Simp-Lee the Best

by Lee McCulloch

  I felt I made a good contribution to our campaign. On Boxing Day 2005 I scored in a 4–3 win over Manchester City at home. They had a good team, David James in goals and Joey Barton in midfield. We beat them 1–0 on their own patch in March 2006 and I scored the winner. I ran away to the cameras to do the ‘baby celebration’ as Jack had just been born.

  One of the few times I felt I let everyone down was away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on 10 December 2005. We had a great chance to score and missed it. Then I was to mark John Terry from set pieces and he scored a late-headed winner from a corner kick. Jewell tore me to pieces in the dressing room at full-time. I had to take it from the gaffer and sat with my head bowed.

  It was good to stay up in the Premiership with time to spare and I looked forward to us kicking on the following season, albeit I was under no illusions that bettering 2005-06 was going to be a difficult task. Near impossible, truth be told. Our case wasn’t helped when we sold Jimmy Bullard to Fulham for £2.75 million and Jason Roberts to Blackburn Rovers for an undisclosed fee. Both were major players and an integral part of the success we’d enjoyed in the previous two years. I knew we’d not be the same without Jason’s goal threat and I knew we were going to miss Jimmy’s ability and leadership on the park. I missed Jimmy. The place wasn’t the same without him. We used to fight like cat and dog on the pitch. Jimmy would never hold his hands up for anything. Even if it was blatantly his fault he would point the finger at someone else. It used to really annoy me and I would give him pelters for it. We came close to blows a few times and then when I’d still be fuming, he’d shout over at me and then blow me a kiss.

  The squad needed to be strengthened and we signed Emile Heskey from Birmingham City for £5.5 million. He was an established striker of the highest calibre and it was a great coup for us to sign someone of that ilk with such an outstanding CV, having played for Liverpool and England. We also signed Antonio Valencia on a season-long loan from Villarreal. Wigan also offered me a new contract and I signed it. It tied me to the club until the summer of 2009. I was happy with my wage rise but things were still eating away at me.

  Second-season syndrome can apply to most teams in the top flight and we certainly suffered from it. After a flying start the previous year, we stuttered this time and only had 22 points from our first twenty games. We went on a run of just three wins from fifteen league games between December and February. We were relegation material. I wasn’t contributing as much as I should have been. In December 2006 I picked up a three-match ban from the FA for punching Sheffield United defender Chris Morgan in the face in a game at the JJB that we lost 1–0. The referee, Peter Walton, missed the incident but I was caught by the television cameras. Morgan’s right eye ended up badly swollen but, as far as he was concerned, the matter was closed at full-time when I offered a sincere apology. The FA, though, weren’t as forgiving and I missed the games during the festive period against Chelsea, Manchester United and Watford.

  To make matters worse, I’d done in the medial ligament on my left knee. It was twisted not torn. For about six months I was taking painkilling injections to enable me to play for Wigan and Scotland. I was never in any doubt about taking the injections. I just wanted to play football. But I was nervous about getting a needle into me. I’d rub an ice cube into the part of my knee for a few minutes before it to numb that part so I wouldn’t feel it. I hate needles and I also have a phobia about people pressing into my knees. All of it gives me the heebie-jeebies for some strange reason.

  I didn’t want to miss out on playing for Scotland either. Things were going well and the country was on a high as we were doing well in the qualification campaign for Euro 2008. But the positive results with Scotland meant Walter Smith was in demand. Rangers and Paul Le Guen parted company in January 2007 and the club wanted Walter to go back and take over from the Frenchman. It was a job he couldn’t turn down. When Walter left to go back to Rangers a few of the boys phoned me up to say to get myself ready as he’d want to take me with him. I wasn’t so sure. I didn’t expect the call to come, but I was hoping it would.

  Alex McLeish took over from Walter. He had Andy Watson and Roy Aitken alongside him as Ally McCoist had gone to Rangers to be Walter’s assistant and Tommy Burns stepped down. There was pressure on him to keep producing the results we’d had under Walter.

  I think that move by Walter back to Rangers turned my head, not that it would have taken a lot to distract me at that stage. I also had a wee nudge from a third party the previous month when I was informed that Paul Le Guen was interested in signing me for Rangers. Things were never to be the same for me after that. I wanted to go – and even more so now Walter was manager.

  Overall, there was just something missing at Wigan. I felt things weren’t right; the dressing room wasn’t as good as it used to be, just not as infectious and the camaraderie wasn’t the same. We sold Gary Teale to Derby County in January 2007 and that was another close friend away. Off the park, we started to get ripped apart. Our close group stayed together for a few years but eventually we all got dragged our separate ways, and it was sad when our ‘core’ broke up. It was out with the old and in with the new.

  9

  CLASH IN THE LATICS: HOW I GOT MY DREAM MOVE TO IBROX

  THERE WAS talk of me going to Rangers less than a year or so earlier when Paul Le Guen managed the club. Sir David Murray was the owner at that time and he pulled the strings. I was doing well for Wigan. A Scottish agent who was close to Murray called me to say Rangers wanted me. I didn’t pay much attention to it and didn’t say a word to anyone because I had my doubts it was true.

  The interest from Rangers reared its head again. Le Guen was still in charge and it rumbled on to when Walter Smith replaced him. I wanted to go and I made Wigan aware of my feelings. I asked to meet Dave Whelan. I wanted him to hear it from me.

  As it turned out, this dialogue between Dave Whelan and myself was to become a bitter bone of contention. It was just the two of us in the meeting and there was no one else to confirm what was or wasn’t said. From my side of it, I came away from the meeting thinking that we had agreed that the club would let me go on a free transfer if I played there for the rest of the season and we avoided relegation from the Premiership into the Championship. Whelan, however, had a different view, as I was to discover later.

  Dave Whelan, as I know well, is a good businessman and club chairman. He and the club looked after me well when I was there and in return I always did my best for the club and, I think, delivered for them. But the end of my time there was soured by the dispute that stemmed from that meeting. How we could have come away from that discussion with such different conclusions I will never know. All I know is what I thought had been agreed between us if I played on to the end of the season.

  That all happened in December 2006, just before the transfer window opened in January. I’d got an agent to write up a transfer request for me. He told me to hand it in to Jewell the next morning. That night, however, I read on Sky Sports News that I was planning to ask to leave Wigan. Someone had leaked the story to the television. I know who it was, and once again had to learn my lessons.

  So, the next morning I was nervous at going in to give this official request to the manager. Obviously with the news being on the television the previous evening, Jewell was ready for me, and I wasn’t up for a fight. I felt like a little boy being summoned the see the headmaster.

  I had the transfer request stuffed down my pants. I didn’t want any of my team-mates or other members of staff to see it, so I walked around the training ground with it inside my shorts for half an hour.

  At 8.30am I chapped on the gaffer’s door. I was shaking.

  I took the transfer request out of my pants and told him I had something for him. It was my transfer request. He took it from me and said, ‘Okay. Now, fuck off.’ I was still shaking. I was scared of him, frankly. He was an old-school manager. Jewell called a press conference that day and absolutely slaughtered me. He told
the media that I took the transfer request letter out of my pants and handed it to him. He said that I didn’t even have the decency to keep it in my pocket, instead it was tucked down in my private parts. It was a fair point he made. But, I was all over that place that morning. My head was gone. But he also told everyone I hadn’t even written it out properly. The agent wrote it out for me, e-mailed it to me and asked me to print it off. It was a nightmare and I felt embarrassed. It was also the last thing Jewell needed as it was pretty clear, even at that midway stage of the season, that we were going to be involved in a relegation scrap.

  There’s no doubt it was a selfish thing to do and I knew it wouldn’t go down well with the manager and other people at the club. I didn’t want to let my team-mates or the fans down, but I desperately wanted to go to Rangers. I took advice from an agent on how to handle the whole thing, but, with the benefit of hindsight, I should have handled it differently and just been myself.

  I played in games during the month of January but wasn’t at my best. Far from it. I totally let Wigan Athletic down during that period. The club transformed my career and enhanced it. The fans were amazing and all the people at the club were professional and kind to work with, but I knew it was time. It was at the end of the window when the chairman pulled me about a transfer and I got my head back together. I knew I then had something to play for and believed there was light at the end of the tunnel. It was less than four months; I had to stick it out. It shouldn’t have been a problem. I owed it to Wigan to be focused for them during a critical period and, after all, I was contracted to Wigan until the summer of 2009. I was buzzing again at the thought of getting away and imagining the finishing line in my head. ‘Not long to go now,’ I’d say to myself when I got up in the morning and before I went to sleep at night.

  On the last day of the season, 13 May, we needed to win to stay up. Nothing less would be good enough. It was a tall order as we hadn’t won a game since a victory against Manchester City on 3 March. We were at Sheffield United and it was a very tense and anxious period in the build-up to the game, a match that was worth more than £50 million to Wigan. The players were also on £96,000 per man to stay up. United also needed to win to have a chance of staying up. It was the year they went down and West Ham stayed up, albeit in controversial circumstances when they had Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano in their team. More than 32,000 fans packed into Bramall Lane to see the game. There was some atmosphere; it was electric.

  I played up front with Emile Heskey. We were a powerful partnership and we both linked up well that day. Emile was a class striker and valued highly by his team-mates. I got booked early doors for dissent because tensions were running high. It was so hard to keep a lid on it all. We took the lead in the 14th minute through Paul Scharner. Jon Stead equalised in the 38th minute. We got a penalty in first-half stoppage time and David Unsworth – a spot-kick specialist – kept his nerve to put it past Paddy Kenny. We were looking a safe bet to get the win but then with fifteen minutes to go, I caught Michael Tonge with a late tackle, only by a fraction of a second, and I was given a second yellow card by referee Mike Dean. I felt Tonge made the most of it but I was sent off.

  I was in tears as I sat in the dressing room all alone and wondered if I had cost the club the chance of staying up. It then crossed my mind that I had blown my chance of the free transfer I thought I would be getting. I watched the rest of the game from the tunnel. Heskey moved back to centre-half but the final whistle blew and we stayed up. I was buzzing. It was the best feeling ever. It’s very hard to explain the emotion involved after such a game. There’s more relief than joy. Leighton Baines was first over to hug me and I sat in the dressing room in tears for a good half hour after the final whistle. Sheffield United captain Chris Morgan came into our dressing room and shook hands with every one of us. I thought it was a terrific gesture from him and spoke volumes for him as a person.

  I got back on the bus after the game and asked the gaffer if he was going to fine me for getting sent off. He told me he wasn’t and not to ask him such stupid questions on a joyous day. We went out that night and most of us got into quite a state. The adrenalin was still pumping fast and it only took a few beers to be totally light-headed. It was enjoyable all the same. I was pleased for big Heskey that he played his part in us staying up. He scored eight goals.

  We were in the next morning and the gaffer called a meeting. He told us that we had all been brilliant for him but he was stepping down as manager. The club had reluctantly accepted his resignation. None of us saw that one coming. It took us all aback, came right out of the blue. Jewell felt he needed a break and I totally understood why as the pressure a manager is under when they are fighting relegation must be unbearable. Perhaps part of the reason he resigned was because he sniffed the break up of the team. He put a jigsaw together over three years and then he could see pieces disappearing. The time was perfect for him to go and the time was right for me to go in a different direction.

  Chris Hutchins, Jewell’s assistant, was appointed as Wigan manager and I went to see him straight away. I told him I wanted to leave to move back up the road and join Rangers. He told me he would think about it and that I should go away and enjoy my summer holiday. I had a good relationship with Hutchins. I was confident he would help get me out. He was a good no.2 to Jewell and they were a good partnership. Hutchins was an extremely good football man and also had a good rapport with the players. He was very approachable and I felt more at ease in his company – less intimidated is the best way I can describe it. I really didn’t want to do it on my own and I wasn’t comfortable. But I had to do it. By this point I had ditched all input from agents, so there was nobody to hide behind.

  After that meeting I went away to Italy on a family holiday. I was constantly by my mobile phone, hoping for it to ring with news that a deal had been agreed to allow me to leave Wigan and move to Rangers. I couldn’t really relax. The whole thing had taken over my thoughts day and night. Phone calls were constantly going back and forward about my situation, and I still thought that I’d be allowed to leave on a free after the conversation that had taken place with the chairman six months earlier and the impression I’d come away with from that discussion. But it then became clear Wigan wanted a fee for me. I immediately phoned Hutch about this and told him the situation as I saw it. When he got back to me he told me the chairman had a different recollection of things to me and that I wasn’t to be given a free transfer. I didn’t know what to think but I was angry and very disappointed. Ever since the meeting with Whelan it was what I’d been working towards – firstly helping make sure Wigan survived in the Premiership and then heading off to Ibrox to play for my boyhood heroes.

  We had a face-to-face meeting on the first day back for pre-season and I confronted Dave Whelan in front of the manager. He said there was no way he’d ever let me go on a free. He looked me in the eyes and said, ‘Do you think I’d let you go on a free?’ I was totally gobsmacked and it put all my plans in jeopardy. I felt like I’d been done in, like I’d given my best for the club and not got the reward I thought I was due. Whelan’s recollection of that meeting was clearly different from mine and I felt really let down. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.

  I thought long and hard about my plight and a strategy to deal with it. I decided to leave the chairman alone. He ultimately would be the man to decide whether I stayed or departed, but it was best to get at him through the manager. So, Hutchins became the man I had to piss off. In my wisdom, I decided to fuck up Hutchins. It was my only way to get to Rangers. I knew Rangers wanted me. I would just need to finalise the wages and length of the contract. At this point I didn’t have an agent and was happy to represent myself. But one or two agents angled to get involved in the negotiations and went to David Murray. I’m glad I sorted it on my own because I negotiated a better deal than what they claimed was on offer from the Rangers owner.

  Some agents in football think they run the show, from owning
the player and the clubs they are supposedly going to be transferred to. I’ve had experiences of agents telling me that Club A is the best to go to when really it may well have been the worst possible option, but they would have got a bigger financial reward for me going to that certain club. I have been told that I was going to be the highest paid player at a club when I was really going to be in the bottom tier of the salaries. I’ve had agents go directly to a buying club to tell them that they represent me when they weren’t employed by me at any stage. It has led to some arguments and some things getting heated and nasty between clubs, agents and myself. It’s not easy being caught in the middle and there were times I felt intimidated.

  For a young professional it must be a nightmare. Any kid that shows a glimpse of promise is chased by twenty or thirty agents, all promising the earth. Youngsters and their parents are offered all sorts of incentives by agents. I think young players need to realise – and I will be telling my kids the same if they ever go down the football route – that it’s not the agent that gets players the move, it’s the player that gets the move. Simple as that. You have to be good enough for another club to want you and pay money for you.

  So, having been deceived a couple of times, I was happy to sort out any deal with Rangers on my own. Knowing I was wanted by the club I love and that I was going to be extremely well paid for the privilege, I had to do my bit and get away from Wigan. I phoned Hutch and reminded him that he was just a new manager and needed the players fully behind him. He had to hit the ground running and the last thing he needed was a disruptive influence. I phoned the day before we were due to report back for pre-season and told him I was going to be his worst nightmare, that I would boot every single ball over the fence at training so that no work could get done. And I told him I would happily fight him if he wanted to confront me. I was not scared of the new manager but I was concerned about the reaction of the senior professionals in the dressing room would be if I had to start behaving this way.