39 Days of Gazza - When Paul Gascoigne arrived to manage Kettering Town, people lined the streets to greet him. Just 39 days later, Gazza was gone and the club was on it's knees…. Steve Pitts
had revealed in his statement that the deal had not been completely finalised and that ‘we expect to have the final paperwork signed before Saturday’s game’. To prevent it from collapsing, Mallinger had agreed to the revised payment plan suggested by Ladak following his failure to get any money off Gascoigne. Gascoigne admitted he had agreed to put up £50,000 but said he did not hand over the cash because, despite repeated requests, he couldn’t get a contract from Ladak.
Although he was not yet the official owner, nothing was going to stop Ladak outlining his plans for a club which he said represented everything that was good about football: ‘Real supporters watching their home-town team because they love football, not glory. Real players in the non-League because they love football, not money. A real stadium with terraces and an atmosphere the players can feel.’
He went on to explain the early priorities were a full-time playing squad, a solution to the stadium issue that had haunted Mallinger as the years on the lease ran down to single figures and building an infrastructure to allow the club to get into the Football League.
And his take on Gascoigne’s appointment? ‘One of England’s finest joining to help fulfil the dreams of supporters and players,’ he insisted. According to Ladak, it was the potential of the club, ‘with possibly the largest fan-base in non-League football’, that had attracted Gascoigne: ‘Paul has been determined to wait for the right club before committing his future and the fact that he is part of this consortium illustrates his confidence in the project.’
However, Gascoigne was already having doubts over his relationship with Ladak, and the lack of a formal contract was a frustration. ‘I saw one once, but then he took it back,’ he later said. He complained of being ‘stitched up’, although at the time of the press conference the lure of a return to football was enough to buy his silence.
Ladak was in a hurry to stamp his mark on the club, and wanted to get cracking. The previous directors might still have been listed among the club officials in the matchday programme for the cup tie against Stevenage Borough on 5 November, but Ladak had told them they had done their bit and it was now time for them to sit back and enjoy the football.
‘My perception was he wanted to run the club his way, which was fine,’ said Dave Dunham. ‘That was his privilege. From a personal point of view, given that he didn’t have any experience of running a football club at all, I probably did wonder if he would benefit from having some help. Imraan was very ambitious and very enthusiastic. I don’t know how much knowledge he had about how non-League football works but I think Imraan would probably say himself that it has been a huge learning curve and he might have done things differently if he could have his time again.’
For Ladak and Gascoigne, however, their lack of knowledge at this level was not something that troubled them. They were both confident in their own ability to get stuck into their ambitious plans, and Gascoigne was quick to establish his hierarchy, making clear that Davis would be his right-hand man while he expected Wilson to look at potential new recruits ‘when we get the money’ and to scout forthcoming opponents. As for himself, he said, ‘I’ll be picking the team and deciding tactics, who comes off, who comes on as sub.’
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Mallinger had watched Gacoigne being chased around the pitch. He had sold the club with a heavy heart and would virtually need to be dragged out of the boardroom. Like Dave Dunham and Wilson, he had been hoping the new regime would not cut all ties with the people who had run the club to that point.
Although Mallinger did stay on to help smooth the transition, he eventually started feeling both left out and squeezed out. Others around the club, who had been appointed by Ladak, would stop their conversations when they saw him approaching, and Mallinger could read the signs. As is his way, he would slip away without fuss, taking a few months out of the game as he concentrated on fighting the leukaemia, and then, as his health improved, buy his way into local rivals Corby Town. He became chairman of the Southern League club and took Wilson with him as manager and Dunham, Leech and Les Manning as directors.
Wilson had left after the press conference and did not join in the fun on the pitch. Despite Ladak praising him in his statement to the media and insisting that he was an ‘integral part of our plans’, Wilson drove home more convinced than ever that his time at Kettering was up.
Wilson handed in his resignation five days later. He had been unsure of the financial situation should he quit, but he had no reason to worry. When he did make the decision to leave, Mallinger would write him out a cheque for the money he was due by virtue of the one-year rolling contract he had signed a few months earlier.
He had watched Gascoigne’s first game as manager two days after the press conference, a 1–0 league win over Droylsden, from the stands, having been told he was not wanted in the dressing room. The victory had lifted the Poppies to fourth in the table and, in those heady days, a genuine push for promotion seemed inevitable.
Gascoigne put Wilson’s nose further out of joint that day by continually talking about ‘my players’, even though Wilson had brought the majority to the club and spent the best part of the previous two years working to improve them, both individually and as a collective unit.
However, it was an incident that happened before the game that really rankled with Wilson: ‘A couple of hours before kick-off I got asked to do an interview with Sky. When I got into the room with them I was told that I was no longer being allowed to do it and that Paul Davis was going to do it instead. Paul Gascoigne had decided that I wasn’t to do it. That was his prerogative, but it was over for me. I came in on the Tuesday and told them it wasn’t for me.’
Wilson said Ladak tried to talk him into staying, while people whose opinion he valued told him not to be hasty. They pointed to Gascoigne’s recent record and told him that, if things didn’t work out, then by staying at the club he’d be the right man in the right place to pick up where he had left off. Despite the excitement Gascoigne’s appointment had generated, there were still those who felt there was every chance that events in Boston, China and Portugal would repeat themselves here. Mallinger and Leech were among those who preached patience, but Wilson wasn’t in the mood to be persuaded otherwise.
His name was rarely mentioned after that by those in charge. Ladak, Gascoigne and Davis had barely got to know the man and their focus was entirely on their big plans. If Wilson didn’t want a part of that, it seemed that was his problem alone.
As for the players, some felt uncomfortable at the way in which Wilson had been squeezed out. But there was little they could do about it and the opportunity to play for such a legend, and the potential for full-time wages, meant they were looking at a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. They were quickly learning that they were the envy of the part-time game and there were plenty of players willing to fill their boots if they wanted to follow Wilson out of the door. At this stage, none did.
This was now the club that everyone below Football League level wanted to play for. Ryan-Zico Black was the first signing of the Gascoigne era, joining the club three weeks into the new regime. He was a young, attacking midfielder contracted to Lancaster Town and could barely contain his excitement when he was told Kettering were prepared to pay £10,000 for him. He drove to the ground and then sold himself short in contract negotiations with Ladak because, ‘I was too busy thinking what Gazza would be like.’
Black could not have been happier. He was promised a two-and-a-half-year contract with a basic wage of £20,000 a year that would rise by £5,000 as soon as the playing staff went full-time, which wouldn’t be long. He was told the club wanted promotion that season; the Football League was the goal. He and his girlfriend were put up in a five-star spa hotel, where they ordered room service and champagne. At the age of 25, he had hit the big time. Or so it seemed.
As he sweated in the hotel sauna the next morning, he wasn’t to know of the power struggle that was already simmering between chairman and manager, and how that was to impact on him. Although Gascoigne, who later accused Ladak of being a ‘control freak’, had welcomed Black to the club with a kiss, he felt the player had been forced on him by a chairman who, he was soon to allege, wanted too much say in team affairs.