Men in White Suits

by Simon Hughes

  Tanner waited almost eighteen months to make his first-team debut and in that period became a central defender for the reserves under Phil Thompson, Liverpool’s former European Cup-winning captain.

  ‘Thommo helped me with my positional sense – how to read the game at centre-back without diving into tackles and learning how to win balls in the air when it seems like you’ve got no chance.’

  When Graeme Souness was appointed as Liverpool’s first-team manager in 1991, one of his first big decisions was to sack Thompson. Souness had replaced Thompson as Liverpool’s captain a decade earlier and a feud existed between the pair. When staff informed Souness that Thompson was being too harsh with players, who did not enjoy working under him, he decided to act. Tanner can understand why.

  ‘Some of the stuff Thommo used to get us to do was baffling,’ Tanner says. ‘It amazes me that we managed to win any away games. If we were playing Leeds at Elland Road, say, he’d have us doing sprints around Anfield before leaving on the bus.

  ‘Thommo could hurt a player’s confidence with his harsh criticism. There were many arguments with players and sometimes it got out of hand. Deep down I’m sure he didn’t mean anything malicious, he just wanted us to be better players. I used to get hammered but eventually plucked up enough courage to tell him that if he kept hitting me with a stick, he wasn’t going to get anything positive back. Man-management is about knowing when to crack the whip and when to ease off. Thommo rarely eased off, though.’

  On trips away, Thompson would relax a little.

  ‘The pre-season tours to Cornwall were fantastic. We played the Man United and Everton and wiped the floor with them. We’d have a few drinks and, to be fair to Thommo, he’d encourage it. The United and Everton boys were staying in the same hotel and they’d be sitting there with protein shakes and soft drinks whilst watching Mike Hooper stumble across the bar with a round of sixteen beers on a tray.

  ‘One day, we all decided to go sea fishing on our day off. Wayne Harrison was always up for the crack so decided to dive off the boat. We all started shouting, “Man overboard! Man overboard!” The captain was ready to call the coastguard when he realized it was a wind-up. Wayne had swum under the boat and jumped back on. The captain didn’t think it was very funny and he called Thommo, who was waiting for us when we got back to the quayside. You can imagine his reaction. I think he grounded us that night, but we still went on to win the tournament. So happy days.’

  Tanner’s closest friends were Hooper and Mike Marsh. Marsh had joined Liverpool from non-league Kirkby Town around the same time as Tanner, while Hooper, a goalkeeper, was also from Bristol and had signed from Wrexham in 1985.

  ‘Hoops was crazy. Boy, I could tell you a few stories about him,’ Tanner says. ‘Love Hoops to bits: not all there. I bought a house in Cressington, which backed on to the garden of Holly Johnson from Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Next thing is, Hoops buys a gaff opposite me in the same cul-de-sac. He just rocked up one morning without saying anything beforehand. I thought that was a bit weird.’

  Hooper was a birdwatcher.

  ‘He was big into twitching,’ Tanner says. ‘He’d disappear into the Lake District for days at a time with his binoculars. Hoops had a silver XR3 and he’d put the seats right back. I figured out he’d been shagging. But one morning, he gave me a lift to training and in the cassette player he had a tape of birds whistling. He proceeded to tell me that he’d lie there in his car listening to these tapes because it helped him relax.’

  The peculiar behaviour did not prevent Tanner from accompanying Hooper in successive summers to El Arenal, Majorca, a concrete jungle built in the 1960s, popular with Brits and Germans for cheap holidays.

  ‘He could eat for England, Hoops. There was a greasy spoon that did fry-ups. The sign outside was advertising six English breakfasts for the price of five. So Hoops went in, put a big order in and ate them all.

  ‘The last I saw of Hoops was a few years back at Cheltenham races. He was working then as a nightclub doorman in Durham, which again was a bit strange, because he wasn’t really the confrontational type.’

  Tanner’s relationship with Marsh was built on different foundations.

  ‘Me and Hoops were thrown together because we were from the same area: two bumpkins was probably the idea. With Marshy, it was more natural. To be fair to Marshy, he was a Scouser and would tell players like Steve McMahon and Jan [Mølby] if he thought they were being out of order. After a couple of beers, he’d have a right go. He was a proper little terrier.

  ‘On our nights out, we’d head to places like Yates’ Wine Lodge near Central Station early doors and meet the other young ’uns, like Alex Watson. We preferred these types of venues rather than stand posing all night with the big heads in places like the Continental.’

  The Conti, as it was commonly known amongst Liverpool’s squad, was the club where most nights out wound up. Before even reaching there during the annual Christmas party one year, Tanner had a scuffle with Steve McMahon.

  ‘I’ve been on a couple of the Liverpool legends tours to Scandinavia and he’s all right now, Macca. But back then he was a pain in the arse. His best mate was Ronnie Whelan. Maybe Ronnie was the only one that knew how to deal with him.

  ‘We were in a pub early afternoon and Macca confronted a lad I was talking to who was a supporter and just asking me a few questions about Liverpool. “Who the fuck are you?” Macca kept saying. I thought he was being out of order and I told him so. “Just jog on, Macca. Stop being a dick.” He wouldn’t stop, so I lamped him and we had a bit of a scuffle before the lads broke it up. Macca turned up to training the next day and Bugsy was straight on to it, asking what had gone on. I’m not sure whether Macca could remember what had happened or whether he just didn’t want to admit that it was me that had cracked him one and caused the cut above his eye.

  ‘Wayne Harrison, bless his cotton socks, told me a story about a time he ended up going back to Macca’s house. Macca wouldn’t let him leave and had him playing pool until six o’clock in the morning. Because Wayne was a kid, he went along with it. That’s what Macca was like sometimes.’

  Of the other established first-team players, Tanner got on best with Bruce Grobbelaar.

  ‘In my first month at Liverpool, we went to La Coruña in Spain for a pre-season tournament. Bruce asked me to go for a walk and we ended up in a bar and had two beers each. When we got back to the hotel, Bugsy was fuming because there was a game the following day. Kenny knew about it and was apparently fuming too. I’d only spoken to Kenny twice before – once on the phone when he called to say he wanted to sign me and then again briefly on the first day of pre-season training. I didn’t play against Atlético Madrid but unfortunately everything went wrong. Bruce conceded five, making two mistakes, and Alan Hansen got carried off with a serious knee injury. There were no stretchers, so me and Mike Hooper had to help him into the changing rooms. Later, Kenny went ballistic. He rounded on all the boys then came to me. “You!” he said. “On your first fucking trip, messing about.” To be fair to Bruce, he stepped in and took the blame. He could see I was a bit overwhelmed by the telling-off I was getting. Kenny grounded me for the rest of the tournament. I wasn’t allowed to leave the hotel.’

  Tanner says he only had three meaningful conversations with Dalglish, who kept his distance from the other players too until the Hillsborough disaster, which drew him closer to those around him who were suffering. On one of the rare occasions the squad, wives and management all socialized together, Tanner ‘messed up’ again.

  ‘We went to see Wet Wet Wet and Kenny was busy talking to Marti Pellow. I got chatting to Marina, not knowing she was Kenny’s wife. The lads were going, “You’re in there, Worzel! Go for it!” But they all knew who she was, of course. Then Kenny shows up. “Give us a sec, boss, I’m in here.” Kenny goes, “I don’t think you are – that’s my bloody missus!”’ The lads had stitched me up good and proper.

  ‘Before one game, a while later,
I was called to reception where they said there was a lady looking for me, and it turned out to be Marina. She thought it was hilarious. The lads had stitched me up again!’

  Tanner played just four games for Liverpool under Dalglish in two and a half seasons, appearing as a substitute during a 4–1 victory over Manchester City in December 1989 before making his full debut towards the end of the same campaign at Charlton Athletic, a 4–0 win. Tanner says that although he was playing regularly for the reserves and included in first-team match-day squads, he felt like an outsider intruding on someone else’s victory parade when the old First Division championship was secured in April 1990. Tanner needed, indeed, to be reminded that he was involved in Liverpool’s last title squad. ‘I didn’t play enough to win a medal, so it’s no achievement of mine,’ he reasons.

  When Dalglish announced his surprise resignation in February 1991, Tanner saw it as an opportunity.

  ‘I was twenty-five and I needed to either kick on at Liverpool or go somewhere else. I’d been on loan to Norwich and loved it there. We lost just one in six. I played centre-half with Andy Linighan and we roomed together. The night before games, he’d reach into his bag and pull out a four pack of Carlsberg with a big smile on his face.’

  Graeme Souness was viewed as an exciting appointment. ‘I was delighted because it was a fresh start. It gave people a big kick up the arse. I used to watch him play as a kid and think, “Fucking hell – he’s a real man.” I wanted to be him. In the first few weeks, he told everyone in a meeting that he would reward effort. It was a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work. It’s the way it should be. You couldn’t afford to be in cruise control.’

  It quickly became apparent that Souness wanted to dispense with the old guard. Tanner likens what happened next to the atmosphere in a traditional public house where a new proprietor encourages the new clientele because he realizes it needs the income to flourish. ‘But the changes are met by resistance,’ Tanner says. ‘The old ’uns even complain when he tries to redecorate, because the walls have been cream for years.’

  There are other chapters in this book that outline the changes Souness made at Liverpool. Tanner concedes that the club’s younger players were more receptive to his ideas because they didn’t know any better.

  ‘If Graeme asked us to do something, I’d do it. I’d always been like that, ever since Mangotsfield. Ralph used to say that if he asked me to run into a wall, I’d run into a wall. He also said that I was quick to learn lessons. If I put my head through a hole in a wall and got punched, I wouldn’t do it a second time.

  ‘The old ’uns gave the impression that they thought the young ’uns weren’t fit to lace their boots. If that was the case, they should have focused on earning a new contract by playing well rather than arguing about it with the manager. The attitude was: “We’ve won five league titles” and anyone who thought differently could get to fuck.’

  The poisonous atmosphere made Tanner realize that it’s not always just the players in the team that define the results.

  ‘It can be the players on the sidelines that ruin the morale of the squad. Big characters not in the team would get together over a few beers and slag everyone off. Maybe they were a little bit worried about getting back in because we trained harder and took Graeme’s fitness programmes more seriously than they did. They’d argue that league titles had been won eating pie and chips. But in those times, everyone else was eating pie and chips.

  ‘I’ll stick up for Graeme until the cows come home because he gave a lot of young players a chance. There was Marshy, Steve McManaman, Jamie Redknapp, Don Hutchison, David James, Steve Harkness, Rob Jones and me.

  ‘Graeme helped improve the diet of the team. There was no more pie and chips. There were no more buses from Anfield to Melwood and back with us all being freezing cold. You probably think I’m only backing Graeme because he trusted me. But the tradition at Liverpool was that the manager always had the final say. Some of the players had become too big for their boots and did not help him when they should have done.’

  Souness met resistance because many of the older players were teammates of his and were there when he stretched the boundaries as Liverpool’s captain. Souness would lead the team off the pitch as much as he would on it and was a chief organizer of nights out. Suddenly, he was imposing his own rules, which could have been deemed hypocritical.

  I ask Tanner about Mølby, who had also admitted to a fraught relationship with Souness.

  ‘Jan was the one who you’d give it to if you wanted to keep hold of the ball, because he was so strong, nobody could knock him about. Although we roomed together on a few occasions, I have been told that Jan makes jokes about me on the after-dinner-circuit, saying I was the worst player he’d ever seen play for Liverpool.’

  Tanner can laugh now.

  ‘That’s his opinion,’ he says. ‘I once told him that if I had his ability and my fitness, I’d be captain of England. Jan turned round laughing and said, “Yeah, but you’re fucking crap.” He had a way with words, Jan. He underachieved at Liverpool, in my opinion. Had he gotten himself fit, I’m sure he would have gone down as a genuine legend alongside Kenny and Keegan.’

  Tanner’s only full season at Liverpool corresponded with the club’s worst in decades. His personal statistics read reasonably enough: forty-five league appearances – all from either centre-back or left-back – fifteen clean-sheets (conceding more than two goals just twice in the games he played in) and only seven defeats. In the First Division, Liverpool finished sixth, eighteen points off title winners Leeds United.

  ‘I didn’t have many bad games but I had a few bad moments,’ Tanner insists. He talks about the occasion when Luton Town, doomed for relegation, led at Anfield after his own goal in front of the Kop – the result of an excruciating back-pass and a misjudgement of Bruce Grobbelaar’s positioning.

  ‘I should have just put it in the stand. That was my natural instinct. If I was playing for Rovers, that’s what I’d have done. But because I was playing for Liverpool, the crowd would get on your back if you booted it. It’s better to give it long than give it away and concede a goal, isn’t it? Lesson learned. Remember, though, I only cost £20,000. I made a high-profile mistake in a game that Liverpool still won. There were fellas around me that cost millions. They were making more mistakes. I think I offered greater value for money than someone like Torben Piechnik, who cost half a million quid. Then there was István Kozma [the Hungarian midfielder signed for £300,000 from Dunfermline Athletic].’

  Liverpool’s problems with back-passes continued the following season when an FA ruling decreed that from then on goalkeepers were to be punished from handling them by the awarding of an indirect free kick. Tanner believes the law affected Liverpool more than other teams.

  ‘In 1992, I played in the Charity Shield against Leeds at Wembley. It was the first time we couldn’t use Bruce as an out-ball just to relieve a bit of the tension. Eric Cantona went on the rampage, scoring a hat-trick. The tradition of Alan Hansen knocking passes backwards and forwards to the full-backs was over because the risk became greater. We didn’t adjust at all well.’

  There were some lighter moments during the 1991–92 campaign. Tanner scored Liverpool’s goal during a 1–1 draw in the Merseyside derby at Goodison Park from a corner at the Gwladys Street end. ‘I’d rather we won 1–0 and someone else score,’ Tanner says. ‘Goals aren’t the be-all and end-all. It would be fairer if there was a definitive list of defenders who have contributed towards the highest number of clean sheets. Maybe then us defenders would get a bit more credit than we do.’

  Tanner enjoyed European games the most. Liverpool were in the UEFA Cup following a six-year ban, the penalty for the hooliganism that led to the Heysel disaster in 1985.

  ‘They were easier, less physical. At the back, you could get your cigar out. It was more about concentrating. The foreign teams would play one up front. It was a doddle. We came unstuck against Genoa because they were ve
ry English, the way they played. Tomáš Skuhravý, the Czech centre-forward, was a beast. We didn’t get to grips with him.’

  Tanner says the improbable victory over Auxerre in an earlier round was a career high. ‘I never really felt like I belonged as a Liverpool player but after this game, I did. We lost 2–0 over in France and everyone expected us to go out. We were terrible. Alan Hansen slated us in the press. But at Anfield, we won 3–0 and went through. It was a defiant performance, really emotional. It felt like an achievement because we’d come through a fair bit of adversity. Unfortunately, Anfield was only half full that night in a period where Graeme was getting lots of abuse. So the game isn’t remembered as much as it should be. It was unfortunate for Graeme that he was also dealing with European football at a point when the club hadn’t been involved in it for such a long time. People expected Liverpool to romp away and win the UEFA Cup because of the club’s history. It was never going to be that easy.’

  One of the real positives was the emergence of Steve McManaman, a teenage winger from Bootle.

  ‘I was great at running long distances, me,’ Tanner says. ‘Rob Jones was pretty good at it too. When Macca came in, he cleaned us both out. He was as thin as a rake but his endurance levels were unreal. I played with him before he reached his peak but even as a kid he was winning games for us. He gets a lot of stick for leaving Liverpool but he didn’t cost the club any money in transfer fees and he was quite open about being an Evertonian. It never stopped him putting a shift in.’