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Far from being Celtic’s highest earner, Roy Keane was no higher than eighth
In this exclusive extract from his autobiography, Gordon Strachan tells how he was courted by Celtic, the truth behind the Roy Keane deal and why he admires Rupert Lowe
When Roy Keane joined Celtic on a free transfer in December 2005, most people were left wondering how we could afford him and why he should be interested in playing in Scotland. He had been reckoned to be on something like £80,000 a week at Manchester United and it was clear that although the Premiership clubs which were interested in him could not match that, they would nevertheless be able to take him closer to this figure than we could. When Keane signed for us, a number of reports indicated that he would be on £40,000 a week at Parkhead and that the deal would be funded partly by Dermot Desmond. Neither was correct.
The salary we agreed with him was considerably less than £40,000 a week, and even then it was dependent on the number of first-team appearances he made. Far from being Celtic’s highest earner when he joined, he was no higher than eighth on the list. Dermot was brilliant in this matter. As one of Roy’s Irish admirers, Dermot wanted him on board as much as anybody — but not at the expense of leaving us short of money for the group of younger players I wanted to sign.
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of Keane’s decision to come to Celtic was that I could not even promise him a regular place in the team. At our meeting at Dermot’s house in London to discuss the move, I told him: “I still see you as a central midfielder. But the problem is that Neil Lennon and Stilian Petrov are doing too well in that area to be left out or moved elsewhere. If I had to select a team for the next match, and the three of you were all fit, I would have to plump for Neil and Stilian.”
He was perfectly happy with that, for the simple reason that because of his affection for Celtic during his upbringing in the Irish Republic, he had genuinely set his heart on playing for the club.
AFTER 21 years in England, I never expected to find myself working back in Scotland; and not in my wildest dreams did I think that my next club after Southampton would be Celtic. The chance arose because of Martin O’Neill’s decision to step out of football to give more support to his wife, Geraldine, who had become seriously ill.
As for the background to Desmond electing to plump for me as Martin’s replacement, all I know is that it was partly due to the recommendation of Eddie Jordan, the former Formula One motor-racing supremo. Eddie, whom I’d originally met through Bryan Richardson — and who had become involved in Bryan’s Manchester City takeover bid — is a close friend of Dermot’s as well as a Celtic shareholder.
I first became aware of Dermot’s interest when we met by chance for the first time at the Cheltenham Festival in March 2005. A friend from my Coventry City days, an associate of the club’s directors, Eric Groves, invited my wife, Lesley, and me to be his guests in his hospitality box there. The suite next to it was occupied by Dermot, Eddie and various Irish football personalities such as Kevin Moran and Liam Brady. When Lesley and I bumped into Eddie and Liam as we were going for a walk, Eddie asked us to join him for a drink in their box.
I had been in the room for only a few minutes when I became conscious of a vaguely familiar distinguished-looking guy with a moustache looking at me. It was Desmond. He came over to introduce himself and asked what I was doing football-wise.
I told him: “I would like to return to football, but a lot of the jobs aren’t that much different from the ones I had at Coventry and Southampton. Maybe that’s my true level as a manager, but I would like to try something more exciting.” There was no way I was angling for Martin’s job, it was just a general comment about my situation. However, Dermot said: “Well, we don’t know how long Martin is going to be here. He will never get the sack from Celtic, but maybe he will want to go somewhere else.”
Referring to the Manchester City situation, I then said: “There is something in the pipeline for me, so I could be going somewhere myself in a few weeks.” But Dermot said: “If you do, make sure you have a get-out clause in your contract.”
Two days later I received a telephone call from Kevin Moran. He had been listening to my conversation with Desmond and he said: “I bet you couldn’t believe what he was saying to you. But take it from me — he meant every word. He does not tell porky pies.” Then came the call from Desmond to tell me that Martin would be leaving at the end of the season, and to invite me to have further talks about the job.
At our meeting my only stipulation about joining Celtic was that the approval of it had to be unanimous. I said: “I know you are the major shareholder, but I am not coming along if it’s just you who wants me here.”
I considered it particularly important that Celtic’s chief executive, Peter Lawwell, the boardroom figure with whom I needed to have the closest working relationship, was in agreement on my appointment. I actually pulled him aside and said: “Look, if you don’t fancy me, just let me know and I won’t come here. You have my promise that if this is the case, I won’t drop you in it, I will just make an excuse.’
Peter seemed aghast at the suggestion. He stressed that he was just as enthusiastic about me being at Celtic as Dermot and Martin were. But I did have a major credibility hurdle to overcome with the Celtic fans. It could be that I still do.
I DON’T think I have ever had a club chairman — either as a player or a manager — as different from me in his social background and mentality as Rupert Lowe, with whom I worked at Southampton. As he is constantly reminded, he is not what most people in the game would call a real football man. He had only ever seen one or two matches before becoming involved with Southampton — his favourite sports were and possibly still are hockey and rugby union — and one of his chief forms of relaxation is duck shooting. Someone once remarked: “If he was not a football club chairman, he would probably be an estate manager.”
His image was perhaps best summed up by a comment attributed to Graeme Souness, the first of his Southampton managers. Graeme, by way of an explanation for his apparent difficulty in establishing a rapport with him, was quoted as saying: “How many people do you know in professional football with the name Rupert?” All this is part of the reason I am fond of him. I like people who are unconventional and in the world of professional football, he is certainly that. Although he got on my nerves sometimes, just as I must have got on his, we could make each other laugh. I got a lot of fun out of working with him.
For the early part of matches I would sometimes sit with Rupert and Andrew Cowen, the Southampton managing director — who had been at prep school with the chairman — in the directors’ box. That experience could also be somewhat amusing. Rupert was fond of comparing football situations with those he experienced as a hockey player. For example, it bothered him that Southampton did not score more goals from corners. He was particularly irritated once when a corner landed at the feet of one of our players, only for him to blast it over from eight yards out.
“Should he have done that, Gordon?” he asked.
“No, Mr Chairman, of course he shouldn’t have done that.”
“Did he practise his shooting?” “Yes, Mr Chairman, he did.”
Andrew, who, like Rupert, had not previously been a football follower, tended to make the same sort of comments. In one ear I would be hearing: “Oh, what a terrible pass” and in the other, it would be: “Doesn’t he work on this?” When I left them to join Garry Pendrey in the technical area, Garry would joke: “I know why you are here — bet those two are getting on your breests again.”
Rupert once said to me: “You know, Gordon, I think I have cracked this game of football now. It is very much like hockey.” While I would question whether his experience in hockey is as relevant as he might have thought, his argument cannot be totally dismissed. He is no mug on the psychological and physical sides of sport. He is very much into various aspects of sports science, and, as reflected by his radical decision to bring England’s former World Cup rugby union coach Sir Clive Woodward on to the Southampton staff, his ideas on how teams can maximise their performances can be refreshingly broad-minded and progressive.
There were a few players about whom he was spot on, too. Take Peter Crouch, the player he went on about the most. Rupert suggested the centre-forward as a Southampton signing so often that it was like listening to a cracked record. We did not try to sign him from Aston Villa when I was manager because in addition to myself, none of the other members of our staff who were consulted on the idea by Rupert voted in favour of him being brought to Southampton either.
Of course Southampton did eventually sign Crouch after I left, in July 2004 for £2m. Twelve months later he had become an England player and been sold to Liverpool for £7m.
How I upset Adams
I FOUND it particularly difficult to be Mr Super Cool when I had the added pressure of playing as well as managing.
I still cringe about what I said to Arsenal’s then captain, Tony Adams, during Coventry’s 1-1 draw at home to the Gunners towards the end of the 1996-97 season.
It started with Adams clattering me near the touchline. As I was chasing a ball towards the corner flag (a bit daft, I know, for a 40-year-old) he came across to boot the ball away and then followed through and caught me on the chest.
“The next time I’m going to knock you into the stand,” he warned.
“Don’t start that, Tony,” I said. “You’ve had many years to do that to me and you’ve not been able to do it once. Even though I’m 40 now, you’ve no chance.”
Instead of dropping the matter, he kept ****ering on about it.
About a minute later, when we were close to each other in the middle of the park, he was still telling me about the harm that he was going to inflict on me.
“Look,” I said, “why don’t you just **** off and go for a drink, and let the rest of us get on with the game.”
Not surprisingly, as soon as I mentioned the word “drink” — the most sensitive of subjects for Tony because of his much-publicised battle against alcoholism — I knew that I was in serious trouble.
His eyes were popping out and in no time at all his big Arsenal teammates had gathered menacingly around me, and they did not want my autograph, that’s for sure.
It was just as well that the match was being shown live on television because otherwise I am sure that I would have got thumped.
As it was, all I could see were these angry Arsenal faces, and I was thinking to myself: “Where’s my help? Where are the other Coventry boys?” Although Tony had started it all, I knew that I had been out of order, so I found him after the game and apologised to him.
“No problem,” he said. “It’s all forgotten.” I am not sure if he truly meant it, but fortunately for me the fact that I packed in playing at the end of the season meant I was never in a position to find out.
Curse of agents in football
THE AMOUNT of money washing around in football has generated greed and dishonesty. There is no shortage of people striving for a piece of the cake, and I can get quite sensitive sometimes over the ease with which some allow any sense of integrity they have to fly straight out of the window.
The point has been brought into sharp focus by the conduct of some players’ agents. They are not all bad, but the truth is that even if one of my best friends became an agent tomorrow, I would find it difficult to have the same trust in him.
Having to sit in on some of Bryan Richardson’s negotiations with these men at Coventry, and see at first hand how dishonest and morally bankrupt a few were, was possibly the aspect of the job I found most difficult to come to terms with.
It did have its light moments, however. I remember one agent sending us a video of a Scandinavian goalkeeper he was hoping we would sign. Embarrassingly for him, the previous film on the video — of a porno- graphic nature involving him and a woman we took to be his wife — had not been totally erased. The first five minutes of the tape were infinitely more entertaining than anything we saw of the keeper.
Generally, my experience of the way some agents conduct their business was disconcerting. For example, what can one make of the guy who falsified the figures on a player’s draft contract? Once he and Bryan had reached agreement on the player’s terms, Bryan, who was running late for a meeting elsewhere, wrote down the details and asked him to take the notes to the club secretary, Graham Hover, to incorporate them into a formal typewritten contract. As Bryan was in his car heading to his next appointment, he received a call from Graham telling him that, unusually for the chairman, some of his handwritten figures were not clear. After Bryan had left, the agent changed the fives to sixes and the sevens into eights. I could never get my head around the instances of agents screwing us to the wall on their clients’ personal terms — which I could just about accept as being a valid part of their jobs — then demanding we give them personal payments of up to £250,000 before the deals could be completed.
On at least two occasions we had two or three agents claiming to represent the same player and ending up having a fierce row, in front of Bryan and me and their client, over how their cuts should be divided.