by Simon Hughes
‘We then looked towards Teddy. The deal was a long way down the line and I was confident of getting it signed. The only problem was that the board’s policy was to buy younger players. It always had been at Liverpool. Lots of other clubs were signing foreign players on the wrong side of their thirties. Teddy was twenty-nine. We were paying big money for him. Teddy really wanted to come; we’d chatted all about it. But the board pulled the plug. It frustrated me because he spent four years at United and helped them win everything before moving back to Spurs until he was in his late thirties. I realized Teddy was no angel off the pitch – he liked a drink and a night out. But he was one of those guys who knew when and where. I figured he’d guide the younger boys.’
Then there was an argument that Liverpool were a ball-winner short of a title-winning team. Evans believed that in the prevailing refereeing climate, tigerish tacklers were a liability, though he was eventually persuaded to sign Paul Ince from Inter Milan, a midfielder in the tough-man mould. ‘Paul was in the worldclass category and few of those were available,’ Evans says of the former Manchester United player. ‘He wasn’t just a competitor. He was a leader and could pass, otherwise he’d never have been a success in Italy. We played with wing-backs and Incey had been schooled in a 4–4–2 system. In the end, it was a formation that we decided to return to.’
A new breed of lithe, agile midfielders was emerging, epitomized by Patrik Berger, who became Evans’ first foreign outfield signing for £3.25 million from Borussia Dortmund in the aftermath of an impressive Euro 96 campaign with the Czech Republic.
British players at other clubs claimed the presence of foreigners helped improve their own technical abilities. While Evans admired Alen Bokšic´, then of Juventus, and Fiorentina’s Gabriel Batistuta as well as AC Milan’s Marcel Desailly, he was not tempted to emulate a Ruud Gullit-type signing in the transfer market just for the sake of it.
‘I didn’t want to go and get someone just to put more bums on seats. We filled Anfield anyway. You saw Gullit and Vialli, they were both well into their thirties and cost a lot of money. How long did Chelsea get out of them? If the chance had come to sign an older player – maybe in his late twenties like Teddy – I would have done it. But I wasn’t someone who wanted to fill the place full of foreigners. I thought there was enough talent in this country at the time.’
Eric Cantona’s legendary status at Manchester United did not help.
‘OK, a lot of people did not like Cantona because he kicked a fan [at Crystal Palace in 1995] and got banned. But his supporters loved him. And so did the media. He was this foreign fella, different. Everyone wanted one like him. It didn’t mean players like that grew on trees.’
The distrust of foreign footballers harked back to Shankly and Liverpool’s peculiarly Celtic insularity. Yet Evans did not have a single Scot in his first-team squad, a far cry from the glory days when Hansen, Dalglish and Souness led the fight. Instead, Evans allowed John Barnes a significant influence, someone who translated his thoughts on to the field.
‘John had some interesting points to make. He was another coach on the pitch. He was desperate for the team to succeed and that was the thing we really had in common.’
There is certainly more of Paisley than Shankly in Evans. He uses that term again – ‘spokesman’ – when I ask him whether he might have been more forceful with the players rather than continue the tradition of self-regulation. The cult of the manager has grown since his departure, with coaches like José Mourinho imposing their characters on the identity of a club, attempting to command respect.
‘When the club you manage is high profile, that makes you high profile because you’re in the public eye on a regular basis. But as far as my own personality being bigger than the club, I don’t see the point in that. I was there as their spokesman, really. It’s only part of the job but if you’ve got one voice then there’s no mix-ups, and we tried to keep it that way.’
Evans could sense the demands in football were shifting. He was prepared to listen to whatever the board of directors suggested when he was called in for a meeting by chairman David Moores in the summer of 1998.
‘I agreed there was a need for something different. The game was turning very European. The idea was to bring someone in who knew more about that side of it. We spoke to John Toshack and several other people about the idea of appointing a director of football. We needed someone who could help build a bigger scouting base and improve the training ground. John rejected the opportunity because he wanted to be a number 1, and I should have learnt from that.’
Evans believes Liverpool ‘ended up’ with Gérard Houllier.
‘Arsène Wenger had revolutionized Arsenal, and France had just won the World Cup. It seemed like a sensible idea to get Houllier in as joint manager and work together. I let my heart rule my head. Deep down, I knew it wasn’t right. I still regret going along with the idea of the board meeting him a few days before I did. I was on holiday in Barbados.
‘[When we did meet] on the football side, we got on. At the end of the meeting, it came to roles, responsibilities and titles. I said something about not having an ego and that I’d do whatever was better for the club. It was a massive mistake. I should have been sharper or brighter than that. I wasn’t strong enough to insist that he would only be a director of football. I should have said that under no circumstances can two men do the same job. The board should have known that too. It had been tried at other clubs and it hadn’t worked. At the end of the day, you can sit down with your best mate and talk about football and you don’t have the same opinions. There’s always going to be a clash. And that’s what happened.’
Evans says he and Houllier did not disagree over ‘big things’.
‘It was silly things, like what time the bus left – stuff that erodes the confidence in the squad. Gérard’s a cleverer man than I am, that’s for sure. I don’t hold any grudges against him. But he knew this was going to happen, although he later admitted he didn’t think it’d be so quick. He was quite happy to bide his time.
‘I felt it was starting to get to the players. While I was still there, all of them still called me “Boss”. I picked the team – the final decision always fell to me. Most of the players were on my side when it got into a bit of a war towards the end. The lads who weren’t in the team were always going to go with Gérard. It was messy. Should I have stayed and fought it out? Because I was a supporter of the club, I realized somebody had to go. It was never going to be Gérard; it was going to be me. Regrets? Of course. About not being the guy that pushed himself forward.’
Evans did not find the separation easy.
‘You leave Liverpool and you’re bitter. I’d been there my entire working life. I had six to nine months when I wasn’t interested. I didn’t care whether Liverpool won or lost. The wife would tell me the result and I’d grumble and walk away. I realized I couldn’t live that way. It was ridiculous. So I decided to become a fan again. Why spend the rest of your life hating something that you loved for so long? It wasn’t healthy.’
Evans hoped another top job might come his way. But Liverpool took their time settling his contract, meaning he missed out on opportunities elsewhere.
‘It took a fair while to pay me off, which didn’t help in terms of going to another club,’ he says. ‘I always believed I had the best job I was ever going to have at Liverpool. But my record stands up today against any English manager in the Premier League. Maybe it warranted another shot. Maybe because I didn’t have an agent and, again, maybe because I didn’t push certain issues as I should have done, I was out of the public eye.’
In the years that followed, Evans took roles at Swindon Town, Fulham and the Welsh FA.
‘They were always jobs for other people, doing favours as a coach or an assistant. Sometimes in life you have to be a selfish bastard and I wasn’t.’
He despairs now at the state of management generally.
‘Everybody wants to move into the top job s
traight away. Top players feel like they should go into management at the same level. I’m not quite sure that’s the way to go. Management is very different to playing. Players have to serve some kind of an apprenticeship and so should managers.
‘You have too many coaches in management positions. Sometimes I feel they try to dictate too much of what goes on during games. They want to kick every ball of every game. Shanks, Paisley and Fagan set the team up and made it clear what the intentions were. But at the end of the day, it’s about people making decisions on the pitch. That’s what footballers are paid to do. Coaching, to me, is about making little points, tweaks. If you played for Liverpool, you were expected to know what to do. But there was nothing wrong with giving bits of advice, offering the right guidance.’
He remains adamant that his approach at Liverpool was the right one.
‘I wanted players to be free to make their own decisions. There was trust. Maybe I gave a bit too much. If it goes wrong, the buck stops with the manager.
‘But you can’t coach winning. Before my team went on the pitch, I’d finish the team talk with a simple message, “Enjoy yourself.” After that, they were away. I trusted them to do the business.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Thank you to all of the footballers interviewed in this book. Thank you to Ged Rea for his remarkable eye. Thank you to John McDermott for his proofing skills. Thank you to Paul at Cult Zeros for his generosity and patience. For being a good gang of lads, thank you to Mark, Matthew, Ian, Andy, Andrew, James, Billy and Paul. Thank you to Peter Hughes for his financial assistance. Thank you to David Luxton for guidance, Brenda Kimber for encouragement and Ailsa Bathgate for being a brilliant editor. Thank you too to David Cottrell. Rosalind, the dedication is yours.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Blows, Kirk, Terminator: Authorised Julian Dicks Story, Polar Print Group, 1996
Carragher, Jamie, Carra: My Autobiography, Bantam Press, 2008
Collymore, Stan, Tackling My Demons, Willow, 2004
Dohren, Derek, Ghost on the Wall: The Authorised Biography of Roy Evans, Mainstream, 2005
Fowler, Robbie, Fowler: My Autobiography, Macmillan, 2005
Gerrard, Steven, Gerrard: My Autobiography, Bantam Press, 2007
Hughes, Simon, Red Machine, Mainstream, 2013
Matteo, Dominic, In My Defence, Great Northern Books, 2011
Mitten, Andy, Glory Glory!, Vision, 2009
Mølby, Jan, Jan the Man, Gollancz, 2000
Owen, Michael, Off the Record, HarperSport, 2006
Ruddock, Neil, Hell Razor, Willow, 2000
Rush, Ian, Rush: The Autobiography, Ebury Press, 2009
Souness, Graeme, The Management Years, Andre Deutsch, 1999
Yates, Michael, Steven Gerrard, Michael Owen and … Me, Independent Publishing Network, 2013
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Simon Hughes is a journalist and author. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph, as well as Liverpool Football Club’s official magazine. His book Red Machine won the Antonio Ghirelli Prize for Italian Soccer Foreign Book of the Year in 2014. His other title is Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout. He lives in Liverpool.
Also by Simon Hughes
SECRET DIARY OF A LIVERPOOL SCOUT
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