Be Careful What You Wish For (12 page)

I was more established in my new environment. Phil Alexander came back to find me sitting in ‘his’ office, having removed his stuff. He wasn’t best pleased. Mind you, I wasn’t best pleased about some of the unacceptable behaviour that had gone on in China either, notably from Phil. Phil Alexander, incidentally, was the only person to be in a business that went into administration and come out better off. He went in on a certain wage and came out on a much bigger wage, with all kinds of perks like the fees
paid
for his children’s schools and a one-year notice period. As I was to learn, ‘The king is dead, long live the king’ is Alexander’s mentality.

The pre-season was drawing to a close and there were four games left to play. These would be the first I was to see under my ownership and, oh boy, what joys awaited me.

I had been trying to develop a relationship with Coppell. He was a hero to the Palace fans. He had presided over the team’s most successful period, the 1990 FA Cup Final and finishing third in what is now the Premier League. More recently, his hero status had been elevated further as he managed Palace through the period of administration and kept them in the division, which was all fine to me, so of course I wanted to try and galvanise the euphoria surrounding a new owner with the popularity of the manager, but this relationship wasn’t really there. We seemed to be speaking different languages.

One evening he mentioned he was going scouting at Southend. I had heard he had been scouting with former chairmen, and I thought that this might be the ideal opportunity to start building a relationship with him. I asked if I could join him. Silence. Undeterred, I asked, ‘What time?’

‘Seven thirty at Southend,’ was the disinterested response.

I mooted the idea of going together and was greeted with silence again, so I changed tone. ‘OK, Steve, I would like us to go together,’ I said and set about arranging a time and location to meet. We must have spent five minutes with me saying one time, him another, me suggesting where we met, him wanting to meet somewhere else … After losing the will to live, I decided no more debate. We meet at Selhurst Park at six, and go in my car. I had my driver, John, so Coppell and I could discuss business on the way to Southend.

I wish I hadn’t bothered. I sat in the back of the car trying to strike up some form of rapport with him. It was like talking to the Grim Reaper. Everything was doom and gloom and very quickly I found it quite annoying. I had just spent £11.5 million and counting in three weeks, to listen to this negative, dour, unresponsive football manager do me a favour and sit in my car grunting at me.

As the journey continued I persevered, just to receive more of the same. In the end I remarked that he was so negative he was interfering with the signal strength on my phone. That raised a rare reaction, a smirk, and we discussed a few things like centre backs and was I prepared to spend £1.5 million on Jody Craddock at Man City etc., etc. I felt like I was being challenged and almost as if he wanted me to justify myself to him. So this fun-packed evening of bonding and bonhomie dragged by, and to top it all the game we watched was crap.

When we dropped him off later that evening, my driver John looked in the rear-view mirror and said, ‘Excuse me, boss, but fuck me that was hard work.’

The excitement of watching my first game as owner against non-League Crawley Town, at the time only some 120-odd places below us in the football pyramid, as part of a pre-season schedule was tempered by a 5–1 thrashing. It was embarrassing.

When I asked Coppell afterwards what that was, ‘I told you the deficiencies were deep,’ was his reply.

‘Are you joking, Steve? They are a non-League side, for crying out loud.’

All I got for my answer was a dismissive shrug.

And there was more to come. The following Wednesday we played Reading behind closed doors at the training ground. Reading
were
a league below us and managed by an ex-Palace player Alan Pardew and his assistant, Martin Allen. I remember hearing Pardew and Allen saying Palace had no arsehole and Reading should beat them up.

That offended everything I stood for as I did have an arsehole. Unfortunately my new team didn’t, and we got thrashed 4–0.

Again, that oh-so-endearing shrug of the shoulders from Steve Coppell.

It was evident further strengthening was required and someone suggested the signing of Neil Ruddock from West Ham United. Ruddock had been a good player and a big name, and even Coppell thought it was a good idea. On approaching West Ham, I discovered he was a free transfer, although he did have a weighty salary – which was not the only weighty thing about him. West Ham were very helpful. Harry Redknapp, the West Ham manager at the time, told me to put in a weight clause. ‘If his weight was right, he’d be right.’ So I decided to put a 10 per cent penalty on the contract we were proposing to offer him if he was over the recommended weight of 99.8kg, which by the way was still frigging huge. At the time I was grateful to West Ham for being so helpful and open, but soon realised they could not believe their luck, and would have driven him round in a cab, or possibly, in his case, a bus.

I phoned the ever-enthused Coppell and asked him to come to the meeting with Ruddock, thinking the weight clause issue was better coming from the manager. I should have known better.

‘I can’t come,’ he told me. ‘I have a previous engagement I can’t and won’t change.’

‘So, Steve, I am signing a player that costs ten thousand pounds a week and you can’t come?’

‘No, I can’t.’

‘OK, Steve, thanks for your help.’

I put the phone down, this guy was beginning to get on my nerves.

The raison d’être for Ruddock’s signing was a statement of intent. He was an experienced ex-England player, a good leader and I hoped he would be an example to this young squad we were assembling, and what a fine example he turned out to be.

The next warm-up game was away to Millwall, one of Palace’s biggest rivals just five or six miles down the road. Getting out of my car at the New Den I was greeted by a bunch of their supporters and for the first time I learnt my full name: ‘Simon You-are-a-fucking-cunt Jordan’. It was to change over the years to ‘Simon you blond-headed wanker’ or ‘Jordan you fucking poof’. Going to Millwall was always a pleasure.

So with that warm welcome I was looking forward to shutting up their fans with a resounding victory.

We lost 6–0!

And Ruddock didn’t even play.

After getting the ringing of laughter out of my ears from the Millwall fans, I went down to their manager’s office and saw Coppell in there. I declined to ask what the hell that was as another shrug might have resulted in the death of one of us. I just said: ‘Where was Ruddock?’

‘We didn’t have a pair of shorts big enough for him and he would have looked like a right cunt out there,’ said Coppell.

‘Would have fitted in nicely with the rest of them, then,’ was my response.

The silence that followed pretty much said it all for both of us.

The next morning my phone rang. It was Steve Coppell.

‘Not working out, is it?’ he said.

‘Nope,’ I replied.

‘Shall we call it a day?’

‘I think so,’ disguising my enthusiasm for his suggestion.

And that was that. No massive blow-out, just two people who didn’t gel. In hindsight, I think Coppell had been used to doing what he wanted and without having to answer to anyone. I was irritated by the lack of help he was prepared to give me in a whole new industry where I had no experience. Anyway, the reasons for our lack of chemistry were academic – we were parting company. It was a sure-fire way to lose some shine: appear to get rid of the fans’ hero.

With the season less than two weeks away, things had just got a little more difficult. I had a brainwave that was to make life even harder. I decided to approach Alan Smith, the ex-Palace manager. Smith had led Palace to the Premier League in 1994 and they only got relegated when the League dropped an additional team for the first and only time in their history and Palace went down with a record forty-nine points.

He also fell out with Noades, which was always a plus for me, and knew his way round the place. He was currently running Fulham’s youth academy and as Palace had a lot of young players, he seemed to be the ideal candidate.

I rang my newfound pal Peter Morley for his thoughts and advice. He had scant sympathy for Coppell. Reading between the lines I think Pete had found him difficult during administration and quite liked the idea of approaching Smith. He furnished me with his number. Thanks, Pete, you could have said you didn’t have it …

That evening I met Alan Smith at the Selsdon Park Hotel, intent on offering him the job to succeed Coppell if he didn’t say or do anything ridiculous. In my previous life I spent weeks, sometimes months, making senior appointments, but in this game, I did it at a hundred miles an hour and on the back of a fag packet.

We got on well and he asked if there was money available for players as he thought the squad needed significant strengthening. He asked what I expected, and naturally I said success. He also wanted to employ his own staff: Ray Houghton, the former Palace and Liverpool player, as his assistant and Glenn Cockerill, the ex-Southampton captain, as his first-team coach.

I have to say he was not quite what I expected, having spoken to him earlier in the day. In that call he came over as self-effacing with an edge of self-belief and cockiness. Yet on meeting him I could see he was more than enamoured with himself, but at least he was positive and talked a bloody good game.

We spoke for a couple of hours; I told him I would remove the existing first-team coach. Coppell had employed Brian Sparrow on his return from China. He had been in the job for about a week and was about to lose it. I learnt very quickly that football people walk around expecting this situation so the only reaction is ‘What am I getting paid?’ Paying someone for failing to do their job was one of the many things about football that was to perplex and irritate me.

Coppell came in on Monday morning and a statement was issued that said he was leaving by mutual consent. We agreed a figure to settle his contract. It was the first and only time I would pay a football manager what they wanted on their departure, which was a good thing as I went through my fair share in my unrelenting determination to bring success to this club.

Some fans were disappointed with Coppell’s departure and maintained that I had forced him out. I was to find out that football fans and the media often believe what they want and don’t let the truth stand in the way of their opinion.

After Coppell’s departure I wanted to give the players the courtesy of an explanation. I soon learnt that wasn’t time well spent.
On
the whole, the players couldn’t care less and were only concerned with things that directly affected them, such as how much they were getting paid and what cars they drove. Departure of managers was part of the territory and, more often than not, down to the performances of the players.

I took this opportunity to have a chat with Neil Ruddock about the importance of the example he would be setting and impressed upon him that I wanted him to lead the younger players. Neil said all the right things but I was to discover he was just a flash Herbert and was exactly the opposite of what I required.

I then phoned Fulham and spoke to their MD, Michael Fiddy, and informed him I wanted to speak to Alan Smith about the manager’s job. It was football etiquette to ask permission. In real terms that is utter rubbish, but I did it. I found the concept of ‘tapping up’ slightly ludicrous as what was the point of not sounding someone out before approaching the club they worked for? Fiddy said no problem and good luck with him. That should have been a warning sign right there, a complete lack of concern about keeping Alan in what was a key role as academy director.

The next day the press conference was called and I introduced Alan Smith, Ray Houghton and Glenn Cockerill as my new management team. I also introduced the world to my bright red Ozwald Boateng suit, a fashion faux pas I was to regret for years to come, and proceeded to rattle on about my ambitions and my belief I had brought together a team with a ‘winning mentality’. Because football is such a public business you get to say things in haste and repent at leisure. By now I had done lots of press and attracted a lot of attention being so young and, to be blunt, seemingly irreverent about everything.

Alan set about supplementing the squad or, let’s call it what it actually was, spending my money. We had already secured Mikael
Forssell
on a season-long loan deal from Chelsea and goalkeeper Stuart Taylor from Arsenal. We then signed Jamie Pollock for £750,000 from Manchester City and Craig Harrison from Middlesbrough for £250,000. So that was £2 million in four weeks and seven new players. All these signings were done in complete faith on my part, as this was the world I was now in and money kept it spinning. The key was to spend it wisely, again, learning the hard way.

The Sunday before the first game of the season the club had its annual open day where supporters got to tour the ground and meet all the players. It was my first experience of meeting the fans en masse. I pulled up in my ‘trademark Ferrari’, as it was now being called in the newspapers, and I was immediately surrounded by hundreds of fans. Two or three thousand people showed up that day, and for most of the afternoon I was signing autographs, which was a new experience but one I was soon to realise was part and parcel of the world of football.

On the whole I think we quite liked one another, the fans and I, despite my alleged treasonous removal of Coppell.

So after a somewhat difficult pre-season, with abhorrent results and now a new management team, we were to play our first game. We were playing away to the recently relegated and red-hot promotion favourites Blackburn Rovers, managed by the enigmatic Graeme Souness.

It was my first visit to a boardroom and Phil Alexander was drooling over the Blackburn directors and their facilities, like it was some kind of honour to be there. My attitude was, yes, it was impressive, but so what? I grabbed him to one side and said, ‘For God’s sake, Phil, stop walking around like we are lucky to be here.’