The Damned Utd by David Peace (easy readers txt) 📕

luck,’ you tell Don. ‘And I don’t believe in God.’

‘So what do you believe in then?’ asks Don Revie.

‘Me,’ you tell him. ‘Brian Howard Clough.’

* * *

Just the three of us now; me, his shadow and his echo –

In the empty stadium, beneath the empty stand, off the empty corridor, the three of us in his old bloody office in my brand-new chair at my brand-new desk on his old fucking phone –

The spit from his lips. His tongue. The breath from his mouth. His stomach –

My brandy. My cigarette. My call –

Bill Nicholson ranting down the line about Martin Chivers; about modern footballers; about Mammon and greed –

‘John Giles could be just the man you need,’ I tell him. ‘Be able to groom him. Mould him. Done a fine job with the Republic. Just what the Spurs need …’

Bill Nick’s not keen, but Bill agrees to meet Giles. To talk to him.

I hang up, pour another brandy and light another cig, in my brand- new chair at my brand-new desk in his empty old office, off his empty old corridor, beneath his empty old stand in his empty old stadium –

Just the three of us: me, his shadow and his echo –

I walk out into the corridor. Round the corner –

Down the tunnel and out onto that pitch –

My brandy in one hand, my cigarette in the other, I stand in the centre circle again and look up into the dark, empty Yorkshire night –

Don’t take it out on this world –

This night has a thousand eyes but just one song.

* * *

‘It’s easy to be a good manager,’ Harry Storer always used to say. ‘All you have to do is sign good players.’

Harry Storer was right. Harry Storer was always bloody right –

It’s players that lose you games. Players that win you games –

Not theories. Not tactics. Not luck. Not superstition. Not God. Players –

You pick them, but they play. They win, they lose or they draw –

Not you. Not the manager. Them. The players –

You have kept the likes of Kevin Hector and Alan Durban. You have brought in the likes of John O’Hare, Roy McFarland and Alan Hinton –

You have tasted Elland Road. You have tasted the Big Time. But now it’s back to the Second Division. Back to Portsmouth, Millwall, Huddersfield and Carlisle.

Derby County win a few games. Derby County lose a few –

Peaks and ruts. The hate mail comes. Ruts and peaks. The hate mail goes –

But there are still men like Fred Wallace; there are always men like Fred Wallace, standing on the terraces, behind the dug-out, outside the dressing room, in the corridors, in the boardrooms and at the bars –

‘Dropped another place,’ he tells you. ‘Fifth from bottom now.’

Men who want you to fail. Men who want you to lose. Men who wish you dead. Men like Fred Wallace. There are always men like Fred and there are always doubts –

There are doubts in 1968 and there’ll be doubts in 1978 –

Doubts and broken promises:

Derby County fail to win any of their last six games. Derby County lose their very last match at home to Blackpool. You have lost nineteen games in the 1967–68 season, scored seventy-one goals but conceded seventy-eight, and you have finished the season eighteenth in Division Two; one place lower than last season, last season when Derby sacked Tim Ward; two places lower than you promised the Rotary Club of Derby –

Promised the newspapers and the television, the town and the fans –

Broken promises and broken hearts –

Meanwhile, Hartlepools United have been promoted to Division Three –

Broken hearts and salted wounds –

Your glass breaks against his lounge wall, you are drunk and crying, shouting: ‘Least we’d have fucking won something.’

‘But we’d still be in the bloody Third Division,’ says Peter.

You shake your head: ‘This rate, we’ll fucking pass them on our way down.’

‘Brian, listen to me,’ he says. ‘Hartlepools was just a bloody stepping stone, always was and always will be. This time next year we’ll be promoted as fucking Champions. And that’ll just be the start of it. You wait and you see.’

You look up. You dry your eyes. You ask him, ‘Do you promise me, Pete?’

‘Cross my heart,’ he nods. ‘Cross my heart, Brian.’

‘If you promise,’ you tell him, ‘then I believe you –’

Promises made and hearts healed –

Peter puts his arms around you, and your wives pick up the pieces.

Day Seven

Impeachment, impeachment, impeachment and the return of George bleeding Best. Bestie. Turning out for Dunstable Town and beating Manchester United 3–2. I’ve got a smile on my face and the radio on as I drive; a smile on my face until I see him, see Bestie by the side of the road, larger than life, any life –

His head full of demons; his own throat cut …

To sell them Brylcreem. Double Diamond beer and pork sausages.

They hate flair round here. Hate and fucking loathe it. Drag it out into the street and kick it in its guts, kill it and hang it from the posts for all to mock and see, from the motorway and the railway, from the factories and the fields, the houses and the hills –

Elland Road, Leeds, Leeds, Leeds –

Yorkshire. Nineteen seventy-four –

His own throat cut –

There is always a war coming, and England is always asleep.

* * *

You are bloody lucky not to have been sacked. Fucking lucky. Except you don’t believe in luck. Talent and hard work. That’s what you believe in. Ability and application. Discipline and determination. That’s what got you from Clairville Common to Great Broughton. From a fitter and turner at ICI to centre-forward at Middlesbrough Football Club and then captain of Sunderland.