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

to blow the First Division to Kingdom bloody Cum, the whole fucking game, because this is who you are –

Brian Howard Clough, thirty-four, and a First Division manager –

Brian Howard Clough and nobody else –

An ocean liner out of a shipwreck.

* * *

Fifteen minutes into the second half, Kevin Keegan hustles the Irishman from behind and Giles whips round and punches Keegan in the face with his right fist. They will burn the grass. Giles, the player- manager of the Republic of Ireland; John Giles, the would-be assistant manager of Tottenham Hotspur; Johnny Giles, the should-be manager of Leeds United. Turn this grass to ash. The referee gets out his book. Keegan pleads for leniency on behalf of Giles. The Irishman stays on the pitch but goes in the book. Turn this field to dust. Minutes later, Bremner and Keegan collide during a Leeds free-kick. They will salt this earth. There is a sea of fists, kicks to the heels and digs to the ribs. Leave this ground as stone. Keegan flies round and swings out at Bremner. Barren and fallow for ever. Bob Matthewson sends them both off –

Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds …

His eyes in the stands. Behind my back. His eyes in that suit.

Bremner and Keegan walk along the touchline. It is a long, lonely walk to a deserted, empty dressing room. Bremner and Keegan strip off their shirts, the white number 4 and the red number 7; shirts they should be proud to wear, these shirts they throw to the ground –

This is what you think I am, says Bremner. This is who you say I am …

Shirts any lad in the land would dream of picking up, of pulling on –

Then this is what I am, shouts Billy. This is who I am.

But not Billy Bremner. Not Kevin Keegan –

His eyes in the stands, behind my back.

No one learns their lesson; Jordan fights with Clemence, and McQueen goes in to sort it out like a fucking express train. Dirty, dirty Leeds, Leeds, Leeds. To add injury to the insults, Allan Clarke is carried off with torn bloody ligaments –

His eyes in that suit, behind my back.

Ten minutes after that, Trevor Cherry heads home an equalizer; first right thing he’s done all afternoon. But no one’s watching. Not now; now minds are racing, events and pens. The game goes to penalties; the first time the Charity Shield has ever gone to penalties, no more Charity, no more sharing of the Shield. The penalties go to 5–5. Harvey and Clemence make a goalkeepers’ pact to each to take the sixth penalty for their side. David Harvey steps up. David Harvey hits the bar. Ray Clemence stays put –

Callaghan steps up. Callaghan converts the sixth penalty –

Liverpool win the 1974 Charity Shield –

But no one notices. Not now –

Now two British players have been dismissed from Wembley –

The first two British players ever to be dismissed at Wembley –

Now they’re going to throw the fucking book at them – at us – for this. The fucking book. Television and the Disciplinary Committee will see to that. You can forget Rattin. There will be those who want Leeds and Liverpool thrown out of the league. Their managers too. Bremner and Keegan banned for life –

Heavy fines and points deducted –

On the panels. In the columns –

In his eyes. In his eyes.

The stadium empties in silence. The tunnel. The corridors and the dressing rooms.

No one is sat next to Bremner on the coach out of Wembley. I sit down next to him. I tell him, ‘You’ll pay your own bloody fine out of your own fucking pocket and, if I had my bloody way, you’d fucking pay Keegan’s fine and all.’

‘You ever play at Wembley did you, Mr Clough?’

‘You can’t do that to me,’ says Bremner. ‘Mr Revie always paid all our fines.’

‘He’s not here now, is he?’ I tell him. ‘So you’ll pay it yourself.’

‘You ever play at Wembley did you, Mr Clough?’

Bremner looks at me now and Bremner makes his vow:

In loss. In hate. In blood. In war –

Saturday 10 August 1974.

Day Twelve

‘You ever play at Wembley did you, Mr Clough? You ever play at Wembley, Mr Clough? You ever play at Wembley?’

You played there just the once. Just the once but you know it should have been a lot more, a lot, lot fucking more; you were sure it would have been and all, after Munich in 1958 and the death of Tommy Taylor, the effect it had on Bobby Charlton. You know it would have been a lot, lot more too, had it not been for your own bloody coach at Middlesbrough, your own fucking directors; everybody telling the selectors you had a difficult personality, that you spoke your mind, caused trouble, discontent. Still, they couldn’t not pick you, not after you played a blinder for England in a ‘B’ international against Scotland in Birmingham, scoring once and laying on two more in a 4–1 victory. You were bloody certain you would go to the World Cup in Sweden then, fucking convinced, and you were picked for the Iron Curtain tour of Russia and Yugoslavia in May 1958, just one month before the World Cup –

That number 9 shirt down to just Derek Kevan and you.

The night before the tour, you were that nervous that you couldn’t sleep. You got to the airport three hours early. You hung around, introduced yourself –

But no one wanted to know you. No one wanted to room with you –

‘Because he bloomin’ never stops talking football. Drives you bleeding barmy.’

But Walter Winterbottom, the England manager, sat next