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

there were four whole bins full of cash,’ he says. ‘There’s three here; now where’s the fourth?’

‘How the bloody hell should I know?’ you tell him.

‘Well, someone said you took one home at lunchtime, for safe keeping.’

‘Who the fucking hell told you that?’

‘It doesn’t matter who told me,’ he says. ‘What matters is where the cash is.’

‘Exactly,’ you tell him. ‘So stop bloody yapping and start fucking looking!’

‘All right,’ he says. ‘I will and I’ll get the police to help me, shall I?’

‘All right, all right,’ you tell him. ‘It’s at home. I’ll bring it in tomorrow.’

‘Why did you take it home?’

‘Because, one, you won’t give us a key to the bloody safe and, two, it’s safer in my house than in this fucking office and, three, I can do what the bloody hell I want here because I’m the fucking boss – not you. You’re a secretary and you answer to me.’

Stuart Webb shakes his head. Stuart Webb slams the door on his way out.

Peter is still ill, Sam still on his holidays –

Suddenly, this is a lonely place.

* * *

The taxi drops me at the ground. Training has already finished, the players gone home. But through the doors. Under the stand. Round the corner. Down the corridor. Bobby Collins is waiting for me –

Bobby Collins, former captain of Leeds, now manager at Huddersfield –

‘You’re bloody late,’ he says as I show him into the office. ‘Huddersfield Town might not be in the First Division, Mr Clough, but I’m still a busy man and I don’t like to be kept fucking waiting.’

I pull open a drawer. I take out a bottle of Scotch. ‘Drink?’

‘Not just now, thank you very much.’

I pour myself a large one and ask him, ‘Now do you want Johnny Giles or not?’

‘Of course I bloody want him,’ he says. ‘Who fucking wouldn’t?’

* * *

January was bad but February could be worse. Pete is still fucking ill; the whole town ill now. Rolls-Royce in collapse. Thousands out of work. The Derbyshire Building Society on the verge of bankruptcy. The whole fucking town. That’s why Derby County FC must be on the mend. That’s why you start to win some matches again, away at Ipswich and West Ham. For the whole town. You lose at Everton in the cup, but you then beat Palace and Blackpool. That’s why you also go shopping. For the whole fucking town. No Peter to hold your hand this time either. But this time you know exactly who you want. This time you go back to Sunderland for Colin Todd –

You coached this lad in the Sunderland youth team; the Almighty Todd –

‘He’s too expensive,’ you tell the press. ‘We’re not interested.’

You don’t ask Peter. You don’t ask the chairman. You don’t ask the board –

You are the manager. You are the man in charge. You are the Boss –

You sign the players. You pick the players. Because it’s you who sinks if they don’t swim. No one else. That’s why you don’t ask. That’s why you just do it –

This time you break the British transfer record; £170,000 for a defender; £170,000 as Rolls-Royce collapses, the whole town, the whole fucking town –

But you’ve also done it for them; for the whole bloody town –

To cheer Derby up; the whole fucking town.

Longson is in the Caribbean. The tactless old twit. You send him a telegram:

‘Signed you another good player, Todd. Running short of cash, love Brian.’

In Colin Todd’s first game you beat Arsenal 2–0 and you’re hailed a hero again. The next game is away against Leeds. Revie tries to get it postponed because of a flu epidemic in the Leeds United dressing room. You’re having bloody none of that and, fucking surprise surprise, only Sniffer Clarke is absent from the Leeds eleven. Norman Hunter’s certainly not absent and eventually ends up in the book as Revie and Cocker leap out of their dug-out, arms flapping, shouting and carrying on as if Norman really were bloody innocent. But fifteen minutes from the end Lorimer fucking scores and sends Leeds seven points clear of Arsenal and Derby back to the drawing board –

You lose to Liverpool, Newcastle and Nottingham bleeding Forest and do not win a single bloody game in the whole of fucking March –

Fear and doubt. Drink and cigarettes. No sleep. That’s March 1971 –

It is your worst month as a manager. Your loneliest month.

But then Peter finally comes back to bloody work and you finally get a fucking win, at home to Huddersfield. You lose again at Tottenham but then you do not lose again; you beat United at Old Trafford and Everton at home –

But it’s not enough for Peter; Peter’s had a long time alone in the house with his Raceform; a long time alone to think; to brood and to dwell –

‘Longson slipped you a £5,000 rise, didn’t he?’

‘Who fucking told you that?’

‘Answer the bloody question,’ Peter says. ‘Am I right or am I wrong?’

‘I want to know where you got your bloody information.’

‘That doesn’t fucking matter, Brian. What matters to me is that you took a £5,000 rise, that you took it eighteen fucking months ago, and that you’ve never said a bloody word about it to me. I thought we were partners, Brian.’

‘Pete, listen –’

‘No, you listen, Brian,’ he says. ‘I want my share of the cake.’

‘Pete –’

‘I want my share of the fucking cake, Brian. Yes or no?’

* * *

‘Bobby Collins thinks that Giles is the player to do Huddersfield proud, but Giles will be very much involved in my squad for Saturday’s game at Stoke. That is my priority