Ring of Fire

by Simon Hughes

  Since arriving there in 1983, Gradi had transformed the small club from the small Cheshire town famed for its railway station. Milanese, Gradi had been born in Italy during the Second World War, moving to live in London with his English mother in 1945. He combined a career in non-league football with grammar-school teaching before turning to coaching, where his most significant break came as an assistant at Chelsea, aged just twenty-nine. Wounded by relegations at Wimbledon and Crystal Palace, Gradi arrived at Crewe when it was lodged in a rut, with the club’s future hinging on whether it could secure re-election to the old Fourth Division.

  Gradi’s vision was for Crewe to develop its own young players, sell the best of them to earn the finances necessary to survive and then produce some more players through academy investment, in a continuous virtuous circle. Before Murphy’s introduction to the system, Gradi had proven that he possessed the talent-spotting and coaching genius that his proposed strategy required to be successful, with David Platt, Geoff Thomas, Robbie Savage and Neil Lennon all securing lucrative moves away while the club simultaneously rose up the leagues.

  Murphy says the atmosphere was key to his emergence.

  ‘Because of the small pool of players compared to the bigger clubs, each player had the intimacy of knowing everyone who worked for the club and, similarly, the first-team manager – Dario – knew which fifteen year olds were doing well and which ones were falling behind, which ones needed attention,’ Murphy says.

  ‘I remember going to Melwood to train aged twelve and fifty kids were there; many of them had signed forms for the club already. I might have made it at Liverpool but the system at Crewe felt better to me. The club wasn’t being greedy, recruiting aggressively. They recruited selectively and made the small details count with the players they had.

  ‘Dario was a pioneer. He had similar traits to the two other managers that had the biggest influence on my career: Gérard Houllier and Roy Hodgson. They were all a bit old-school in terms of their temperament, being gentlemen. Gérard wasn’t a coach in the same sense as Dario and Roy but they were all teacher-like and father figures. I clashed with some of the younger managers I worked for because I can be gobby when I’m not happy. When my dad separated from my mum, Dario filled the void.’

  Training sessions at Crewe were focused on developing technique.

  ‘The emphasis was on ball-work, making you comfortable in possession. Sessions began with half an hour of passing drills. There was no running. As you got older and closer to the first team, it was more about developing game intelligence – common sense. Whereas Liverpool and Man United had had a first team, reserves, an A and a B team, at Crewe it was first team, reserves and a youth team made up of players aged sixteen and under. It meant that as a youth player, you were performing against older boys, sinking or learning how to swim very quickly.

  ‘Dario had an influence on every decision at the club. He looked at the development of every player. For the reserves, Dario decided I should play as a sweeper when I was sixteen years old. Two big lads played at centre-half and they stopped me getting whacked because I was still at school and probably only 5 ft 6 in. tall. The idea was for the goalkeeper to roll the ball out to me and for me to build up play from the back. I could move forward into midfield and join in attacks. I had been a sweeper but now Dario told me I was going to play some games as a right-sided midfielder, then on the left wing, centre-midfield – where I wanted to be – and finally up front. It helped my understanding of all positions and in the end made me a better centre-midfielder.

  ‘Dario was light years ahead of other coaches. I used to play against other teams in the lower leagues and wonder why they were so bad. I realized that, actually, we were so good. We worked on the basics like positioning. But it was the attention to detail that set Dario apart and gave us the advantage. The number of hours we spent on quick short corners and quick free kicks – getting the opposition on the back foot before they can settle. Throw-ins – oh my god, we spent hours on them. How many clubs have I been at since where players don’t know how to take throw-ins and receive a ball? I watch Premier League games now and see players run fast at throw-in takers and close the space down. Did nobody ever teach them what to do?

  ‘Dario was the first manager to use scenarios in training sessions. He’d say, “Right, it’s eleven on ten, there’s five minutes left, the team with ten are winning 1–0, let’s go . . .” He wanted intensity and to see the players switch on straight away. If we couldn’t figure out what to do, he’d let us know that he wasn’t happy.

  ‘I suppose Dario was fortunate in that he was working at a small club and his job was safe. He had a place on the board. It meant that he could follow his passion. He was more interested in player development than team development and success. Of course, he wanted success – and the fact that Crewe stayed in the Championship for so many years was a miracle, considering the size of the town, the size of the fan base and the money at the club. Work was never a chore and Dario made football enjoyable. We passed teams to death. It was really good fun.’

  Murphy scored the winner as a substitute in his second appearance for Crewe, a 4–3 win over Preston North End. He was sixteen years old. Successive promotions were earned, taking Crewe into England’s second tier. Murphy’s presence in attack with Dele Adebola helped achieve the feat.

  ‘Dele was a big lad and took a lot of my buffeting from the big centre-halves. I was playing a lot with my back to goal and I was better when the ball was in front of me. When I got smacked in one game, the lad told me he was going to do it; I’ll never forget it. I’d nutmegged him in the first minute and set up the first goal. “I’m gonna do you,” he said. And fair enough, he did. I was out after that for six weeks with a knee-ligament injury. When I came back, Dario decided to switch the system to a 4–3–3. I had more freedom in midfield. I could go and have a wander without being that disciplined.’

  Gradi held a tight rein on Murphy’s behaviour off the pitch. He peers back at his teenage self and cringes sometimes.

  ‘I was precocious and there was a period where I’d answer back to anyone who was critical and have an argument with people that didn’t agree with me. I had a tendency to be overdramatic whenever I misplaced a pass, throwing my hands up in the air and berating myself, cursing. It really annoyed Dario because he thought it was stopping me from going and putting it right, winning the ball back. It felt like months but it probably only happened for a couple of weeks where he’d stop training sessions. Dario would say, “OK, let’s see the drama, everyone can stand and watch you throw your hands in the air . . .” Then he’d say, “How about when you give the ball away, you just bloody run back and don’t let everyone know how disappointed you are? We all know it’s a crap pass . . .”

  ‘It took a while for me to get out of the habit.’

  Had it not been for Gradi’s guidance, indeed, Murphy wonders whether he’d have become a professional footballer.

  ‘There was a spell before I went full-time at Crewe where I was late for training a lot. I was still at school. I remember calling Dario up, telling him that I wasn’t going to make it in the following day for a youth-team match. I wanted to go to a party with my mates the night before and it would have meant getting up at the crack of dawn to get a bus before catching the train to Crewe. He said, “Danny, I’m not stupid, I know what’s going on. You will get here. You’ll be on time. If you make the effort to get here, I’ll make sure you get home, whether I drive you myself or put you in a taxi.”

  ‘A lot of the lads at Crewe were being dropped off by their mums and dads. My mum was trying to look after four boys. I had to make my own way to Crewe and it was a bit of a trek and quite expensive. I wasn’t a rebel but I was starting to experiment with things as you do when you’re a teenager, drinking and chasing girls.

  ‘In the end, Dario guilted me into showing up that morning. I realized he was making such an effort for me. His attitude wasn’t like, “You little twat, yo
u get here,” it was more, “I’m helping you here, come on and give me something back!”

  ‘I had problems at home but I knew I could go to him. This isn’t a violin story; it’s just an example of Dario helping out. After I left school, Crewe put me on their YTS scheme and I was earning thirty quid a week. It meant that my mum lost her benefits for me, which were worth more than thirty quid a week. You’d get expenses for your travel to training but I was giving my mum a lot of my income so she could pay for food. She didn’t have enough. I had a great relationship with my dad but he didn’t have a pot to piss in either.

  ‘I told Dario that I wanted to continue with my education and go to sixth form and play for Crewe at weekends. It worried me what might happen if I didn’t make it all the way. It was the only option that I thought would work in the short term from a financial point of view. Dario said, “You’ll fall behind if you do that. You won’t make it as a footballer.” Crewe had players before me who chose to do the same thing and had fallen behind. I suppose it makes sense, because if you’re in training five days a week, you’ll improve more than if you are there for just two.

  ‘Dario’s solution was to pay my mum dig money. It meant that my mum got forty quid a week for looking after me and then the thirty was mine. All along the way, any time there was a hurdle, Dario helped me cross it. He was a great judge of a situation. Gérard Houllier was very similar.’

  Gradi trusted Murphy and gave him responsibility. One of his duties before he’d even made his first-team debut was to watch first-team games and offer opinions on what he saw.

  ‘I’d sit in the stand and sometimes Dario would let me go in the dugout. He even asked me once during the half-time team talk to say something. “What do you think, Danny?” he asked in the dressing room when Crewe were losing. Can you imagine what the first-team players must have thought? Who is this little shit? Dario knew that I saw things that other lads my age didn’t see. So he encouraged me to have an opinion on formation, performances and the way the game was going. When Crewe weren’t playing, I’d go and watch Chester City because their ground wasn’t far away from my house. Again, he’d ask me what I thought of rival players. Maybe he was thinking of signing them.’

  Once in the Crewe first team, some of the more experienced players did not warm to Murphy due to his withering assessments.

  ‘I figured that if Dario was asking me to highlight problems, I might as well go for it – let my voice be heard. The problem was, some of the older fellas saw me as one of Dario’s pet projects. Looking back now, I can see why a senior player would have a problem with a youngster in this situation, especially when you consider that some of these players needed to play every week to earn their match bonus and the wages weren’t very high anyway. They had families to feed, just like my mum.

  ‘It meant that I had to grow up quickly and learn how to fight my corner. I took some shit. Luckily, there were some good guys there who realized I was a decent footballer and could actually help their financial outlook by playing well, scoring goals and improving the results of the team, therefore earning them a win bonus!’

  Despite his own initial teething problems, Gradi was creating a culture based on collective responsibility.

  ‘Every single player in that dressing room wasn’t scared to give an opinion. If things weren’t going right, each person would have their say and get issues sorted out pretty quickly. You couldn’t afford to hide. That manifested itself on the pitch.

  ‘If you’re a manager who doesn’t encourage questions and opinions, you’re screwed,’ Murphy continues. ‘The best players have an opinion on the way the game should be played. If you don’t allow these players to express themselves, they won’t come to you. What happens then is, they talk behind your back and create a clique. Good managers know the trick: they listen without taking everything on board.

  ‘Under Houllier in one pre-season, he set up a suggestion box. We had twenty-four players in the squad and he split us into groups of six, although not necessarily putting people with their friends. Each group would go into a room for half an hour and discuss the mood and atmosphere. Then, anonymously, we made suggestions on a piece of paper. If the same issue came up amongst the six, we’d then offer that suggestion to the manager. It was simple things like wearing tracksuits over suits to away matches because we felt more relaxed in them. The biggest issue was staying behind in foreign cities after away matches in Europe. We usually waited to fly back until the next day and most of the players hated it. We wanted to fly home straight after the game.

  ‘Houllier gathered us all together and discussed the merits of each suggestion. We reached the issue of staying in Europe – in Prague, Kiev, Moscow or wherever it may be. It turned out that every group had raised it. So surely he had to fold? Instead, Houllier produced a flipchart – he loved flipcharts – and he showed our points tally immediately after European trips compared to Arsenal and Man United. We were pissing it, performing something like 25 per cent better than the other two.

  ‘Houllier wanted the Liverpool squad to have a proper meal within two hours of each match. He explained it was particularly important in UEFA Cup fixtures late at night. By flying home immediately, players would have resorted to unhealthy airport food, delaying the recovery process and possibly resulting in a more lethargic performance in the next game a few days later. Although players were still wired after a night match, a six- or seven-hour block of solid sleep was better than flying and disrupting natural sleeping patterns. It might sound boring but his was a bloody strong argument. There was no chance of anything changing. And the lads understood. Next . . .

  ‘That’s an example of good management: listening to the players’ needs and concerns. Instead of going, “I’m the manager, it’s my way or the highway,” he addresses issues properly,’ Murphy concludes. ‘Someone like Martin Jol would have reacted a different way. I quizzed Jol on a pre-season trip when I was at Tottenham as to why some lads were doing more running while others were spending more time in the Jacuzzi and spa. It seemed a bit weird to me, so I asked the question. He seemed shocked and it really got his back up. It said to me that he wasn’t equipped to deal with big-personality players. And there were certainly bigger personalities than me.’

  Murphy did not originally sign for Liverpool from Crewe because of Gérard Houllier, however. The first option was to join Newcastle United, who were managed by Kenny Dalglish.

  ‘Kenny was my hero. I had a Liverpool shirt and my mum ironed the old number 7 on to the back. I was desperate to go to Newcastle because it was him – the hero, Kenny Dalglish. I’m grateful to Dario, because it would have been easy for Crewe to take the money.

  ‘Dario had already been having conversations with Liverpool and we were going for promotion. Dario said, as a matter of fact, “You’re not going. I didn’t want to tell you but Liverpool want you and I know they’re your team. They’re happy for you to stay here until the end of the season too and the other clubs that want you won’t. So that suits us as well.” He told me to relax and enjoy my football.

  ‘I took a call at home the day after from someone claiming to be Kenny Dalglish. I put the phone down on him because I thought it was a wind-up. He tried again and I put the phone down for a second time. The next night, he finally got through and this time I listened to him. I couldn’t believe it – I put the phone down on my hero twice and then I rejected him.’

  Tottenham Hotspur were pushing hard to sign Murphy as well. Although he appreciated that competition at Liverpool would be the fiercest, it was an opportunity that ultimately he could not refuse.

  ‘I knew Michael [Owen] and Carra from playing for England. Around the time I was making my decision, we all went to the Under-20 World Cup in Malaysia together. I scored twice against the United Arab Emirates and was on for my hat-trick when the referee gave us a penalty. Michael being Michael was desperate to take it – even though he was the youngest in the team – and we started arguing about it. In the en
d, Carra had to intervene and made Michael realize he was being unreasonable considering we were already 2–0 up. Michael was fuming. He was even gobbier than me!

  ‘We had a great time over there in Malaysia, though. There were some real lads in the squad, including Kieron Dyer and Jody Morris, and others like John Curtis, John Macken and Ronnie Wallwork from United. Argentina beat us in the knockout stages. Juan Román Riquelme and Pablo Aimar were in their side.’

  Riquelme would later become a legend at Boca Juniors. At Melwood, Murphy would train with one of his own legendary heroes.

  ‘John Barnes,’ Murphy says suddenly, as if the surname Barnes is awe-inspiring to him. ‘Suddenly, I was around players that I’d worshipped for so long. It was surreal. John was on his way out. Newcastle were signing him. But he did the pre-season with us. I’d had a season ticket at Anfield. I wanted to be John Barnes. Now – briefly – he was my teammate. Weird. It took me a few months to relax and begin to enjoy it. I was a chirpy little character. But I struggled to express myself.’

  Murphy remembers his full debut against Aston Villa, a game screened live on a Monday night by Sky Sports in September 1997. Robbie Fowler and Steve McManaman were at their best and Murphy felt ‘ten-feet tall’ being in such company. Yet he admits now the environment at Melwood was not conducive to sustained success.

  ‘Although you don’t realize that at the time when you’re young,’ Murphy interjects. ‘Senior players, recognized internationals, boys like Razor Ruddock or Robbie [Fowler], were wandering out two minutes before training was due to start with a bacon sandwich in their hand. I’m sure that happened at many other training grounds. But the clubs like Arsenal and Man United – where they’d clamped down on player freedoms – were the clubs winning the trophies. Bacon butties never happened at Crewe, for example.