Red: My Autobiography Page 5

  The night we celebrated at home to Blackburn Rovers was as euphoric as I’ve seen Old Trafford, before or since. You can never beat the first time. It was a night when you felt the hairs stand up on the back of your neck. We’d had to wait so long. There’d been the agony of just missing out the season before, and we’d endured heart-stopping moments in the run-in, famously the game against Sheffield Wednesday when Brucey’s two late headers saved the day. That night at Old Trafford is a memory I’ll take to the grave.

  The downside of the club’s new era of success was that it was going to be even harder for the likes of me, Becks and Butty to break into the team. As a centre-half, my path was blocked by Brucey, a brilliant, brave defender and a respected captain. Alongside him, Pally was one of the best centre-halves United have ever had. Opportunities for an eighteen-year-old central defender were going to be limited. So the coaches decided I was now a full-back.

  Jim Ryan, our reserve-team coach, and ‘Pop’ Robson, his assistant, took me aside one day and pointed out that Paul Parker was getting more injuries. Perhaps he wasn’t as assured as he used to be. They told me, bluntly, that right-back was my best chance of making the first team. I disagreed and told them I wanted to stay at centre-half.

  I can’t say I enjoyed full-back at first. I’d loved the authority that came with being in the centre – organising the defence, pushing people forward and back. I could yell out instructions from the middle. I couldn’t see myself as the next Josimar, making overlapping runs. Even before I learnt to attack and cross the ball I’d have to become more mobile, get lower to the ground and snap quicker into tackles. But the coaches had made it clear it was my only chance of moving up through the ranks.

  When it came to my education, I couldn’t have been luckier than to have Denis Irwin to study. Has there been a more versatile full-back in English football? He was able to switch from left to right wing without skipping a beat, he could attack and defend with equal ability, take free-kicks and penalties – and he stayed modest and hard-working throughout. He must be the best left- and right-back United have ever had.

  I wasn’t in his class, but I must have been doing something right because in the 1993/94 season I made it on to the pitch for a second time. We younger lads would often find ourselves as unused substitutes in Europe when the manager needed a bigger squad. But for the trip to Istanbul in November 1993 I got on to the pitch for five minutes – though it wasn’t my appearance that made this a memorable evening.

  We were playing in the Ali Sami Yen Stadium and the Galatasaray fans were up for it. One of their supporters had run on to the pitch in the first leg and Peter had given chase and chucked him to the ground. Now thousands of them were giving us hell.

  An hour and a half before the game, the crowd was frenzied. I’d never experienced an atmosphere like it. There were so many flares and so much smoke it looked as though the whole stadium was on fire. By the time the game kicked off the noise was deafening. We couldn’t understand a word of what the fans were chanting, but we didn’t need a translator when we saw a banner that read ‘Manchester United RIP’.

  After the 3–3 draw at Old Trafford, the game was heading towards a goalless draw and we were sliding out of the European Cup (I still prefer the old title to ‘the Champions League’) in only the second round when I came on for Mike Phelan.

  It had been a trying, frustrating evening and it was all too much for Eric Cantona, who was sent off right on the final whistle for a gesture to the referee. The crowd grew even more frenzied, and as we walked off a couple of missiles landed at our feet. Suddenly we were being surrounded by a gang of policemen with shields. I’m guessing their job was to protect us, but you wouldn’t have known it as we were shoved down the stairs which led from the pitch to the dressing rooms. Eric was steaming, and then he took a whack on the back of the head with a truncheon. He flipped. Suddenly it was a riot, with police batons flying and shields clashing everywhere.

  Kiddo and the other coaches were grabbing us, trying to pull us into the dressing room. We bundled through the door into sanctuary but all the shouting carried on outside. Pally, Robbo and Brucey had to drag Eric in and hold him there. The experienced lads were going to the shower two by two so that Eric was never left alone in the dressing room. They ended up walking him to the coach to stop him going back after the police.

  There’s no doubt that team – the club’s first Double winners after they thrashed Chelsea in the 1994 FA Cup final – had a massive influence on me and the rest of the young players coming through. They established the standards for the rest of us to match.

  Just to train with the likes of Ince, Hughes and Cantona was a thrill. Eric could make an average pass look brilliant. But even the slightest mishit, or a lost tackle, would earn you a glare. You’d feel two inches tall. A mistake was a crime in that team.

  As if it hadn’t been competitive enough already, Roy Keane had now taken the squad to another level after joining United and coming in alongside Incey. There was a time, a match at Coventry, when Keano came storming at me after I’d taken an extra touch to steady myself before getting a cross over. Thrusting his head forward – I honestly thought he was going to butt me – he screamed, ‘Fucking get the ball over!’

  ‘Can I not take a fucking touch?’

  ‘Who the hell are you talking to? Get the fucking ball over!’

  It was like having a snarling pitbull in my face. And I’d thought Schmeichel was a hard taskmaster. One extra touch and Keano was slaughtering me.

  We were already fiercely competitive ourselves, but now we were seeing how even the very best players took immense pride in their performance. We were seeing up close what it took to be winners at the highest level.

  The ethos had been created by the manager: success was expected, and it was the players’ responsibility to go out and seize it. After twenty-six years in the wilderness United had won two titles in a row. From now on, a season without the championship could be measured as a failure. And that’s been the case ever since.

  It was just my luck, then, that the 1994/95 season would be one of those years when we fell short – because that was the campaign when I properly became a United first-team player.

  After a couple of one-off appearances in the previous two seasons, just before Christmas 1994 the boss gave me a little run of four games at right-back, though you never quite knew what he was thinking. He left me out for a couple of matches when I’d been playing well, never wanting to overexpose a young player. One of them was a trip to Chelsea when there’d been a lot of talk in the build-up about hooligan trouble involving Combat 18. The manager sensed it was a night for the old hands.

  I only had myself to blame for another spell out of the team – a rare lapse involving K cider. Strong stuff, that. I’d been travelling with the first team so I was caught totally by surprise when the manager suddenly threw me into an A-team game at Chester on a Monday morning. After a Saturday night out, I was all over the place.

  ‘It’s gone to your head, Neville. Well, you won’t be travelling with us again any day soon.’

  And I didn’t travel with the first team for six weeks. That would teach me to take my eye off the ball, even for one night. No more K cider for me.

  That Premiership campaign was shaped, unforgettably, by Eric’s kung-fu attack on a supporter at Crystal Palace in January. I was out in a bar in Manchester that night when someone said to turn on the telly because Eric had been involved in some bother. I’d seen Eric lose his rag spectacularly in Istanbul, and everyone knew he wore his heart on his sleeve. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Eric had a unique personality and didn’t give a stuff what anyone else thought of him.

  The club, rightly, stuck by him, but Eric was a huge player to miss. It was always going to be hard without our talisman but we were still chasing the league and the FA Cup as we went into March and I enjoyed another run in the side.

  We were in a frantic race with Blackburn Rovers for the title. They did
n’t have United’s flair, but they had a goalscoring phenomenon in Alan Shearer and an experienced manager in Kenny Dalglish. It was obvious from a long way out that the title would be tight, and it went right down to the final game of the season.

  Our last fixture was at West Ham United – and all to play for. Blackburn were two points ahead but had their own tricky trip to Liverpool so we had to give ourselves a good chance of overtaking them. That’s why I was surprised, like all the lads, when the boss left out Sparky. Sparky had started every game in the previous few months. He was a fixed point in the team, one of our leaders. I’m still not quite sure why the boss didn’t play him in a game we needed to win.

  We fell behind but had enough opportunities to win several matches. Brian McClair equalised and we had three or four chances to win in the last ten minutes but it just wouldn’t fall for us. One goal to win the league – that’s all we needed. That’s the fine line you are treading sometimes between triumph and disaster.

  Afterwards in the dressing room it was the most disappointed I’ve ever been at a football match. Throughout my career I’ve been able to handle defeat pretty well. Particularly as you get older, you learn to take the blows. But that was one of the real low points. My first championship race, and it had ended disastrously. As we made the long journey home I felt physically sick.

  Perhaps the FA Cup final could provide some comfort. I’d been cleared to play by the FA despite amassing eleven bookings. In my eagerness to become a tackling full-back I’d been launching myself into some shocking challenges. I’ll admit I was a bit of a maniac in those early months. There was one tackle, on Jason Dodd at Southampton, that was terrible, deserving a straight red. I can also remember going into a fifty-fifty with Carlton Palmer against Sheffield Wednesday and cutting him in half. The coaches had told me to make my mark and, typically, I’d taken it to heart. I knew I had to take my chance, to make an impression. It’s always been said, rightly, that you can’t be ordinary at United and expect to survive for long, but maybe I’d got a bit carried away in my eagerness.

  I was due to miss the final, but we appealed against the suspension. You know, a young lad, making his way in the game – just over-enthusiasm. I went down to London to plead my case, explain that I hadn’t been booked for anything too bad and it wasn’t fair to deprive a twenty-year-old of participating in such a big occasion. And they let me play. I did, however, have to pay a £1,000 fine for the privilege of a Wembley appearance. I didn’t have the cash – I was earning £210 a week on my first professional contract – so I had to borrow the money off my dad.

  It was my first hearing in front of the FA disciplinary panel and I thought they were a fair bunch then. That wouldn’t last.

  I loved all the build-up to my first big game at Wembley. Call me sad, but I like the tradition of the cup song, even if ours for that year – ‘We’re Gonna Do It Again’ with a rapper called Stryker – is probably best forgotten. I felt in good form and I was really confident we were going to win. Ince, Keane, Bruce, Pallister, Hughes – these guys were winners. We knew Everton were beatable.

  I don’t remember much about the game apart from the gaffer going mad at us for the goal when they broke on us to take the lead. Scholesy almost scored, then Sparky went close. But after letting the league slip on the last day, again we just couldn’t get the vital goal.

  So that was two crushing disappointments in a week. A Double gone in two tight games. I’d made twenty-seven appearances, which should have been something to be pleased about, but this was no time to smile. United were not in the business of trophyless seasons.

  They say you learn most from defeats, and that campaign would certainly lead to major changes at the club. But that was for later. Coming straight off defeat in that 1995 FA Cup final, we headed off for a team party. It came as a bit of a shock to see how the senior lads stayed up drinking until breakfast – but there’s something to be said for drowning your disappointment. I sank a few myself, but next time I hoped I’d be drinking out of a trophy.

  Win Nothing With Kids

  I’LL ALWAYS REMEMBER one newspaper article at the time when the manager was being asked a lot about the gamble to promote his ‘Fledglings’. One line stuck in my head. The great thing with young players, the boss said, is that if you confront them with a barbed-wire fence, they’ll run straight through it; an older player will walk two hundred yards to find a gate.

  That’s the sort of hunger he knew he would get from us. We were so eager, so willing. We would have run through a brick wall for him, never mind a barbed-wire fence. This was the Busby philosophy, moulding young players so that you know exactly what you will get from them when they break into the first XI. We were already steeped in the disciplines of the club, the way to play the game, the work ethic, the way to behave.

  It doesn’t matter how much homework you do, sign a player for £20 million and you are always taking a gamble on whether he will adapt to a new environment, a new style of playing, the new level of pressure that comes with representing United. With us, the manager knew our games and our characters inside out.

  He knew that Butty wasn’t scared of anything, and never has been. He’s got this fantastic temperament to confront whatever’s in front of him. Put him up against the best player in the world, or the hardest, and Butty would roll up his sleeves and get on with the job.

  The only time I’ve ever seen Butty run away from anything was after he’d held a scalding-hot teapot right next to a naked Schmeichel in the dressing room so that when Peter turned round his privates got burnt. Everyone found it funny, apart from the big Dane. As Butty legged it, Peter picked up one of those massive drinks containers and hurled it across the room. ‘I’m going to kill you!’ he screamed, sounding like Ivan Drago from Rocky IV. But Butty was long gone, leaving Peter nursing his burns.

  Scholesy, the late developer, was blossoming into the player the coaches always knew he’d become. He had eyes in the back of his head and a pass as accurate as a laser. Half the time he’d use it on the training ground to smack you on the back of the head when you weren’t looking. You’d turn round and he’d be about sixty yards away pissing his sides.

  It would be another year before Becks scored from the halfway line, but he had started to come through, stronger and better after a loan spell at Preston, and already plenty of people were taking notice of his technical prowess. He could hit a brilliant pass off any part of his foot – spinning, dipping, a low grass-cutter or whipped into the box. And, game after game, you’ve never seen anyone cover so much ground.

  It must still have taken massive courage for the manager to throw us in together, but he’s never lacked that quality. Plenty of other clubs talk about bringing through young players. They spout a good game about youth philosophy. Our boss has demonstrated as far back as his days at Aberdeen that he’s willing to put his trust in kids. ‘Young players will surprise you,’ he says. And we certainly did.

  My first championship would be unforgettable for a few reasons, but perhaps mostly because Alan Hansen claimed we couldn’t win it. Mind you, it wasn’t Hansen who put the wind up me after we were thrashed at Aston Villa on the opening day of the season in August 1995, even if it was his remark – ‘you’ll win nothing with kids’ – which has gone down in folklore.

  When we came in to train on the Sunday morning after our drubbing, ‘Choccy’ McClair demonstrated a nice line in dry wit: ‘Well, lads, only forty points to avoid relegation.’ Everyone laughed, but they were nervous giggles.

  We’d been shambolic at Villa Park, playing three at the back. We must have looked a mile from championship contenders with a team that contained Butty, Scholesy, me and Phil in the starting XI, and Becks and John O’Kane off the bench – unknown youngsters to most of the country. On Match of the Day that night we were pulled apart a second time. Win nothing with kids … on that evidence, it didn’t sound a daft thing to say.

  Plenty of people wondered what the boss was doing. After th
e disastrous conclusion to the previous campaign, he’d wielded the axe. Incey was off to Inter Milan. I was sad to see him go. A lot was said about his self-styled reputation as the Guv’nor. He could be brash, but what did you expect? He was from the south. He’d been encouraging us young lads and looked after us on the pitch. He was a fantastic midfielder for United.

  Andrei Kanchelskis was next out after some row about his contract. On his day, there was no better right-winger in Europe, though it was fair to wonder if we’d seen the best of him.

  The big shock was Sparky. I was in my car when I heard on the radio that he’d left for Chelsea. I was as stunned as any Stretford Ender. With Incey, I half knew he’d reached the point where his relationship with the manager was strained. And Andrei had agitated for a move. But Sparky was a United legend. I guess he must have known that Cole– Cantona was the first-choice partnership, and being left out of that title-decider at West Ham can’t have helped. He was too good and too proud to be sitting on the bench.

  The fans, and the media, were in uproar. The Manchester Evening News conducted a poll asking ‘Should Fergie go?’ It couldn’t have been more ludicrous, looking back, but it showed the pressure we were under.

  It was the first of many little crises we’d confront over the years. The world would be going crazy outside, but inside the camp the manager would tell us to keep our heads down and get on with our jobs. And we had plenty to think about that late summer of 1995 with three big games in a week straight on the back of our humbling at Villa.

  First up was West Ham, when Becks would face Julian Dicks. We knew Dicks would want to clatter him early, put the kid in his place, so Becks made sure he got stuck in early, showed that he wouldn’t be pushed around. He gave Dicks a torrid time as we ran out winners.

  Next up was Wimbledon, Vinny Jones and the rest. They might have had an intimidating reputation as the Crazy Gang but we thrashed them 3–1. So recently written off as kids, now we were proving ourselves men. I walked off with the knowledge that we had nothing to be scared of.