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

playing ADO of the Hague, while you, the wife and the kids are at home in Derby with your reprimands and with your fines –

The whole bloody world at war with you; you at war with the whole bloody world.

* * *

‘Now just you wait one bloody minute, Clough,’ says Sam Bolton.

‘There isn’t a bloody minute,’ I tell him and I stand up.

‘Sit down,’ he says and he means it. ‘Enough bloody stunts. It’s not your brass you’re spending, so you’ll bloody well sit down and shut up until this meeting is over and we tell you whether or not we’ve accepted or refused your request for transfer funds.’

I roll my eyes and tell him, ‘There’s a match on Wednesday night.’

‘I know that,’ says Bolton.

‘Well then, do you know how many players you have available to play?’

‘That’s your job, Clough,’ he says. ‘Not mine.’

‘Exactly,’ I tell him. ‘Now you’re talking some bloody sense, Mr Bolton. So if it’s my job to know how many players are available, then it’s my job to go out and bloody buy some more if we’ve got three players suspended, two with long-term injuries and countless bloody others with short-term ones. Isn’t it now?’

‘I don’t think anybody doubts your motives,’ says Cussins, the peacemaker.

‘Oh really?’ I ask him. ‘It doesn’t bloody sound like that to me.’

‘I just think,’ he says, ‘that perhaps the Derby County way of doing things and the Leeds United way of doing things are probably quite different.’

‘I would bloody well hope they are,’ laughs Bolton.

‘What do you mean by that?’ I ask him.

‘Come on, Clough,’ says Bolton. ‘World and his wife knows how you treated Sam Longson and rest of them mugs on Derby board. You had them all round your little bloody finger, eating out of palm of your hand, didn’t you now?’

‘So what?’ I ask him. ‘I won the title for them, didn’t I? Took them to the semi-finals of the European Cup. They were forgotten when I took them over, were Derby. Yesterday’s men they were. Now look at them; household name now Derby County.’

‘I know you are,’ smiles Bolton.

I look at my watch but I’ve not got one, so I just ask them outright, there and then, ‘I want John McGovern and I want John O’Hare. Derby want £130,000 for them –

‘Yes or no?’

* * *

You are the Champions of England and this is how you start the defence of your title on the opening day of the 1972–73 season:

Down at the Dell, you draw 1–1 with Southampton in front of the lowest gate of the day; the lowest gate of the day to see the Champions of England, see the Champions of England miss chance after chance. The only good thing you take back to Derby is the performance of John Robson in the back four. Three days later, you draw again at Selhurst Park. In another disappointing game, your best player is again John Robson.

This is how you start the defence of your title, as Champions of England, with draws against Southampton and Crystal Palace. But it doesn’t worry you, not much –

Not with all the other things on your plate and on your mind; on your mind and on the box; on the box with your new contract from London Weekend Television for On the Ball, On the Ball and in the papers; in the papers and in your columns; your columns for the Sunday Express:

The FA Cup should be suspended for a year to give England the best possible chance in the World Cup. I feel I am the best manager to handle George Best; he’s a footballing genius and I’m a footballing genius, so we should be able to get along well enough. I’ll actually be leaving football shortly. I fancy a job outside the game; one which would give me more time with my family. I’m thinking of telephoning Sir Alf and offering to swap jobs for a year. Unfortunately the chairman has refused to give me time off to accompany England on their winter tour of the West Indies. I think I would like the supreme job of dictating football. I would halt league football in March to give the national side three months’ preparation for the World Cup finals.

* * *

Just one call, that’s all it takes. Jimmy to Dave. Just one call and I’m on my way. From Elland Road to the Baseball Ground.

I get Archer, the club secretary, to drive while I sit in the back with Ron from the Evening Post; bit of an exclusive for Ron this, put a few noses out of joint, but Ron and the Post have been good to me; kept me company at the Dragonara; kept me from my bed, my modern luxury hotel bed; never one to say no to a drink is our Ron from the Post.

Teatime and I’m sat down with Dave Mackay in my old office; Dave in my old chair at my old desk, pouring the drinks into my old glasses.

‘You weren’t ever tempted to burn that bloody desk, were you, Dave?’

‘Oh, aye,’ he tells me. ‘The way the fucking players went on about you, on and on about you. Fucking Cloughie this, fucking Cloughie that. Like you’d never left the fucking building, felt like you were fucking haunting the place.’

‘So why didn’t you burn the bloody stuff?’ I ask him. ‘Have fucking done?’

‘Be a waste of a good desk,’ he laughs –

In my chair. At my desk. In my office. The tight Scottish bastard.

From the Baseball Ground to the Midland Hotel, where John and John are waiting. Not waiting in the lobby. John McGovern and John