Bill Nicholson. Brian Scovell
entertain, but unfortunately they are not given the recognition they deserve.’
In another prophecy that turned out to be true, he said, ‘Some years ago I told another manager: “The players will soon be running the game.” I believe we are close to that now. The players and their agents make the demands and the clubs are forced to comply. In my day, managers told the players what money they were to be offered. Today it is the reverse. The player and his agent come up with a list of demands and the club has to decide whether it can afford them. If it can’t, the player is touted to another club, often abroad where wages are higher because transfer fees are lower.
‘The money paid to players goes out of the game but money paid in transfer fees circulates among the clubs, keeping them alive.’
He was not strictly accurate about players being sold to clubs abroad and the wages offered by most Continental clubs. Hardly any English players go abroad because few speak another language and technically they are inferior in skills. Premiership clubs can afford to buy the world’s best players and when they are no longer wanted, they sell them off abroad.
No one from the FA, the Football League or the major newspapers of the time made proper efforts to clean up these irregularities and restore some credibility to the game. Twenty-seven years later, little has been done. In many instances, managers have a clause in their contract allowing bonuses if players are sold for big profits and the get-out excuse is ‘well, it’s in the rules’. MPs used the same excuse when they were caught overcharging on their expenses and, like politicians, managers know it’s against the spirit of the game. Most earn enormous salaries, so why do they need the money? Richard Scudamore, chief executive of the Premier League, told Neil Ashton of the News of the World in 2010: ‘I’m convinced the game is clean. We scrutinise transfers more than ever after the Lord Stevens inquiry. Sven-Göran Eriksson claimed corruption in the game was rife, but we did a right trawl and we couldn’t find any compelling evidence.’
Portsmouth’s affairs have been scrutinised on a number of occasions and at the start of the 2009/10 season their chief executive Peter Storrie told a fans’ forum at Fratton Park: ‘We all know that all managers tap players up. It is not right, it’s illegal and it is against the Premier League’s rules, but it happens all the way around.’
‘Tapping up’ players can be traced back to the time when the Football League first kicked off in 1888. The trainers or chairmen of clubs were continually trying to recruit the best players from rival clubs and approaches were usually made secretly through friends, relatives or journalists. In Bill Nicholson’s heyday, one of his best contacts was the Scots football writer Jim Rodger, who had a good appreciation of talent north of the border, but Bill was scrupulously honest about his own transfer deals, always going through the right channels.
Shortly after Storrie made his comments about tapping up, FIFA banned Chelsea from buying players until January 2011 after they signed 18-year-old winger Gael Kakuta from Lens. FIFA has a regulation, Article 17, which prohibits poaching players in these circumstances and two other clubs, Roma and Sion, were also found guilty. Progress has been painfully slow but the worldwide clean-up has now started, with UEFA joining the campaign in 2009 by charging Arsenal’s Eduardo with ‘deceiving the referee’ by diving.
Bill was unerringly correct about the lack of skill of many players, the inflated salaries, the growing gap between the overpaid performers and the supporters, plus the unwholesome activities of many agents. The game was losing its appeal and it was only the intervention of BSkyB, buying up the televised rights at a gigantically high price for the new Premiership when it replaced the old First Division in 1992, that prevented a footballing version of a tsunami. Sky devoted large sums to promoting the product – and it worked. The pendulum swung forward to better grounds, pitches like bowling greens, fitter and stronger players, as well as livelier, more informative coverage. But on the downside, some of the new owners were global entrepreneurs who were running up vast borrowings – almost like Robert Maxwell, who wanted to take over Manchester United but had to settle for Oxford United and then Derby County.
Whereas Maxwell was found out and committed suicide in 1991 before he was charged, today’s owners stay on the right side of the law, but they have still created empires which may collapse, like a number of banks in the latest recession. After Norwich City were relegated at the end of the 2008/9 season Delia Smith, their incorruptible director and leading backer, commented: ‘You can’t run a club and succeed if you are a millionaire, or even a multi millionaire, but only a billionaire.’ Norwich are on the way back, which proves that honesty is still the best way forward.
Bill was critical of the work rate of the players when he spoke in 1984 because his generation of players, most of whom served in the Armed Forces, were subject to severe discipline. If they slacked, they were put on jankers (punishment duties). His generation has now passed by. They grew up kicking tennis balls against a wall to master the art of control and played in small-size kickabouts in the streets or on patches of grass. Their successors have less self-discipline and money has tended to corrupt some of them.
‘A footballer is now in a different class from that of the man who pays his wages,’ said Bill. ‘Some people argue that they should be paid a relatively low basic with higher bonuses related to success. In a sense, that already happens. They even get a bonus for staying up. My argument is that the only real incentive for players is to seek to play to the best of their ability in every game because of sheer pride of performance and personal satisfaction.
‘There are times when I see highly paid players taking a breather and that angers me. They have no pride in their performance. Ninety minutes isn’t a long time to be running about, but some want to take it easy. They are cheating themselves, their teammates, their employers and the public. Managers in Italy fine players for not trying and there is no reason why it should not happen here, because the contract of service specifies that a player must play to the best of his ability. There were times when I accused my players of not trying, but I never fined them. I would leave them out of the side, if need be.
‘There is no reason why the gifted players shouldn’t work hard for the whole of the game. That is one of the problems of the game today: they do not work hard enough. Players soon become complacent and many will duck out of work, if given the chance. Often I was accused of not handing out praise, or concentrating more on finding fault. I may not have complimented players after matches, but I did it on the training pitch. That is the place where I experienced my greatest happiness in the game. That is where great football teams are produced and to achieve that goal, much work is needed.’
Bill was one of the first to ask a centre forward to take over as a centre half, reversing roles to understand the other man’s approach; he believed in wide, attacking players to open up defences and he was in favour of flexible formations. He advocated the use of the now outdated WM formation – four rows of men; three defenders at the back, two defensive wing halves, two attacking inside forwards and a centre forward with two wingers. ‘It means a more open game,’ he said. ‘It is very fluid and the man off the ball has to be the playmaker, the man who dictates the next move.’
These days many of the big clubs use only one striker, a sign that the game has retreated because of the fear of defeat. Cliff Jones, the youngest-looking of the 1960/1 Double survivors, said: ‘Bill knew more about the game than anyone in it.’
Some commentators called him grumpy, but his observations have proved spot-on. He forecast a top four or five Super League at the top, including Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal and Tottenham, making it extremely hard for the other clubs to survive. He was wrong about Spurs and should have anticipated the arrival of Roman Abramovich at Chelsea. It was more convenient, and often cheaper, for managers to import foreign, ready-made players instead of rearing their own English players, and now less than 40 per cent of the Premiership’s stars are available to be picked by England. These players, particularly those from Africa, work harder because of their poor background and have more skill, and so the overall standard of matches has gone up. Not many of them drink alcohol either. Too many of the young English players still make exhibitions of themselves, in and outside of night clubs and bars, disgracing their profession. Bill insisted that his players showed respect to