by Ian Holloway
I saw the lad the next day and we exchanged words and shortly after I had an assessment of the squad I had to present before the board. At the meeting, I told the directors that they couldn’t be that close with the players and they couldn’t have favourites, either. It was incredible how events had dictated a complete U-turn during that first month and there were all kinds of strange things happening. One minute we’re playing Real Madrid in one of Plymouth’s most high profile games ever, the next I’m at a police station wondering if one of my lads is going to prison or I’m arguing with a director – who’d be a bloody manager, eh? I had to get us winning football matches again and our next game was at Home Park against Yeovil and a semblance of normality returned as we won the game 2-0. Barry Hayles scored his first goal for us which was another bonus and I felt we were just about ready for the new season, a week away. I released the player who’d been involved from his contract, after he’d been at the Sporting Chance clinic.
I felt a lot of guilt about the incident in Austria. The dressing room is a tough place at times and you have to earn respect from other players – I knew that from my own experiences at Wimbledon and Bristol Rovers where I got stick about my nose, but I gave it back. I could laugh at my problems but how can anybody know things are going too far if there are no outward signs whatsoever? As a teenager breaking into the first team, you have to expect to be given stick by senior pros and you’ve got to give as good as you get or you’ll never survive. But nobody knew how badly the mimicking was affecting him until he snapped. It was a new experience for me and one I never want to go through again. I did consider resigning at one point, the whole episode had been that horrific and I still can’t get my head around how someone can bottle up so much and react so violently.
It had all been going too well and I had to pay for it somewhere down the line – life’s like that, isn’t it? There’s always a price to pay and that’s just the way things are.
We started to come out of the collective daze we’d be in and by the time we kicked off our new season, I think we’d just about returned to somewhere approaching normality and all that stood between us and a morale-boosting start, was Wolves at home. Happily, the injured party was fit in time for this game and was in my starting line-up. It was a tough game with more than 16,000 inside Home Park and I was pleased enough with our performance in a 1-1 draw.
We had a ridiculous fixture at Colchester the following Tuesday night and we flew to that game. Layer Road is always a horrible place to go, but it was good to see my old mate, Colchester manager Geraint Williams, again and I was more than happy to leave with a 1-0 win, thanks to young Luke Summerfield’s spectacular goal. It didn’t get any easier and our next match was away to Sunderland who were wobbling badly and had lost their first two games under Niall Quinn and in hindsight, we couldn’t have played them at a better time. Before the match I told the lads they had to have the constitution of a police horse. For me, horses are amazing beasts as they are trained to deal with stress or noises and bangs which are against their nature, because they are naturally flight animals. My thinking was, if they can do that with a horse, why couldn’t I do the same with a group of footballers? A lot of that team talk was about having the right mentality and keeping our focus no matter what was going on around us.
Everyone knew what their jobs were and we’d prepared really well, but before my bum hit the bench at the start of the game, we went 1-0 down. My lads didn’t flinch, however, kept their focus and we went in 2-1 up at half-time. In the second-half they equalised and suddenly their fans woke up and went from being against their own team to being behind them – and my God that was scary! Then I had a choice to make and I decided to stick two strikers on because I wanted us to attack them whenever we had the chance because I didn’t think we were good enough to keep them out for the remainder of the game. The bench thought I was mad but I made two attacking substitutions, one being Nick Chadwick, who goes and scores me the winner in the 87th minute. It was just a fantastic feeling.
After the game I said I’d like to buy a drink for every one of our fans who travelled to watch us. I’d thought they’d been amazing and there must have been five or six hundred and they never stopped singing from start to finish, though they’d outdo themselves around a month later. I added another striker, Cherno Samba to the squad after that match and he was a kid who Des Bulpin had heard about and he’d been a bit of a wonderkid at Millwall a year or so before and Liverpool had been rumoured to have been on the verge of signing him for £1.5m. Millwall hadn’t wanted to let him go, he couldn’t handle it all so went back home to live with his parents in Spain. We got him over for a trial and I liked everything about the kid – he played with a smile on his face and did all the right things so we signed him.
Seven points from the first nine was exactly the start I’d hoped for, but we lost our Carling Cup match against Walsall, which brought everyone back down to earth. I had a few words with their manager Richard Money afterwards because I thought their lads over-celebrated in the tunnel after the game, considering the level we were playing. I said, “Well done, you played well but get them real, eh?” I actually wished I hadn’t said it afterwards because the fact was they were two leagues below us and he was right when he said it was a great result for them. I looked at the next three games and thought, ‘good God!’
We were playing an ex-Plymouth manager, an ex-Plymouth manager and then QPR! You couldn’t have scripted three more connected games. It was a very difficult phase for me, in all honesty and first up was Sheffield Wednesday and Paul Sturrock at home. The Argyle fans love Sturrock – or ‘Luggy’ as they call him – because of everything he achieved during his time there as manager and they gave him a great reception. In fact, my chairman called me the day before the game and told me he was having a meal with him after the match and asked me a) did I mind? and b) did I want to come? I said I didn’t mind but I didn’t want to go because however the result went it just wouldn’t be right. As it turned out, we lost 2-1 to a late goal meaning we hadn’t won any of our first three home games which wasn’t ideal and I was angry at myself for over trying because 1-1 would have been fine but I went for the win and I think it may have cost us the game. But you can’t always get what you want, can you?
Chapter 24: Coach Holloway!
Two home defeats in a row meant I had to think outside the box a little, and on the following Monday morning, I decided to do something completely different and not even my staff knew what I had planned. A guy had written to me – a performance coach, I think he described himself as. He said that he’d read some of the things I’d said and he thought I was very positive and added he’d really like to work with me. I’d let him come into the dressing room for one match so he could assess what I was doing. Afterwards, he suggested I should watch a movie called Coach Carter, because I reminded him of that character. I watched the film and was blown away by it and I have to say, likening me to Coach Carter was a hell of a compliment. I’d decided I’d show the lads this movie as soon as we got beat because I thought I’d sussed them out. We’d done well, done well, done well, lost and then lost again and I could have lost the lads myself at that point. So on the Monday morning, I said to them, “Alright, get your trainers on, we’re going to do something a bit different today.” We organised some pots of tea and coffee and mini pasties and we headed over to the education room at the Pilgrim Centre where a lot of school kids with learning difficulties often come to study. We closed all the curtains, got the lads around the screen and Des said, “What are you showing? The Sheffield Wednesday game?” and I said, “No, this is for you as well.”
I think the lads were waiting to see how I reacted to two defeats in a row, so when everyone was settled, I said, “OK lads. This is our training for today. Have what you want to eat and drink and just watch this film.” They looked around at each other and there were one or two comments so I said, “No seriously, I just want you to watch
a movie, thank you. Play the film.” I didn’t tell them why, I just wanted them to watch it together. Next to the screen was a blank flip chart and everyone got really into the film, because you can’t help but get involved. It’s a brilliant movie, and when it finished, we put the lights up and bang! Off I went. “That’s how you lot are to me,” I said. “And now I’ve had enough time with you to know exactly who you all are and it’s all about my judgement on you and what you are going to bring to my club.” I then proceeded to link each character with one of my players because they either did something in a similar way or they had personality traits that were the same and I nailed everyone of them and the lads were laughing as I did it, because they couldn’t argue with my assessment.
There were two lads who I always thought seemed a little isolated from the rest of the group – Ákos Buzasaky and Bojan Djordjic – both foreign lads, but we had three French lads at the club now and they weren’t ostracised from everyone else so I couldn’t understand it. Argyle had been champions twice in the previous three years, so there was no reason not to feel part of everything so it was baffling me but after watching Coach Carter I woke about 4am and thought, ‘My God, that’s it!’ it was like, Eureka! I got a pad and scribbled down my thoughts while they were still fresh and wrote ‘My champions won’t do their suicides.’ And then went back to sleep. What that actually means is, there was one kid in that film who was thrown out of the team by the coach because of ill-discipline and the coach said, “If you want to get back on my team, basketball is a privilege and you have to earn the right to have the privilege and I want you to do one thousand suicide runs for me.” Suicide runs are one length of a basketball court and back again, plus sit-ups and push-ups and he had to do them within five days. He went away and thought about it and he came back and told the coach he wanted to play on the team, to which he replies, “OK, but you still owe me those things you need to have completed them by Friday and you’ll never be able to achieve it. What is your biggest fear?” The kid then started trying to do the runs and by the deadline on Friday, the coach told him that he was still 85 suicides short and to get out of his gym. Then, two or three of the team said that they’d do his runs and push-ups because they’d seen how much he’d wanted it and he got back in the team.
So I associated Bojan and Ákos with that and reckoned they weren’t prepared to do our version of the suicide runs, whatever that might have equated to and thought what Coach Carter would have done and it was simple – he’d have thrown them out. One didn’t do it because he tried too hard and the other lads weren’t very nice to him and the other was moaning and whinging all the time so he’d created an atmosphere around himself so I threw him out. I said to Bojan, “You’re not playing with us anymore. I’d do Ákos’s suicides but I wouldn’t do yours and I’m not having it in my club.” I asked Paul Wotton if he’d do Bojan’s suicides and he said, “No, I wouldn’t.” I think I’d pinned down everyone’s character and nobody could argue, because I think I got every one of them right. I told Bojan that if he wanted to come back, he’d seen the film and he knew what he had to do. I told him he had to do what we wanted because we weren’t going to do what he wanted and that he wasn’t welcome. He didn’t moan, scored four goals in his first youth team game and three his next game and he kept looking over at me and was very respectful. Our training improved because they’d seen how strong I was and it wasn’t until another four weeks that he came to see me and I let him rejoin the group.
What a bloody film! Talk about inspirational – I decided after I’d seen that film that every day of my life, I was going to live the right way, I was going to do and say the right thing. If it was good enough for Coach Carter, it was good enough me, because he cared about his players in the same way I do and playing for QPR or Plymouth Argyle is an unbelievable privilege that you have to earn. Being given talent in your feet is not enough as far as I’m concerned and I could not have got my point over any better. It was a bit unusual and a bit weird, but I think it worked because our spirit was excellent afterwards. I believe all of us can shine and I think we’re all good at something and if I have one talent, it’s that I think I can spot that shining within people and I can get to it and encourage it and take away some of the worries and concerns so that they can go away and shine. I cried my eyes out at that film because the essence of the story was what I believed in my heart. It was an immense moment for me.
Next up was Tony Pulis’s Stoke away and our fans were pretty derogatory towards him because he’d been quite negative about Plymouth’s chances of promotion before he’d left. It was a bit of a weird atmosphere to be honest. We played some nice stuff and we came home with a 1-1 draw, which was no more than we deserved. We were unbeaten away from home, but couldn’t buy a win at Home Park and our next game was massive for me because it was the first time I’d come up against QPR since leaving.
I could have just as easily been sat in the visiting team dugout at Home Park but for off the field activities at Loftus Road that had been none of my doing. It was an odd experience to say the least. I was angry, emotional and wanted to smash Gary Waddock off the face of the planet because I still wasn’t happy with what he’d said after I left. I focused on my team winning the game, but we fell behind to an early goal before levelling matters and then proceeded to pass them off the pitch, and how we didn’t win that game, I’ll never know. The Rangers fans were a little strange with me, though it was understandable because we were neck and neck in the table and they wanted their side to win. I was desperate to win, too, and ram Waddock’s words down his throat and I was very aggressive on the line, I have to admit and I let him know exactly how I felt at one point which I have to admit I sort of regretted later. It was the most one-sided 1-1 draw I’d ever witnessed and I was proud of my lads. Waddock’s comments afterwards were that his side had ”done a job,” and I thought, ‘Yeah? Well where’s the overnight change of style that you promised on a manager’s seat that was still warm?’ I didn’t get caught up in everything, though, and shook his hand at the end. I wanted to be as professional as I could and just got in and got out, not sticking around to speak with anyone. I would never want to hurt Rangers or their fans, but Waddock’s words had hurt – no two ways about it. To label me as a long-ball merchant was absolute bullshit and, well, that’s enough on the subject.
For all our good away form, I still hadn’t given our fans anything to cheer about at Home Park. We were fine in the table but had to start winning at home if we wanted to kick on. My chairman kept asking “What about the fans? The gates are still down,” and I told him that they wouldn’t come back if we weren’t winning home games. We were playing attractive football, which is my philosophy, and if truth be told, the Argyle fans wouldn’t have allowed me to do anything else. So the style wasn’t an issue and my philosophy is to attack anyway, but there was something else we needed to fill Home Park each week. Don’t get me wrong, if we were first or second, there’d be no problem but to get to that level we need the Green Army behind us each week, frightening the visitors to death each week.
The first time I heard a few moans was when we played top-of-the-table Cardiff City in our next home match. We were 2-0 down at half-time and I could hear a few groans around the ground as we went in and I’d not experienced that at Home Park before. Worse was to follow when we went 3-0 down and that made my next decision easy. I’d been toying with changing formation from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3 for the last few games because I felt we’d become a more potent attacking force, but the only problem being we hadn’t actually had time to practice it on the training pitch. The funny thing was, we were playing quite well despite the score and then Des says, “What do you think, Oll?”
I said, “I think I’ve got to change things around.”
“You can’t do it without practising it,” Des said, not without good reason. But I thought now was the perfect opportunity. I had Lilian Nalis sat on the bench and I just thought ‘why don’t you
make your own feckin’ mind up and do something Holloway? There’s nothing to lose.’ It meant taking two senior players off to make it work, but I had to do what was right for the team so I took off my skipper Paul Wotton and left-back Anthony Barness and brought on Nalis and Nick Chadwick. I explained to Lil what I wanted us to do and I thought we’d be all right if he sat just in front of our centre-halves in a Claude Makelele kind of role and pushed my full-backs in. We started sending the ball long and then picking up the scraps because we had enough players forward to do that. Cardiff kept their formation and because of the timing of our substitutions, Dave Jones didn’t really have time to envisage what we might do. It was a gamble, pure and simple but almost immediately we pulled it back to 3-1 with a bit of a scuffy goal. The lads kept plugging away and pulled it back to 3-2, though time was running out. Then, with five minutes left, we made it 3-3. I’d rolled my dice a different way and it’d paid off – this time. Des said, “Oh, well done genius,” but he’d been quite right saying I shouldn’t have tried 4-3-3 without trying it out first. The fans had loved it and even though we were still without a home win, it felt like we had won and I felt like a manager, too. That might sound odd, but there are plenty of times you don’t feel like a manager, trust me. I told Dave Jones afterwards that all the reports I’d had back on his team said there were no weaknesses throughout the side and he thanked me for that, but the reports on our next opponents, Southampton, were the best I’d ever seen.
