Cytat:It wasn’t my only bust-up with the boss that season.
The first knock-out round in the Champions League took us
to Lille, and there was some tension between the manager
a nd his opposite number, Claude Puel. It was an edgy
match which boiled over when Giggsy scored with a quick
free-kick while Lille were still assembling their wall. It was
entirely legal, a sharp piece of thinking, but the French were
furious. After protesting in vain to the referee, they started
walking off. I couldn’t believe it.
‘Come on, get on with the fucking game,’ I said to
their captain, following him towards the side of the pitch.
The next thing I knew the manager was charging
down the touchline shouting at me. ‘Neville, what are you
doing? Get back on!’ He had really snapped.
As far as I was concerned I’d been doing the sensible
thing, trying to get everyone to get on with a game we were
now leading. But he was furious.
So I snapped back – ‘Fuck off’ – and walked away.
Now, I’ve said ‘fuck off’ a million times to a lot of
different people, but this was a first. I’d never said it to the
manager before. I knew as the game resumed and we
played on that I wasn’t going to get away with it.
We won the match, and the boss was waiting for me
afterwards. He was apoplectic, just as I’d expected.
Back at the club, Giggsy tried to get me to apologise.
I hadn’t yet had an opportunity when I got a call to go and
see the boss in his office. I guessed it was for another
bollocking. I wasn’t wrong. He blitzed me, fined me a
week’s wages, then sent me out of his office.
We were playing at Fulham at the weekend and I had
to laugh when he took me all the way down to London and
didn’t play me. He didn’t even put me on the bench. I knew
exactly why – to teach me a lesson – but the thing about the
manager is that he’ll always give you an explanation for
leaving you out. It’s one of his great traits. You hear stories
about some clubs where the teamsheet goes up an hour
before a game and that’s the first a player knows about
being dropped. If you started the previous game and he’s
about to drop you, the boss will always call you into his
office and tell you why, without fail. He’s a brilliant
communicator like that. You might not like the explanation,
but at least you’ve been told, to your face.
‘I need some height so I’m going with Wes in the
team and O’Shea on the bench,’ he said to me that day. ‘I
need the tall lads against Fulham.’
I just started laughing. ‘Boss, you played me at
centre-half against Wimbledon’s Crazy Gang when I was
twenty-one. I’ve marked Duncan Ferguson in an FA Cup
Final.’
‘No, Gary. They’re dangerous from set-pieces,
Fulham.’
Imagine how chuffed I was when we got down there
and they had Alexei Smertin on the left flank, all four foot six
inches of him, or whatever he is.
‘I could have played you after all,’ the manager said in
the dressing room, looking at their teamsheet. He was
laughing.
Three days later he took me down to Reading and left
me in the stands again. The seventeenth man. ‘What have
you brought me for?’ I said. ‘I could have trained back at the
club.’
The trip was a total waste of time, but the boss had
asserted his authority. I wouldn’t be swearing at him again.
He’d slapped me down hard, as he was never slow to do
with anyone who stepped out of line, particularly those of us
who’d come through the youth ranks.
It always felt like he was harsher with us than with the
players he signed because we were the kids he’d brought
through. Perhaps he took it more personally if we did
something rebellious. I didn’t feel that I had done much
wrong in Lille but I knew it wasn’t worth pursuing with the
manager – not unless I wanted to spend even longer out of
the team.