They would be out screaming at you at half-time, they'd be screaming at the end of the game. What's the tone of that? David the Messiah boys! One of the best known football managers across the globe.
Building teams with a clear identity. So where am I looking at who I'm I talk to? I was desperate to be successful as a manager and I had a lot of years ahead of me. I find it really difficult to break into the top four before I was at Alice.
And he said, I'm retiring and you're the next manager and I'm actually isolated. In my interview, I'm not saying, would you like to be? I met Edward on the next day, back to the service again, we met the glazers, which three days in that was as simple as that. To get that offer from the greatest manager in the world was a great compliment.
But maybe if I'd really looked into more detail and more debt, there was a huge change when you have to do it. I trusted Manchester United. Do you feel like that trust me? Let down.
Definitely. But my biggest regret was... We start with the story that has dominated the front pages, the sacking of David Moyes. How did you find out that you're losing your job?
Media? Oh, really? If you've got any class at any style, you have to give bad news well. What are those steps forward to get West Ham competing at a rate on the table?
I want to build a new West Ham. A lot supporters might not like the sort of that. When you look at where West Ham is now, do you worry about losing your job? I've got to say it.
Take me back to the context that I need to understand in order to understand you. Take me back to Glasgow, 1960s. Yes. I was in a real good family, who were really important.
You probably gave me a talk a lot about it now. But we were a family who stayed in the West End of Glasgow in a tenement building. And we used to have to have got the up to tenement. And the people who don't know what a tenement is a tenement is a no.
What we would probably think about block of flats and you got the tenement. And they were never in Glasgow at that time. Very, very good, delicate people looked down on them a little bit. But it was a great upbringing for me that allowed me to play my football out in the street, which at that time was with some which everybody considered, you know, street footballers, everybody played football in the street.
And everybody in Glasgow did play football in the street, played in the park. So I started in Glasgow in the West End, and that was probably where me and my family grew up. Your father's also called David. He certainly is, yeah.
What did he do for a living? How did that influence you? Well, this is probably a really good question for me is because my dad actually was a teacher, but he worked in the shipyards in Glasgow, which was really important. So he worked in the ship builder and then he went on to become a teacher in a college.
But meanwhile, what he'd done in his part of his other job was that he was an amateur football manager and he was a very famous boys club team in Glasgow, called from Chapel Amateurs, which was very famous. And really is all my memories come with my dad running one of the teams that drew from Chapel Amateurs. Now, the people who don't know, you know, there's people like Sir Alex Ferguson played from Chapel Amateurs. There's people like Ace Hartford played from Chapel Amateurs.
John Watt was a Scottish international. So it was a very, very famous boys club. My dad also ran the college where he'd teach. My dad was a teacher at Annie's Land College, which was a college in Glasgow.
And he took the team every Saturday morning, and then he took the amateur football team every Saturday afternoon. But remember, this was all as well. There's no money involved in this. So really part of my life, we've seen my dad grow up as a football manager for Amateurs.
But meanwhile, his real job was that he was a teacher at Annie's Land College. Did that make you want to pursue that as a career at that time? Or what kind of influence does that have on your hindsight? Well, I think when I went back, I had to say to say to, I think your parents, if you didn't, huge influence and everything you do, for different reasons, mine definitely did.
But I don't think when you're growing up as a boy, you're thinking, you know, I'm going to be influenced too much by my dad and my mum. You don't think that you get a bit older yourself when you look back. You go, wow, I can't believe that I'm quite similar to my dad. I can't believe that I followed my mum.
And good back to that, my mum was part of it as well. My mum had to wash the strips and hang them up outside. And, you know, and then she'd have to wash them and iron them and I'd be folding them and putting them away. So probably from a really young boy, I was watching my dad and my mum help young boys at that time, you know, fulfill, go for a game of football, hopefully they were all home to go and become professional footballers.
But if not, try and be successful playing for the boys team and go out of that time. One of the things we do tend to pick up from my parents when I've seen them, I certainly did myself was, I guess, like, principles and values of, like, how to approach life and how to deal with life. What were those principles and values that your parents imparted on you directly? We're indirectly from observation about life and how to deal with it and how to confront it.
Well, I think the parents were always influenced in some way. I was sent to church when I was younger, so I went to church, a lot of people were. And I think that probably had an influence as well in its own way in the early days. But I think more to do with schooling, more to do with education and what they try to do.
And to be fair, none of them, I was never pushed on anything. I was never pushed to be that well educated. I was never pushed on it to be a great football player. They were just encouraging, really, and always their support.
So I had parents who really let me grow up the way that we actually used to do. So everything was guided by them, respect, trust, trying to be truthful all the time. All those things, I think, come into a good relationship. Did you ever have a, you kind of suggested that they weren't necessarily, like, pushy parents, necessarily.
But did you ever have any idea of what career or aspiration would make them proud? If I'd asked you, you know, what did your mum or dad want you to be when you're older, when you were younger? What would you have said? I think my dad would have definitely said, I hope your football, you know, I think my dad would have always probably thought that.
He'd have great love of football as well. But I think they were always really supportive in anything I wanted to do. But I think, you know, as I got on and I got to an age where I was starting to get close to 12 or 13, I think football was probably my biggest sort of love and what I wanted to do. I was more interested in either watching football, playing football.
And that was probably the probably sort of run about that age as well. Is it sort of 12 years old? You were in the Celtic youth system? Yeah, it was, that time Celtic kind of boys club.
And you have to remember, my dad also, as I said, ran a very, very famous boys team. One of the teams in Glasgow, from Chapel Amateur. So I went to Celtic Boys club and I played with Celtic Boys club from about 12 to 16 to went on. But they were brilliant years I had there.
You know, my time at Celtic, which, you know, came after as a player and as a, you know, a senior professional, not a senior professional, I should say. But the young, the young period when I was at Celtic Boys club was, I can remember, been winning things and being really successful and representing, you know, Glasgow schools as a school buyers, representing Scotland schools as a school by International. So I had really, really good days and early days, probably, from 14, 15 onwards. Did you, if I asked you, even at that age, so say when you were 16, if I asked you, about your ambitions in football, what would you have responded with?
I hope that I might have been good enough to become a player. I'm not sure I would be. And I would love to be involved in football. I'd always used to think that, you know, I'm hoping that maybe I could run an amateur team or I could be involved.
I could maybe be good enough to take a junior team, you know, and make it pay a little bit of money. You know, maybe I'd become a used team coach for some day, if you know, if I wasn't going to be a football player. I'd always thought even at that time, when we were growing up, it was like, what's the use of clubs? You know, so we would go to a school use club, you know, because it was where you'd get to give him tennis, you'd play pool, you know, the gym, maybe then you'd play five or five or five football, you know, whoever was there.
So I always thought, well, maybe I might be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be able to be a club or something if I didn't get any more better than that. So those early days, there was no guarantee that you were going to become a footballer. Everybody really wanted to become a footballer. What did you learn from your dad as a manager?
Is there anything, even today, where you think, I think I got that from a dad or that trait? Yeah, planning, yeah, organization, commitment. And if I just talk about planning, you know, at that time, there was no mobile phones then. So it was a phone.
So he'd be phoning all the players to say, like, we're playing on Saturday, I want you to meet at 1230, I mean, whatever it was. And at that time, they all had to come, at times with the same, with a shot and tie on. They had to bring a bag, not all had to come with the same bag. Shot and tie, you've got to remember, this is Glasgow in a time when, you know, people were, people had to turn up with your car and tie on.
If you didn't turn up with your car and tie on, you might not get selected for a game. So small things like this, if you're talking about maybe disciplines or ways you were brought up, I think possibly I picked up a lot of the traits probably early on. What does that matter? What are the small things that matter?
Shot and tie? Do you think they matter, I guess? Yeah, I do. I think they really do matter.
I think they sometimes, I mean, they don't have to say, if you jumped on to this in my senior time, I think, you know, they've always looked better. I think people have always looked better, they dress well, and they're correct, they look prepared for the games. I jumped to Manchester United, just quickly and single Manchester United. And the rule, which is that Alex had to do with always turned up for away games and shot and tie.
Now, most teams would rather turn up the tracks, so it couldn't come more casual. But Manchester United always turned up with a shot and tie on, which I thought was a great thing, because they wanted to show what they were, wanted to come out there and say, look, the way we, the way we approached it, you look at this Manchester United, I've got to say, I really admired that part of it. It's interesting, it's an interesting small psychological advantage, isn't it, to some degree, I guess it's a statement of professionalism and attention to detail before the balls even kicked. It is, and, you know, that takes me back.
So, you know, maybe, Sir Alex, who played with him from Shuffle Amateurs, maybe picked up from his time at Shuffle Amateurs, you know, the way they had to turn up the shot ties on and they had a blazer on. And again, this was just an amateur football team in Glasgow. You played with many, many clubs over here, almost 600 career games, across a variety of different divisions. That time working as a player, across multiple clubs and multiple divisions, what did that teach, it's always useful to get a variety of different experiences that you can kind of create your own perspective on the world.
But what did that teach you, those 600 games as a player? What are the fundamentals? The fundamentals where I learnt so much. But my early days when I started at Celtic was probably engraved in more than anything because Celtic is an incredible tradition of winning.
You know, winning now, obviously Celtic had to win with style as well, Celtic were, you know, biggest couple of Rangers in Glasgow, and Scotland, I should say, and because of that, Celtic had to win was always so important. So, you know, I could see the first team, there was the reserve, there was the youth team, and all the managers were under pressure to win. Then, if you did win, then it was, what was the score? You won one-nothing, that's not good enough, you need to win.
You need to win, you need to win, you need to win. But more goals. And how did you play? We didn't play that well.
We scored an only, we were skipping. Not good enough, you have to win with style. So, I think my early days I was brought up with brilliant footballers, people who showed me, I don't know if you want to cut a philosophy because philosophy might be much deeper in my offer, much more. But it gave me some way I had to say, well, I have to win, I have to find a way of winning.
You know, if I can win with style, that's even better. But more importantly, I have to find a way of winning. And I picked it up for my early days at Celtic, and I wasn't near that long. No, that wasn't near that long, but I wasn't near that long.
Probably just seeing your player move down and ended up bobbing around the championship in a couple of lower leagues in England for a long time. But I come across some really great managers. I come across so much. We aren't so good.
But, you know, I always try to be respectful to anything because that came from my background and my upbringing. But I was trying to pick up everything I could in. When I was 20, I had already qualified as a full time, full A license coach at the time. You know, to be a coach, you had to have an A license, it was called.
Now you have to have a pro license, but you have to have an A license. I had qualified as a coach when I was 20, 21, which was unusual. The reason I done that was because the coaching courses were obviously full of really experienced managers, full of really lots of players trying to get into management. The only reason I went and done it was hoping that I'd become a better player.
I thought that if I went on these coaching courses, it'll help me become even better as a player. And I had a really good career, but not quite at the elite level which I really wanted to be. Whose idea was that to go to a coaching course at 20 years old to improve yourself as a player? My own because I thought that maybe I'd find out more about it.
But I have to say, there was a thing when we were young players, when we were 16, we were sent to the courses to help the coaches. So we were called the runners. So we were down there to do all the running. You know, you had to do all the running.
You had to be a field player. You had to be a field player. And all the practices were put on for the coaches. And Scotland had great coaches at the time.
You know, people like Sir Alex, Jim McLean, Walter Smith, you know, I could go on and on. Scotland had brilliant coaches without naming likes of Jockstein and Bill Shankley and you could go on and on and Jock's green, for example. So I was sent down by Celtic and I was just one of the runners for a couple of years. And once I was down, I said, I want more of this.
I want to be around football people. I love to listen to them. I hope that I would impress some of them who were managers of really big clubs at the time. And that's what I thought I'm not going to do my bad use myself and went on to do them in Scotland.
Well, your time at Celtic, in the first team, when you got signed there, three years, right? You were in Celtic? Yeah, yeah. You then got to experience other cultures and clubs.
But you signed Celtic as having that sort of winning mentality that some clubs just have, where they're almost, you know, they just, they get used to develop the habit of winning. Throughout your career, you've been in clubs that have the habit of winning. What clubs that maybe have struggled in the opposite direction and don't have that culture of we always win every game. When you think about the clubs you've worked in that have that habit of winning, like Celtic did, what is that?
Where does that come from and what does it look like and feel like? It looks like you walk in every morning, your chest out, your head high and you're sort of confident in what you're doing. There's a motivation to keep it going, not to let it drop. There's something about having to continue to improve to stay at the top that you can't just do what you're doing.
It's just going to keep you there forever. You have to keep trying to find a way to do it. I did see that and I feel that and I've seen it at other clubs since. But I have to say, I think on the journey to probably where I'm today, it's probably more that seeing a lot of the other side as well is actually the bit which, you know, I've been a club so I've been getting relegated.
I've been a club so I can't win. I've been a club so I, you know, it's not going well. I've been a club so there's, you know, it's not been as powerful as say a club at Celtic. So I think, I think you have to see it all round for you to give yourself the best chance.
And I keep saying, you know, to do, to get to become a football manager, I don't think there's any one plan. You could be the best player on the planet and not become a football manager. You could be someone who's never played the game and become incredibly successful as a football manager. So I don't think there's necessarily one way you do it.
I'm really intrigued by this idea of like cultures at clubs and within teams and how you can just feel it almost when a club has that momentum and they were winning team and when they don't. On the country then, when we're thinking about teams that are struggling and aren't performing well, what are the signs of that? Now, Rio said something really interesting. I was at Rio, Gary Neville said something interesting to me.
He said that when he was at Manchester United, Saralex Ferguson only came into the dressing, training ground dressing room twice. And he said he never needed to come in there because the culture was in there. So when Burbitov came over and wasn't fit in the culture, the players would correct it. He then says when he went to QPR, when the manager left the changing room, everyone was talking about their wages and where they're going next.
You can feel that. There is a difference. I actually think the culture, I mean, that team you're talking about Manchester United were incredible players. I would say self-made because they had a great manager.
But if you look now, if I moved to just now, I'd be saying there's much more communication in life now. I came from background with really tough the Scottish managers. I know they're probably the working background they came from. They would be out screaming at you at half time.
They'd be screaming at the end of the game. They would be after you if you didn't do well. I don't think that culture's there. I don't think it's changed completely in Scottish managers.
If you look at Scottish managers probably over history. Scotland had lots of managers in English, Premier League, for example. Very few now. And it might be that we're having to change your culture.
So come back to a little bit of what you're talking about. Real second in there. I think there was a period where the players looked after themselves. They could take the hard hitting, hairdryer treatment if you want to call it that.
Now I think it's a completely different culture. Whether we've changed or whether I feel as if management is not necessarily in that form. I don't know. Steve, you tell me even better.
You're here in the businesses. Would you go in and be screaming in bloom? Your staff now. One of my advantages is I didn't grow up in that culture.
So I've never known the prospect of coming into work. Whereas you hear about it in some old businesses where the CEO would come in and throw things and throw the table over and stuff. I just never grew up in that environment. I grew up in a societal expectation that a manager might be tough and sometimes, but it's fairly nice.
There's no big gloss office that I sit in away from my team members. It's a different world these days. As you were talking about that, you said that it's kind of a different world in management. You've been in the job since you had, I guess, 20 in your early 20s.
You're 59 now? I'm 59 now. I've probably been in management since I was early 30s. I started and then.
So 25, 30 years. You talk about the change that you've seen in the approach that is effective now. What is effective now? If once upon a time Scottish managers come in and hairdryer it and whatever, whatever.
How has the approach changed in your view? Well, let me tell you, I remember I remember one of the managers coming in to the dressing room and always said is, don't look up. Just look at the floor. Look at your boots.
Look down because if he catches his eyes, he's going to come for you. So it used to be you don't look up so that he couldn't have any eye contact when you had to. You know, and you probably put your head in the towel so that he couldn't see. And because that was the way it was.
We were, it was that. And I think that I probably had a lot of that in me when I first started. But the difference now is I think we're in a different, and maybe, maybe yourself. Maybe you'll understand it's a different year.
So as a coach and as a manager and as a manager, I think you need to find a way for you're moving on with that. Or you'd be left behind. And I've got to say, I think in my position, I've got to admit, I have to keep trying to keep up, renew, invest in more work to find out how it's going on. There's so many new things.
Don't get me wrong. That doesn't mean that I've still not got the bit of anger in me when I think the players need it. And I actually think that I like it. I think sometimes I like it.
I think people want to be told the truth. And I think one of the worst things you can do to people is I think if you keep praising people all the time, I think it makes you soft as well. So I think there's a level of praise you can give people. But I think you've also got to be really tough with your praise as well.
And I actually think that as I've become older, I've become better in giving praise. I think that some of my players, I'm sure, have ever told me to say that I've ever given praise because I was always looking for better from them. You know, over the last, well, I've been in business for 10 years or something. Not as long as you in terms of management.
But even I've started to notice some warning signs in people. So if I see this in the interview process, I saw this before and ended in this way, from a patent recognition. You've talked a lot about and I've read a lot about your scouting process, how you find great talent, great players. What are the things you look for in the things that you consider to be warning signs?
I always wanted someone who I thought was putting in effort. Okay. I always thought that you might say, how can that come in front of many other things? Well, I can think of many, probably you and you'll think of plenty of school boys, friends who were really talented play with the video, they weren't dedicated in the effort to do the work.
I think you don't put the effort in the dedication to it then. And the other thing I use a lot is if you don't love the game completely, then you'll probably find it really difficult. I think you'll find it really difficult to become a manager if you don't love the game or have real longevity. I think you could be a player and maybe get through your career 10, 15 years as a player, with maybe without loving football.
But I think if you want to go longer, I think you've badly got to love the business. I became manager of Everton, but I did it before. I used to always meet the players and I still do if I can. You only wanted to see their eyes, to see I need you to work hard.
I need you to know to do this job for the team. I'd like to see how you're going to take that. I'm going to be critical of, you know, I want you to get better. You're happy with it.
You only wanted to put the questions over to them to see if they were going to take it. Did you? I did to many players. I've got to say, we've had quite a few over the time, which I've got to say, who I've had in my house, who I've had in offices.
And we've probably not taken them sometimes because a bit like you said, sometimes something just makes you go, that's just not what I quite wanted to hear. And that might only be a gut. And it might not. It might have no reason in the voice.
Some of the boys I'm talking about are going to be superstars and play for a little bit. But something at the moment can only give you that little bit of gut feeling if you think it sounds like it's going to fit for you. And I'm not saying you're going to write, but I think at that time you have to be your own, your own sort of things where you say, no, I'm not going to change. This is what I want to do.
I want to keep it this way. And I missed out on some. How does that process work? If you're looking, let's see you're looking for a striker.
What's the process? Because we've heard some, I don't mean many, understanding of like signing players and playing football manager on the PlayStation or whatever. But I have, in my head, you have all these scouts, they produce reports. Yeah.
And then do you know what position you want to fill? Do you go to the scout or what happens? I think you, in the main scouts will probably bring them to you. I mean, like, if it's somebody playing for one of the teams locally or that, and it's available and you think it's a chance then, you'll probably try and do your homework.
You'll try and, you know, obviously, statistically you'll try and get it right. You'll try and look at the strengths and weaknesses. You'll take any consideration, maybe the price is only cost. Where do you think it's, you know, way fits in for you, what you can do.
You're scouts to bring to you. And quite a lot more than football, it's the agents that are bringing them. You know, because the agents are playing such a huge part, no, whether you see it, it's a positive or a negative. They're playing such a huge part behind the scenes in football at the moment.
And these people will bring it, obviously, you're trying to sell something. You're always going to talk it up. But in the end, you know, we would, I would always try and get my scouts to go through it. They would probably say, yes, this is coming and looking at it.
I mean, we should, we'll go and sit and we'll sit for a few years watching. If we wanted to take it even further, then we would go into much further detail. We'd eventually probably start trying to find out people who know the boy or has played with the boy and trying a bit of his character background. We'd try and find out more about, you know, is he the right type?
You know, is he a good boy? Is he a good trainer? Is he going to be disruptive in the training? I think all those things are really, really part of it.
I don't think any football manager wants people who are not going to fit in. And what was it? I'm going to reverse back to business. Probably you're the same.
You don't want people who are not going to fit in with what you've got. You want somebody who's going to come in and blend in and be part of it. What was your best ever signing? I always say Nigel Martin, a sign.
Nigel Martin, a goalkeeper who was lead United. And we took him to Everton at the time. And it's only because he was free. But not only that, he was a great goalkeeper.
Obviously he'd been an England goalkeeper. He was probably near at the end of the time. But he gave me about four or five years of stability. But see when people talk about signing your best signing, over the time I've made that many signers, I've got, you know, it would be really pretty shameful.
I'm even in anyone because I've got so many that I could say. You don't have to ask you to name your worst signing. But where have you frequently got it wrong when signing players? No, what I think you do is I think it's the ones I've missed.
The ones who you've said, no, I don't think it's quite good. I think I've had hundreds of them. Who's the one you missed the most at? Well, just recently because we've been talking about it, you know, we've been overheads who's just played for Argentina in the World Cup.
You know, I brought in a new scout who says, look, you should go for overheads at River Play. And I watched and I watched these very good, really good technicians. I thought he'd done so many good things. I thought maybe not quite the one we want.
Maybe didn't quite. We had Mickey Antonio who had been doing very well. I thought I don't know if he's, you know. And you see, sometimes the players change in six months.
But I have to say there's other players like that who you don't take and don't go on to be a real success. But that one at the moment is just one because it was probably only a year ago where I decided no, I don't think it's probably the one we're going to take. It's the same in business. No matter how many people you hire, it's always still guessing.
You know, speaking to my friend, Dave Venichak about this, who's about 5,000 people and he said to me, he says, you know, I've been in this game for 30 years and I'm still just guessing because we can come up with all the principles and systems we want. But how someone, people change but also how they present in an interview can be drastically different to how they present in six months' time when they're comfortable. You know what, it's really interesting. I hear now and I hear because of so many jobs changing our industry, he says, how do you pick a good football coach now?
How would you pick a football manager? How would you pick a football manager? How would you pick a football manager? You know, what would give him the owners or the people who are doing it?
How is it picking it? Because again, what I said is, yes, of course we can think of some real special people who would be in that group. But if you're at a lesser club trying to pick a new talent, you know, why would you get it? Has he got the drive?
Has he got the energy? Has he got the love for the game to stay with it? Has he got an idea that he wants to go further and he's only put the work in? It's really hard and sometimes you can't find them and I get the feeling it's the same in industry now as well.
Yeah. Yeah. I think the more I've hired, the more I've realized that it's just guessing, which I think we'll be surprised at because people think that you'll get progressively better or your confidence will grow. My confidence has actually fallen with experience.
Yes. So what that means for me is that when I hire someone and I know it's not right, you just very quickly have to make a decision because the worst thing is indecision, right? We can do not. We have the same situation we're talking about is we're buying players and we're spending a lot of money.
You are and then you're seeing what you can't do this, but we don't think you can do that. And it times maybe the older you think it becomes easier. It actually becomes harder the more you're in it because you've probably seen the good ones, the bad ones. Yeah.
We've followed this path to try and get a good win, but not so good anymore. We've followed another path. So I've got to say no hiring people and bringing them in is not an easy thing to do. It's slightly different.
I guess it's because as the CEO, I in business usually get to make the decision about who you're hiring. I mean, sometimes of course, managers make that decision, but in football, there's often a conversation that the board or the owner has stepped in and has told you who to sign and who to buy. Well, I think that's one of the things really in football where you would say, if an owner was going to do that, you'd say, no, come on. It's not right.
It's part and parcel of football now. It's rife in football where a lot of owners are making the sign instead of the manager. Has it ever asked you to sign up there? Yes.
Yeah. What did you say to that? I've tried to say, I've said no to it. You know, I've said no, it's not the way to do it.
No, if the players are good, I'd be saying great. Bring them in. But then what we would do is we get a name of a player, then we would try and do our homework and try and do other stuff. And by the way, we might be wrong, but we follow the correct process or what we believe is the correct process.
And it still comes out. No, we have to go with what we say. Now, if the process says, hey, by the way, he needs a good player. He's going to lots of goals.
He's young, you know, resellable. If it doesn't work, if all those other points come up then, we'll say, wait a minute, maybe we have to think about it. But I think really trusting your process and holding that, the longevity I've had will probably hope that you've made more right decisions than wrong decisions by the time you get around to meet in the final decision. I guess one of the things you can control, which doesn't have to be a guessing exercise, is the culture that they join.
So if the culture that they join is good, then there's a high chance of them being successful as a player, as a signing. I agree. How do you do that in the club? Do you want managing now, West Ham?
Have you done that in the past? To make sure the culture is right? What is that culture? Yeah.
Well, I think for me, the biggest one was when I was at West Ham the first time we came in, we thought we'd done a good job and we kept the team up. We were asked to come in and we kept the team up and we didn't get the job. And then another manager came in and we were out of work for a year. So then, to be fair to you, you want to be able to solve any for me, a bad company says, would you come in?
I said, yeah, I'd love to come back. No problem. I felt I had to do a bit more at West Ham or had to try. I keep using it.
I want to build a new West Ham. So what does a new West Ham mean? Well, a lot of people, a lot of supporters might not like the sort of that. But West Ham would move to a new stadium.
It's not been appreciated by everybody. But that's what we're going to be. It looks like for the next 100 years. That's what it looks like.
The club's going to be there. So we need to make the best we possibly can of it. You know, I want to change the car. I want it to be lots of young kids coming West Ham.
East End of London is a huge area. Full of West Ham supporters. A lot of poverty in the area. West Ham offer great ticket prices, great opportunities.
They do brilliant work in the community West Ham and East End of London. And I want to encourage all the young kids. Now, what do you need? You need exciting players so that the young kids won't want your body.
So they're not following the top two or three teams in the country. And you want them to come. So I've tried to change the team. But, you know, deep down, I'd really like to say, I'm trying to make West Ham better.
And it used to always do. All the people, I was a manager. I haven't always managed it. I had other clubs.
I thought we'd say, ah, you get flaky West Ham. You know, they're not that reliable. And you don't know what West Ham team's going to turn up. Well, I want to change that culture.
There's so much room for improvement at West Ham. I think it's got great potential to improve. And I hope that you get the opportunity to keep it going with a couple of really, really good years. Success for West Ham has been success.
And it's how we continue that success and how we build on it. And I think if you're in business, I think you'll accept it. You know, you quite often give a couple of years and a good year and then you might not have it quite so good because we're a little bit like that at the moment. So I'm hoping that culturally, I think we have changed.
I think we've changed a lot of things at West Ham. We're not milky. We're not flaky. I think it's a different atmosphere in East End, I wondered in regard to how people see West Ham.
I like the way we've done it, but we've also got some exciting, really exciting young players who those young supporters have talked about can fall. What are those next steps then? If you reflect back on what you did at Everton, you took them from being that kind of, you know, happy to survive clubs. I think in the last eight years, you finished in the top.
You last seven years, you finished in the top. One of the two. You last eight years, you finished in the top eight, seven times or something along those lines. They became a consistent competitive team at the top, top end of the table.
When you look at where West Ham is now, as we sit here now 16th in the table, what are those? But after two amazing years in the two previous years where West Ham were absolutely fireworks, to be fair. Dangerous, very, very dangerous team to play against. I'm not meant to be too late.
The last two years have been really, really credible for West Ham. What are those steps forward now to get West Ham to being that team that is competing at the very top of the table? And it's fine. It's so interesting that in fact, when you answer this question, you don't just think all we need to buy will play.
It's kind of more of a holistic, wider, broader job and needs to be done. Yeah. I actually think that we've bought with players and I think that, you know, I've got to answer this what I'm doing. I think I sometimes I think in football, not that you need to break it, but we had a really good team for the last two years.
But we had a few marked nobles coming to them. One or two other players were coming to them. We had to change them. We were actually short numbers.
We were really short. The players have done. I felt as if I nearly had to break up a little bit because I had seen signs now. My experience, my longevity was telling me, if I don't do this now, then I'm going to feel I'm going to be caught out.
Now we probably didn't do quite as well from January on last year. That was my feeling. We had some brilliant nights. We got to semi-final European football.
You know, we've been challenging all years. I mean, in the last game of the season, we finished sevens. We were 10 minutes away from finishing sixth up off Manchester United. You know, so the margins were incredibly small and all this, but I felt that now we might know where the edge I've only seen is.
I don't really give a shit now. I've got to say, I'm not going to get me anymore. It goes at this. So if I don't make a go at it, I don't really do what I think's right and what I want to do, then I'll regret it.
So as part of me said, yeah, we had to bring in new players and we've gone out and we've put our head on the block and said, here we go, brought these new players in. Now what I really need is hope that I can get a little bit tanky set on, get them settled in. I think we've brought in good players. I think we have got a better squad.
Maybe not a better team at this exact time than what we had last year, but we've definitely got better players, which I believe will show that in the coming months. Do you worry about that losing your job? Is that something that sits in my business? I mean, other than one of the social media and I had board of directors were a public company.
So technically they could find me. It's not something that I think about. Like if I perform badly as an executive, the company goes down. No.
That's right. That's right. Well, what I'd say is, I think it's a young manager. I worry much more.
Yeah. In the position I'm in now and I worry far, far less because it's in my blood. I love the game. I want to be here.
I'm enjoying what I'm doing. But it wouldn't be the end of the earth if something went wrong for me now. But my pride, my determination is that I want to be successful and I want to, I want to do a really good job for West Ham. So, but I think when you're younger, if you look now at young managers, young managers find it very difficult.
You don't do well in your first job. Maybe like business, you know, in business. Maybe you have a going. Something fails.
Nothing quite work. Yeah. I think you need people who are really supportive at the start. I had a great owner, a couple of great owners who really supported me.
When I went to West Ham, I had great men who helped me at that time as well. I think sometimes you need to be a bit lucky on your journey. No, if you're talking about a club where an owner's making the signings or you're not, he's only going to give you half a dozen games to show what you can do. You're probably going to find it.
It's going to be very difficult to succeed. So, maybe a bit lucky at the start. But I worry much more when I was younger than I would do now. That's success that you want the time to achieve at West Ham.
What is that success? What is the goal for West Ham? If we're sat here in, you know, let's say, ten years, five years time. That's too long in a couple of these days, five years time.
What's the goal? I think we've been successful. Yeah. I think West Ham, I've been successful in the last two years.
Really the one should be great when I was in the serial, when I was in the one to get a bit of success. All the one is more of it. I'd love to be sitting here bringing my trophies in here in front of you and putting them up. Look at these trophies.
I've not got that. What have I got? I've got periods of success. All my teams have done well.
We've got to cut final here. We've got to semi-finals. Not everybody in the industry can have success. Not everybody can know about the medals.
I'm not. But I still believe there's no big chance I can do that. Is that your KPI of success? Is that what you...
No, it's probably not now. It's not now because actually staying in the job wouldn't be a bit longevity is a real important thing. If you can stay in it, you know, it's a big thing. You've done a good enough job.
But you know, I've been forcing off with a few manager of the year awards over the years. The last few years have been nominated for it. I've said many things. I'd swap it for when I chose him very new.
I've got the chance, you know, I've won his trophies all day long. So that's still got to be what I'm driving to do. Now, they're not going for ever because I'm getting older and I don't want to be his oldest Saralex. Or Roy Hodgson when they've finished those sort of people.
But I've still got the energy. I've got the drive. I feel myself. I've got a good team.
I feel myself. I'm still capable of keeping up with those younger ones. Saralex. There's been a lot said about Saralex.
I talk about him a lot because I've interviewed so many of his former players. There was a lot of rumours that he went to your house. And I asked you to become the manager of Manchester United. No, he took me to his house.
Oh, he took you to his house? Yeah. And actually, I'll tell you the story, Steve. It wasn't long after I turned 15, my wife had bought me a watch.
And actually, we had gone through to Manchester to the Jaws. I needed to get a link taken out. And it was actually in all places. I was in all places.
I was in all places. And the phone rang. And it was Saralex. And I said, what the hell?
It's Alex on the phone. And I thought, oh, he's gone. He's gone. He's gone.
He's gone. He's gone. He's gone. He's gone.
He wants me to take one of his players. He's coming on. He says, hey, where are you? I'll say I'm in Manchester.
I says, aye. I'm in Manchester. No, come out to the house when you're ready. I said, and that's a puerce Saralex accent.
Probably he's gone. I don't know. I don't know. I'm in my jeans.
I couldn't go at Saralex with a puerce on. It's no way. So I'm saying, I want my gun. I don't want your marks and spin.
So I'm saying, I'll say I'm a puerce Saralex. Sorry. She's going to ask me. So she's saying, how can we just go and do it in there?
So anyway, drop my wife off at the shop centre and I drove out to Sinaldi's house and he went in, and he says, and he come. And very nice house and he's got a lovely sort of room, sports room upstairs, and he says, what, a cup of tea? And he says, I took a cup of tea. And he said, I'm retiring.
And you're the next manager I'm interested in. No interview, no telling me, not saying, would you like to be, I'm retiring. And I nearly slipped down, it was a little slip down because obviously, I was nobody knew that Sinaldi was retiring. Nobody knew, nobody even suggested.
I thought about it and then he only slipped down and I heard him say that. And he says, you're the next manager, I'm interested in it. And I just sort of went, yeah, okay, I wasn't going, I wasn't going to turn around, I didn't think I would ever say no or I could, I don't even know it was in a position to say no. And that was as simple as that.
We got underway, he said. And there was only maybe, and to be fair, there was only four weeks to go to the end of the season. Maybe five weeks to go to the end of the season. I was coming out of contract to Everton.
And I was really, I want to be respectful to them. And actually, my next game was against Liverpool. On the Sunday, I think I met Sir Alex in the midweek on Wednesday or Sunday, on the Sunday. And I knew that if we had got a draw with Liverpool, we would probably finish up all of them in the week.
And it was at Anfield and we did, we got a draw and we did finish up all of them, so it didn't have any effect on what I was doing at Evan. But the big thing was to say, and then the next day, he said, I want you to come back to my house tomorrow. Edward was going to come and see, he's going to be the new chief executive who he says David Gills is leaving as well. And that was it, and I met Edward on the next day.
And then the next day, back to his house again, we met the glazers. And so it was three days, three days, where I dropped back to his house. The biggest problem I had was, he said, and you can't tell him the amount of me retiring. He says, nobody knows, and I said, no promises.
Tell your wife, I couldn't tell my kids. I couldn't tell my dad. I couldn't tell my dad that I was going to get the job. I was getting the job.
So that for me was how it happened. And we now look back now to get that offer from probably arguably the greatest manager maybe there was, was a great compliment. But maybe if I'd really looked into more detail and more depth, and I was desperate to be successful as a manager and I had had a living years of effort and where we said we'd, I wouldn't say we'd take the glass ceiling, but we'd find it really difficult to break into the top four, the competition and the money was required. But my biggest regret was I was so close to Bill Ken right there at the owner at Evan.
And I couldn't tell him, and it felt really bad that I couldn't tell him, because I was so close to Bill. But I couldn't break my word with Alex and Alex that he didn't want me to tell him. So I couldn't tell him to be with my wife. So jump back in the car, throw back to the shop mall, shop center, got the wife put her in the car, and I said, I'm the new manager, I'm alienated, and she was like, you got pissed off, you're talking, you know.
So that was it, and that was how it went. You were coming to the end of your contract a little bit at the time. What was your plan? You hadn't signed a contract.
So you must have been thinking. I had to say as I had been, I think my plan was probably to stay at Evan. We just hadn't got it done for different reasons. I always wanted to see how it was going.
But I have to say, I'd met a couple of other cops, I'd met a couple of really big cops who had approached me and phoned me and spoke to me. You know, what was I doing? Would I be interested? The truth is, I don't think I'd have left for any of them because Evan had been so good to me.
But I was also wary about over staying here. Welcome, Evan. You know, sometimes just in management, supporters want change, they want to try something different and I get it. I'm a huge football supporter, you know.
If I wasn't managing, I'd be watching football and I'd be probably talking about it, what everybody else does. But I, you know, it came up, I get a chance to manage probably the biggest cop in the world. I'm following a club who always give their manager's time, they give some analytics time. And also that their values were, no, they played young players, man United.
I always thought my United never went out and tried to buy the best on the market. They never went to the, they never went to the sort of designer shop to buy the best thing in the designer shop. They bought correctly, they bought young players, they bought, you know, you look at the players they had which they come through from Bex and the Neville's and all the other ones who came through. They always had something a bit style about them.
They never went out to get the best overseas money in the world, they picked which fitted their model. So I actually felt myself with me the job and I just said, I need to give them the job, I felt they thought, I must have been the best choice for the job at that time. And they saw that. And also maybe not similar, but similar in a way that maybe there was a similar background, a similar upbringing, a similar route, maybe to get to the point.
So I trusted Manchester United, I really got to trust them because of what they stood for as a football club. You know, many times when you're successful as you were at Everton, you're given the opportunity to sustain the business. People come to me and give me these huge opportunities and sometimes like the bright lights of the opportunity have often caused me to make a wrong decision or not to take the right amount of due diligence as you described, they're like not really looking into the details because it's such a big thing that you almost can't say no to it. You said that you wish you looked a little bit close with the details.
What do you mean by that? Well, I'll tell you who told me was Harry Wilkinson. Said to me down the line, I wish you'd told me before he says, all the managers who have had a dynasty. So when you look at it, I think it was Brian Koff was one of them.
I think the other one was the Bobby Robson. All the managers who had the real dynasty, in fact, I think the United manager as well, Don Raven maybe as well. I think it was, anybody who followed them, never worked. No, I never even stopped for a minute because I thought to myself, no, I'll come in and I was thinking, I'm not changing.
I'm gonna try not to change much whatsoever. I was like, of course, I have to change it. It's not synonymous, it's me, I have to do it my way and I have to try and do it a little bit. But ultimately, I was gonna keep it going.
But then when I look back at the things where I had to thought, my goodness, I've had looked a bit closer. And maybe even now, I'm a bit older now than I was when I got the job. Maybe, maybe even more experience and maybe even I had it at that point, maybe we'd be more ready. This period in my career than I was, even say, no, no, it was eight.
And then years ago, whenever it was, it's difficult to know. Well, you know, they've got a really good manager. And I think, I think the thing about Manchester United, Manchester United have chosen incredibly good managers, probably some of the best managers, some of the best managers you could ever imagine, have been Manchester United. So, you know, sometimes you've got to say, you know, if you're quite bright, I'm sure you are with the business.
It's not always in the boss's fault that this doesn't go right. So, like I took over at a difficult time, you know, it was quite a few senior players probably coming to near the end of their time. But I also have to say, I was really proud I took over the Champions England when I was a time and that was, I'm saying, what a chance I've got, you know, maybe the opportunity to win trophies, the opportunity to be successful. And it was the thing I was probably missing from a time that I wasn't quite getting close enough to win in trophies.
Would you, would you, Eric Tanhagasan, I think he's great? I think we both agree there. But would you ever be open to coming back to Manchester in the future if they had been asked? Well, I don't think it would ever be, it would ever be in a role as a manager, that's for sure.
So, that, my time's gone. But, you know, if ever, I always love to be involved in football. And hopefully somewhere, I want to use my experience when my time's up was, we've been a football manager. But Manchester United is a great experience.
And I found it difficult to sort of have something which could sort of, I would sort of put over what it meant. And the only way I could put it out is, I think when you manage Man United, it's like living in a penthouse and looking out, you know, and until you've played the penthouse and you're looking out and you're above everybody and you're looking over, you see the view much better and from being able to penthouse. One of the big things that did change Man United, and I only know this because I had a season ticket. The ladies and the men that serve you the food in like the hospitality suite or whatever, they always have a great relationship with them.
And they would tell me things about how the club was, maybe before I could, I had enough money to buy a season ticket. One of the things they always said was the role that David Gill had on the club as well. People don't think, understand that enough, but David Gill was the CEO of the club. And I mean, I've seen in my own businesses when the CEO was removed, it was a completely different place.