by Ian Holloway
Then came the day we’d be waiting for – the FA Cup tie with Derby County. This was a huge game for us and boy oh boy – what a performance. There was a massive crowd and I had a virtually full strength team to pick from, though I had to decide if Barry Hayles was fit enough after just about recovering from a broken toe. I decided to go with Sylvan and Kevin Gallen, who can link up play fantastically well and was probably the perfect foil for Sylvan. Kev drops back and can ping the ball all over the place and plays a kind of Teddy Sheringham role for us. Things had started to improve for Sylvan by this point, because he’d been having a tough time up till then and was even booed off during one game – that seemed to snap him out of whatever it was that was stopping him playing to his full potential. The whole of Plymouth was talking about the game and a lot of people were saying that the last really great Cup run Argyle had been on saw them beat Derby before getting knocked out to Watford, who were, by coincidence, still in the last 16 this time around. I told a few journalists that mentioned it that it was alright for them to go on about it but it didn’t mean much to me.
So Billy Davies brings his side to Home Park and we played as well as we’d done all season from the first whistle to the last. We competed for everything, we were disciplined we scored two goals and they had a man sent off. We were given two penalties as well in that game, though Kevin Gallen missed one, but that meant in two home games against Derby that season we’d been given four penalties, and Billy had moaned like hell about that, but I think we’d earned a bit of luck, and I’m a firm believer in what goes around comes around, even though Derby had done us no harm. We seemed destined for the quarter-finals and that was the best overall performance by any of the teams I’ve ever managed. We were in the quarter-final and the whole city was going crazy. Again, I just wanted a home draw and Chelsea and Manchester United were the teams we most wanted. I didn’t care who it was, so long as we didn’t have to travel and, just as everyone had predicted, we pulled Watford out of the hat. We were actually the last two sides out and I was just relieved that we came out first. We were just two wins from Wembley and if I could pull that one off, I really would be the Pig of Plymouth!
We played just as well against Colchester two days later and won 3-0 so the confidence seemed to be growing and we were on something of a roll – so I thought. I can’t say I was looking forward to my next game, which was away to QPR.
Gary Waddock had gone and John Gregory had taken over and I’d called him to congratulate him on the appointment. He let us use QPR’s training ground prior to the match, which was fantastic so for me, all the animosity was gone and all I wanted to do was win the game. I had no problem with Gianni Paladini, either. I felt very emotional the night before the game because I’d spent five years at Loftus Road but it had felt like ten after all the problems we’d had and for most of that time I felt like I’d been the cement trying to hold everything together. I hoped I’d get a good reception from the QPR fans but I didn’t really care because I just wanted to focus on winning the game. I was too emotional and I went out of the tunnel just before the game kicked off because I didn’t want to be the centre of attention but I think things will be easier next time because football is like a river flowing underneath a bridge and hopefully a lot more water will have gone under by then. In hindsight, I wished I’d not done what I did at Loftus Road that day and think I would have felt better if I’d at least gone out and clapped for some of the QPR fans. As for the game itself, we went in 1-0 up at the break and in the second half, our goalie is rammed sideways as he caught the ball, drops it and Lee Cook taps it home. My lads stopped, waiting for the foul to be given but instead the ref points to the centre circle. It had to have been a foul and Lilian Nalis, the most placid man on the face of the Earth, then chases the referee to argue the decision and gets booked and then five minutes later he gets booked again, still arguing about the goal. We held out for a draw but the whole day had been a bit surreal and had felt a bit like my dad’s funeral where I’d felt like I’d not really been there. I’d needed to shut down to cope with the day and I think I ruined what should have been a pleasant experience because the QPR fans were very friendly and nice and I believe they were chanting my name before I came out. I felt like one thing might trigger me off and the last thing you want to do is blub in front of your bloody subs. I might not have applauded the Rangers fans that day, but I am now, so thanks for your support during those five years and thanks for the way you treated me on my return – it meant an awful lot.
Chapter 26: Life On the Ocean Waves
As the 2006/07 season drew towards its conclusion, it seemed every game had some kind of edge to it and our game after QPR was Stoke City at home and the return of my old Rovers team-mate Tony Pulis. Pu had done a brilliant job keeping Argyle up the previous year and it would be unfair to say everyone was gunning for him on his first return to Home Park. He’d alienated a lot of fans by his negative comments, but I think he just did what he had to do to keep Argyle up and I have to say he also left me with a great bunch of lads. I wanted to distance myself from any perceived Holloway v Pulis sideshow and instead sat in the stand initially, though I had to go down the moment I saw something I didn’t like. We drew 1-1 which was a fair result though I knew my directors had been desperate to win that one!
The talk was all about Watford and the build up to the game was hugely enjoyable. We still had business in the League to deal with first though and our trip to Sheffield Wednesday left me absolutely bewildered. Remember I said the decision at West Brom where Capaldi was almost snapped in half was the worst I’d ever seen up to that point? Well that’s because an incident at Hillsborough eclipsed even that. I changed the team around again in preparation for Watford and the referee that day was guilty of the worst decision I’d ever seen at any level as a kid, adult – anywhere. The score was 0-0 when a ball came across into our box and our goalie catches it and as he does, their striker stumbles – I think purposely after watching replays – and hits our keeper’s legs as though he’s been fired out of a cannon. It flattened our goalie and he drops the ball to one of their players who thought he was going through the motions of tapping the ball in regardless, a little embarrassed by his actions judging by his body language. Not dissimilar to the foul we’d been on the end of at QPR, our lads stop, look over to the linesman and he’s only kept his flag down. I was watching it all in disbelief and I’ve got to say the Sheffield Wednesday fans were absolutely hilarious and I love them for their reaction. They were leaning over and apologising to me because they’d never seen anything like it, either. When Lilian Nalis had got sent off at QPR, I went mad at him for losing his rag and said referees would make mistakes and it was futile showing any dissent. With that in mind my lads calmly get on with it but it was me going ballistic on the side like a complete fruitcake. My lads then go and equalise and then dominate the remainder of the game. The Wednesday fans were telling me it was embarrassing. “Your reserves are twice as good as our first team Ollie!” was one shout I liked. We drew 1-1 but I was incensed and after watching the replay several times on my laptop I thought, “Bugger it.” I went to the ref’s room singing an old Eighties song, “You’re unbelievable,” as I banged on his door. I went in and started to say my piece. He said, “You’re raising your voice.”
“Raising my voice?” I turned to the linesman. “And what the hell were you doing?”
“Oh I couldn’t see it from my angle.” “Couldn’t see it? Everyone in the ground saw it, what are you talking about? What’s the matter with you?”
I was out of order but I needed to get that off my chest and I calmed down a bit after that. But it was another two points lost and when you look at our final total, it’s heartbreaking that such clear-cut decisions didn’t go our way because if they had, I believe we’d have sneaked into the play-offs.
Then – at last – the game was here – Watford at home in the FA Cup with the winner going into the semi-final
s. I was stunned by the media interest in us but we managed to box them all off in one day and there were some fantastic interviews done. One bloke from The Sunday Times spent three hours with me and Kim and wrote a blinding article on our lives – apart from the fact he called me an unfashionable, scruffy, little Bristolian!
I got presented with a gift from FA Cup sponsors Eon because I’d made a comment about my teams being like a cheap tea bag – we didn’t stay long in the Cup – and Eon sent me an expensive box of tea bags with a letter saying, “You can’t call yourself a cheap tea bag anymore, Mr Holloway.” These were only small things, but they meant a lot to me.
The whole of Plymouth had gone mad, the lads were up for it and it was a relief that the game was finally here. The whole squad was fit and for the first time since I’d been at the club I had to leave some of the lads in the stand. It was live on the BBC on a Sunday evening – it was a huge occasion.
We prepared meticulously and went over and over Watford’s main threat which was from set-pieces and blow me, what happens in the end? They score from a set-piece and we lose the game 1-0. We’d felt like we had half a chance but despite throwing everything at them, we just couldn’t score on the night. I was incredibly proud of my team, who played without fear and gave me everything but young Mr Foster – in their goal – who didn’t play in the bloody semi-final – was superb. Man United wouldn’t let him play against them in the semi and how can that be fair? If you loan a player out, he should be able to play against anyone, not who the club who own him choose.
So I was left bursting with pride but fuming as well. It felt like I was always the bridesmaid, never the bride. We had 10 league games left and I told the lads that if we could win nine of them, I thought we’d get in the play-offs, because we were good enough. We had a game two days later and came back down to earth with a bump, losing 4-2 to Barnsley, who had a terrific attitude in that match, but I think my lads tried too hard to win it when it was 2-2, probably because of what I’d said about winning all our games. It cost us three points, so I’ll never say anything like that again.
We bounced back with a win over Crystal Palace thanks to a wonder goal from Scott Sinclair and that win eased a little bit of the pressure I was feeling but all it did was precede what I now call The Week From Hell (TWFH). Because of the Cup run, we had to squeeze in a game with Burnley and I’d gone for the soonest possible free day because I thought we could take advantage of the rotten run they’d been on. Carole, the secretary at Plymouth said to me, “Do you think that’s wise, Ollie, playing Ipswich, Burnley, and Leeds all away within a week?” I said, “Carole, Burnley are on a bad run, we need to get it in so let’s do it.” So we did, but boy did I learn to rue that day! TWFH began at Portman Road where I had every confidence we could do well, but I lose my centre-half in the first minute. My lad nudged the Ipswich player, who went over like he’d been shot and the ref waves play on. The linesman, meanwhile, puts his flag up, play stops and the ref speaks to the lino and then gives my lad a straight red – how can you go from waving play on and giving no foul whatsoever on to sending someone off? How could he not see a foul and still give someone their marching orders. I saw him afterwards and he said that it had been a goalscoring opportunity and I asked him if he’d had any idea how quick my centre-half was and that there was no way he’d have time to do that. We went in 2-0 down and then Sylvan Ebanks-Blake goes through after charging the ball down and scores a great goal. The same linesman kept his flag down but the ref disallows it for handball. Had it gone to 2-1, I think they’d have been twitchy and I reckon we could have got something. I couldn’t believe it and we end up losing 3-0. Next we went up to Burnley who hadn’t won for 19 games and everything they did was spot-on that night and everything we did was useless – it was just one of those games that we’d been destined to lose. It didn’t look like my team that night and we were 3-0 down at the break and eventually lost 4-0. TWFH was about to get even worse, though. Next up were Leeds and to be fair to the lads, their response was fantastic even though we lost 2-1 to a last minute goal. So my win nine from 10 had started well, with one win and four defeats from five and we sank to our lowest position in the table all season and I’m feeling the pressure again! Who’d be a manager?
We then ended the season by winning our last five games, stacking up the club’s best ever finish and set a new club record for most points in a season at Championship level. I have to say that we probably ended up around about where we should have done, just outside the play-offs – but we could have done so much more. The amount of rubbish decisions that we were on the end of probably cost us about eight points and that would have been enough to get us in the top six. I’ve never had a season when my team has competed so well in almost all of the games we played so I felt really positive about my first year with the Green Army. The support we had was fantastic but few would have guessed, especially yours truly, what lay ahead for the club and me in the next six months, during which time I went from hero to zero with the Green Army. The following chapters might go a little way to explaining what really happened, though.
Chapter 27: The Capaldi Factor
We’d ended the season with real optimism but I could see troubled waters ahead and without the financial backing of the board, the simple truth was that we would lose several of our best players. There were too many out of contract at the end of the 2007/08 season and a number of them were unhappy with their wages, which by Championship standards were average at best. The problem was, the Argyle board just couldn’t or wouldn’t acknowledge what was on the horizon and by the time they did, it was too late.
On the plus side, I’d promised the lads a new gym before the summer break but none of them believed I’d ever get it. The board were reluctant to pay for new equipment but I said to the squad I’d manage to convince them somehow and by the time we returned for pre-season training, we had everything in place – new equipment, new weights – the lot.
That enabled me to do something I’d always wanted to do by creating a book for every single player to keep track of their personal development, fitness and weight targets. We changed the training routine to three sessions a day and it was tough, exhaustive stuff. The lads were really tired for the first nine days which took us up to our first pre-season friendly against Torquay United prior to our now annual trip to the Austrian training camp.
The boys had been working flat-out with the strengthening programme kicking in and they were finding it difficult, as we knew they initially would – and it showed against Torquay as we lost 1-0. It was a bit of a rude awakening for me, to be honest, to discover that the board weren’t happy at all with that defeat. “How can we lose to our nearest rivals?” I was asked so I said, “Well hang on a minute, the lads have been training hard all week…” but then I thought to myself, “Why am I explaining a defeat that was no more than a work out?” After the run we’d gone on last season, just missing out on the play-offs, I thought maybe they’d have a little more faith in what we were trying to do than they were actually showing.
As it was, we then went on to have one hell of a pre-season after that as the lads got stronger and started to realise they could cope with the extra demands we’d been placing on them and instead began feeling the benefit of them. The only addition I’d made to the squad was French midfielder Nadjim (‘Jimmy’) Abdou on loan, though we also managed to make Peter Halmosi’s loan deal permanent – probably the most important piece of business the club did that year because he’d had an outstanding end to the previous campaign. We paid Debreceni a fee of £325,000 and with the £75,000 loan fee we’d already paid, it still represented fantastic business, even though it didn’t leave us with much of a transfer budget. I had told the board that if that was the only money we had to spend, it would be better spread around on new contracts to the players we risked losing for nothing next summer, but if they could finance both Halmosi and new contract offers, then fine. They coughed up an
d I thought that meant we had some pennies still left in the coffers to start negotiating one or two new deals for our existing players.
I wasn’t that concerned about bringing new faces in however, because we’d ended last season on such a high and I wanted to keep things ticking over rather than make wholesale changes – I was happy with the squad and the team spirit so why tamper with something that clearly wasn’t broken?
I still had major concerns about what we were going to do with the 13 players that were going to be out of contract at the end of the season – the majority of the squad – and it was something I had flagged up as a matter of urgency with the chairman and the board on numerous occasions. There was another spanner in the works, too. We’d dropped a major bollock by allowing Tony Capaldi to see his contract out and leave Plymouth on a Bosman at the end of the previous season because he’d moved to Cardiff City and pretty much tripled his wages in one fell swoop… and now all my players knew exactly what he was now earning – because he’d told one or two of them. Capaldi had played himself to that level of earnings, took a risk by not signing a new deal with us and it had paid off for him. But a lot of other members of the team had earned the right to expect some monetary reward for their efforts and the Capaldi situation was causing more than a little unrest. We’d finished two places higher than Cardiff in the table and they were wondering why they weren’t being paid the wages other leading Championship clubs were seemingly paying their players. In effect, our own success had been counter-productive so I went to the board to try and get some of the lads new deals, basically because I believed they deserved them. I knew I couldn’t sort them all out, but I reckoned we could re-sign five or six, even if that meant doubling one or two of the wages we were paying. It might mean ending up with a smaller squad if five or six players walked away on Bosmans at the end of the season, but we’d still have the same quality in the team for the same amount of money, just a smaller pool to select from.
