then suddenly he has cut the ball back to sort of nowhere, and its in the ‘D’. Ian Rush has delayed his run and then arrives from nowhere to sidefoot it in, because I have been drawn out of the middle of my goal… tremendous vision. Anyone else with a few minutes to go would have had a crack at goal, but that showed you the quality of Dalglish.
Its 2-2 then and Grobelaar launches one down the pitch and it’s bounced once, and I have timed my jump to perfection to collect it, and Rush has come in and hit me and I hear the whistle go. I’m thinking, ‘Brilliant’. I can knock the free-kick out wide, get it back and kill the game off. Then I see the ref pointing at the penalty spot, which is absolutely ridiculous. Graeme Souness picked the ball up to take the penalty and he eyeballed me, never took his eyes off me as he placed it on the spot and I was staring back and he had such a grin on his face. I thought: “Just put it the way I am going to dive, PLEASE, just put it the way I am going to dive because I am off to my right like nobody’s business.” He put it to my right. And I saved it in front of the Kop and we got the draw. I thoroughly enjoyed that.
The first time I ever played at Liverpool was back in the seventies and Bill Shankly had just retired. He came back to Anfield for one last lap of honour and the big send off and there were 56,000 rabid Scousers there to see it. We took the kick off and within 19 seconds we were a goal down. Usually we went backwards from the kick off and then someone would wallop it forward. This time it went back but Crossy or one of the centre-halves played it square to Stevie Whitworth, only it didn’t reach him and Steve Heighway nipped in. I went down at his feet and he didn’t bother to follow the ball but tripped over my hands. The crowd were going mental and there was no way the ref wasn’t giving a penalty. Alec Lindsay scored and I thought: “Oh god here we go.” My first game at Anfield and we are going to get stuffed. But we only lost 2-1 with the other being another Lindsay penalty.

 FOX: You had quite a good record of penalty saves…

MW: Yes, I did well. I worked at it like everything else. You would try and work out which way they were going by the angle they ran up. Whether they were midfielders who would place it or centre-halves or full backs who were going to whack it. Obviously it didn’t work every time but you could often work out by the way they played on the park whether they were wallopers or passers. 

FOX: Did you always commit yourself…

MW: Yes, I always did. I know that these days you might do well to stay put, but back in those days only very rarely would anyone put one down the middle of the goal. They just didn’t. I think that these days a keeper will try and come out a little and see how much he can get away with.; At worst a retake will put more pressure on penalty taker. Whereas, of course, in our day we never used to cheat. Ever…! 

FOX: Which centre-halves did you most enjoy playing behind?

MW: I don’t think I could single out any particular pair. The first pairing was John Sjoberg and Graham Cross and sometimes Malcolm Manley. Because I was fresh into the game they used to teach me an awful lot. Then there was Jeff Blockley who was good and later there was Larry May and John O’Neill. I always had a good relationship with my centre-halves and we worked well together. We had that triangle the three of us and we could work most things. They all had different styles… some thought they could play a bit of football and they couldn’t. Some thought they could and they could. Some knew their limitations but they were as solid as rocks. If they went for a header you knew they were going to get it. Which made it difficult later on when I moved to Lincoln at the end of my career. I would take my position as a goalkeeper off my centre-halves. If he was rising to meet a ball with his head then I would know that it would be going twenty yards in a certain direction and I would have to position myself in case someone could meet it on the volley from there. When I got to Lincoln the centre-halves –God bless them – would go up for a ball, I’d position myself – it would skim off his head and suddenly someone would be there to larrup it into the net with me standing over there hung out to dry and everyone saying, what the hell are you doing over there? Pretty quickly I had to learn to be reactive not proactive. I had to stop anticipating and start waiting and seeing.

FOX: One of the most memorable games you were involved in was the Shrewsbury FA Cup quarter final in 1982. You had played 331 consecutive games when Chic Bates came along and put a stud hole in your leg. He didn’t seem that remorseful at the time, did he ever ask if you were okay?

MW: No I don’t think he did! Funnily enough my first game back after that was against Shrewsbury in the league up at Gay Meadow. The first ball that came in, and I knew it was going to happen, he belted me again. No, I wouldn’t really expect him to make any mention of it, it was just part and parcel of the game. He did it on purpose, I know it was deliberate. He saw me coming and he just looked after himself and put his foot up, but as a keeper you can’t afford to see anything bar the ball. What actually caught me out, I think it was from a free-kick, and it clipped Eddie Kelly’s head which altered the pace and the flight of the ball. Once I was committed I had to keep going and collect the ball. 

FOX: What was the conversation out there because there was a long stoppage?

MW: We were trying to strap it up, it wasn’t bleeding it was just a hole! We were trying to get me through to half time which was about ten minutes away so we could have a proper look at it, but I hadn’t realised how much it had incapacitated me. After a couple of minutes the pain started to come and then after five minutes I was in bloody agony with it. Then they scored and I was thinking this is bloody ridiculous but let’s get to half time. Then we lost a second because I couldn’t move, I was like a floundering fish in the goalmouth. 
After the second one then I took the decision upon myself and threw my gloves off and off I went. It was no good.
But then we got an equaliser just before half time when they scored an own goal. 

FOX: Did you see the second half when we got revenge with a 5-2 win?

MW: No, I spent the rest of the game in the bath. We knew nothing was broken, it was merely a flesh wound so I didn’t bother going to hospital. We had to clean it up, because if you remember it was always very sandy up that end of the ground.
Tommy Williams and myself used to have a good laugh together and as I was lying there in the penalty area Tommy came up and poked his finger right in the stud hole and said: “Yeah Wall, I think that could be trouble.” I said: “Really? Well thanks Tom.”
Another incident like that shows you how crackers players have to be. Do you remember David Cross the big striker who was at West Ham, Norwich and West Brom? He was the original Psycho. My little mate Dennis Rofe – God bless him I’ve spent many a happy hour in Sid’s company – went up for a header with Cross while we were playing at West Brom. Dennis was at full stretch and Crossy caught him with an elbow right across the jaw line. He was down and I went across to see if he was alright. Now Dennis was hard as nails but if there was one thing he hated it was having stitches and as I reached him I went: “Oooooooo Sid, that’s going to be a twelver.” He had a four inch cut along his jaw but he refused to go off and had some butterfly stitches in until half time. At the break they wouldn’t let him go back out like that and I was laughing my socks off at him because he had to have all those stitches.
Then in the second half it was getting frosty. I went up to collect a cross and the little winger Willie Johnstone came under me and knocked my legs away, he claimed he couldn’t stop in time. When I came back down I landed on my eyebrow! At the end of the game I had to sit there and have four stitches above my eye while Dennis was laughing his head off at me. I said: “I’ve only got four, you’ve got as dozen mate!” like kids we were. That’s how it was, you would look after each other, run through brick walls for each other. 

FOX: The win over Shrewsbury earned City a semi-final against Spurs. You have already touched on why we lost but the real killer was Ian Wilson’s own goal. Does it ever get mentioned now?

MW: I don’t see Ian very often now. He shinned it without a doubt. I called for it and he was trying to play it back to me around the penalty spot, but it lopped up and over me. On the day I suppose you could say we were lucky to keep it to two because I don’t think we were ever at the races from what I can remember. I think we had about one chance in a one on one, was it Jimmy Melrose? Clemence just beat him to it. I was disappointed because we had done so well to get there and we let ourselves down. We didn’t give as we should have done. You know they were a very good side, one of the best in the country then. They had Hoddle, Ardiles and Villa… although Villa didn’t play that day as the Falklands War had just started.

FOX: Before you bumped into Chic Bates managed to play 331 consecutive games… how did you manage that?

MW: Well I was very lucky as regards injuries. You would get your knocks, your bruises, your broken fingers all the time but you could play with those. You would always make it. I think a lot of it was fear of losing your place. There wasn’t any rotation then, you were either in or you were out.
There was also the pride you took in being a first team player. We used to say there were a hell of a lot of training ground players. But once they got out there in front of a crowd against real opposition then nerves could get the better of them – I never had that problem. I didn’t allow myself the tiniest shred of self doubt, even if I made the most awful howler I would say to myself, right sod it, that’s gone now, on with it. I had the ability to do that no matter how low things got. If you let one in you’d say, well I’m not conceding another one. If you let four in then you’d say there’s no way they are getting a fifth…
I think a sense of self belief and also a sense of humour could get you through it.
We were at Highbury one day and it was David O’Leary’s debut. We were three-nil down within about eight minutes. After the third went in I said to myself: “Bloody hell Mark, this is ridiculous. This is going to end up 27-0 at this rate and we can’t have that.” So I went down on the edge of the box, in the ‘D’ and put my arm in the air. The referee came running back and said: “What’s the problem?”
I looked up at him and said: “To be honest with you we aren’t quite ready yet, could we start again?” He wasn’t at all happy, but we had to have some kind of stoppage or something had to happen to give us a break and that was the only thing I could think of. I got booked, but we didn’t let any more goals in. 

FOX: You always looked as though you enjoyed playing…

MW: I loved it…

FOX: …which you don’t see now. Players are all very serious now, you never see them laughing. You always looked like if you hadn’t been paid you would have gone out there anyway.

MW: Well that was exactly the attitude I had. You never expected anything, you never assumed you were going to play in the next game, you treated each game as though it might be your last because you might get badly injured or you might lose your form. I had a very balanced outlook on it, possibly because I came very late into professional football and hadn’t been indoctrinated as a kid.
It used to frustrate Jimmy Bloomfield so much because he always thought I still had a student attitude and didn’t take it seriously enough, but if only he knew how seriously I took it. I had a wife and a family and an opportunity to do something for a living that I really enjoyed anyway. There were a lot of players, including goalkeepers who were better than me or more able, but they didn’t have that inner strength that I had and my determination to hold on to my place.