Sweet and Sou-ness

Liam Mackey talks to Liverpool legend and recently sacked Newcastle United manager Graeme Souness.

IT’S gone three o’clock on Saturday and Newcastle United and Bolton Wanderers have kicked off their Premiership game at St James’ Park. But Graeme Souness isn’t there. Instead, he’s sitting in a hotel lobby near his home in Manchester, reflecting on a career which has taken him from the high of European Cup glory as a player with Liverpool to the most recent low of his sacking as manager of Newcastle United.

That was just a little over a month ago but if Souness is missing his day-to-day involvement in the game, he’s doing a good job of hiding it. But then, there are plenty of things to occupy the 52 year old, not least the rewarding business of spending free time with his six-year-old son. However, he also makes it clear retirement is the last thing on his mind.

“Missing the game?” he muses. “Not yet, but it will come. There are a lot of things I’m doing now which you ignore in management because it’s such an all-consuming job but I know a point will come when I’m sitting at home one morning with nothing to do today and...” And only one thing can fill that void? “Being around a football club, being around football players - I love football,” he says simply.

Which is hardly surprising given that it’s the life Souness has known best for over 40 years, back to when he first showed talent as a youngster in Edinburgh and then, as a schoolboy international who was a member of a Scottish team which beat England 2-0 at White Hart Lane, came to the attention of Spurs and their legendary manager Bill Nicholson. And so at the age of 15, he found himself hundreds of miles from home as an apprentice at one of England’s most famous clubs - not that this appeared to faze the cocky young Scot one bit.

“At 15, I had ridiculous confidence in my own ability and - rightly or wrongly - I still have that,” he says. “It’s just an inner belief that I’m up for anything.”

Speak softly and carry a big stick - Souness seems to personify the concept. In conversation, he is articulate, thoughtful and softly spoken; on the pitch he earned a reputation as one of the hardest men around.

Bridging the two is a self-belief which many describe as arrogant but which Souness simply regards as objective fact. From an early age, he knew he was good, and didn’t mind telling anyone who was slow to agree.

I mention the famous story of how, as an 18 year old, he once confronted Bill Nicholson, demanding to be picked for the first team. Souness smiles and courteously corrects me.

“It wasn’t once, it was every Friday, when the team would go up. I’d been in an all-conquering youth team and then the reserves but I felt I wasn’t progressing. At the time, Spurs had the likes of Alan Mullery, Martin Peters and Steve Perryman - but I felt I was a better player than all three of them. Now, obviously, I wasn’t at that time. But in my head and my heart I believed I was.”

The club didn’t agree.

“And eventually they got fed up with me knocking on doors saying I should be in the first team - so they said go and prove it somewhere else.

“They sold me for £30,000 to Middlesbrough - they got me as far away from London as they possibly could. I could have gone to Millwall or Charlton but they wanted me out of London so I didn’t embarrass them.”

Suddenly, there’s a hint of steel in Souness’ voice.

“But I did embarrass them. And that was what was in my head - I am going to embarrass the life out of you, Bill Nich, I’m going to show you. So I left there angry with one thought in my head - you are going to regret this day. And I did. I made them regret it. And Bill Nich told me that years later. Without blowing my own trumpet, I am his single biggest mistake.”

As if it needs to be said, Souness conceded that, “looking back, I was an extremely arrogant young man.” But at Middlesbrough, manager Jack Charlton brought him down to earth.

“I’ve had major influences on my career and he would be sat up there with Bob Paisley and Jock Stein,” says Souness. “Jack Charlton said to me, in his abrupt no-nonsense way, ‘There’s two doors for you: that one will take you to oblivion, you’ll never be heard of or seen again. And that one might take you on to being a decent player.’ He didn’t say a great player, just a decent player. And that was it. There was no arm around the shoulder, that’s not his style. It was black and white - you choose. And I needed that.”

At Middlesbrough, the arrogant youth was transformed into a hardened pro, and in January 1978 Bob Paisley came calling, bringing Souness to Anfield for £350,000, hot on the heels of fellow Scots Alan Hansen and Kenny Dalglish. It was the move which would cement the player’s reputation as one of the great defensive midfielders of his day - and one of the most ruthless and intimidating too - as he went on to win five league titles, three European Cups and four League Cups with the all conquering Liverpool team of the late 70s and early 80s.

Souness says psychology played a big part in the way the Liverpool management team - the famous boot room - got the best out of their players time and time again.

“Team meetings were never more than five minutes. Bob Paisley knew he had the best players around, so he just made sure we were all at it, every time we went out to play. And the way they did that - him and Ronnie Moran and Joe Fagan - was that they gave you a feeling that you were never as good as the previous players who were there. Obviously, with hindsight - and history proves it - we were the best team they ever had. But they always kept your feet on the ground.

“I was captain of the club and captain of Scotland, and I remember I was tying my boots one Saturday, about ten to three, and I was looking at half a dozen guys with their suits on - this was in the days of two subs - and everyone of them had played international football in midweek, whether for Ireland, Wales, Scotland or England. The two subs had also won caps in midweek. And I thought, fuck me, I know that if I don’t perform today - and again next week - one of them will be sitting here. That was what Liverpool had above everybody else: the best group of players. Stars would go there and were not guaranteed a first team place. The management always said things like, ‘if you’re still here next year.’ And they had a history of doing that: you’re time is up, you’re gone.”

For Souness that still remains the key to success: having top players in your side who will always be willing to give it their best. But does he think that, in the modern game, the distractions of vastly increased fame and money have diminished players’ hunger for success? “I think for the real top men, no. The real top men don’t need to be told anything. They don’t need to be told how to look after themselves or how to train properly or what their attitude should be on match day. At Newcastle, Alan Shearer, you didn’t have to say anything to him. You didn’t have to say anything to Scott Parker. Shay Given, the same. It’s there. What can I say to them? If I say to them, make sure you’re bang at it today, they’ll look at me like I have two heads. It’s in them. And nobody ever had to say it to me.”

Souness doesn’t think the game has improved, from when he and Liverpool were in their prime, although he admits better diet has helped make for fitter players. “Your body is a machine. “Put the best gear into the machine and it’s going to pay dividends.”

So, yes, the game has changed but most of the differences are cosmetic, he feels. In essence, it’s still about best players being able to impose their will on the opposition, whatever it takes.

“I think Man United had this with Roy Keane and Arsenal had it with Vieira,” he reflects. “All the top teams must be able to do it. How do you want it today - do you want to go to war with us or do you want a game of football? You want a war for 90 minutes you can have a war for 90 minutes. Change your mind and want to play football - we can do that too. Now it only needs one catalyst. Man United haven’t got that now. Arsenal haven’t got it. That one person who does that, there’s a few lesser lights who’ll go ‘I’m with him’.

“They’ll tuck in behind Keane or they’ll tuck in behind Vieira. And then they all grow in stature because they’re all in it together. But those players are few and far between.”

Even as I ask the question, I know the answer: and were you the top man at Liverpool? “Yeah, I was.”

“Great times, the best times,” is how Souness sums up his playing career at Anfield. Unfortunately, there was to be much less happy second act when he went back as manager in 1991.

In the intervening years he’d extended his playing career with Sampdoria in Italy, an eye-opening experience which sowed the seeds of new ideas he would bring into his first management job at Glasgow Rangers, where he lead the club to three titles and once again showed his single-mindedness by breaking the sectarian ban to sign Mo Johnston.

But the return to Liverpool, as successor to Kenny Dalglish, was a tale of under-achievement - and worse.

“It was a difficult period post-Hillsborough,” he says. “We managed to win an FA Cup but it wasn’t a happy time for me. The hardest thing was I couldn’t deal with players not having the same love for the club as me, even though I’d left it seven years before. I’d left after we’d just won the treble of European Cup, League, and League Cup and we’d had a really strong dressing room. I went back to a dressing room that was fragmented with every man for himself and I ended up falling out with players because they didn’t share the same passion I had for Liverpool.”

And what of his own part in their downfall? “Certainly, I was too hard on the players. As well as being a self-confident person when it comes to football I’d also be my own biggest critic.”

He admits too that the selling of Steve Staunton was a mistake.

“Steve was a top-class player and the only reason I let him go from Liverpool was because they had just introduced the law whereby Irish players were now foreigners - which only lasted for a year - but it meant we kept David Burrowes who was an English lad and let Steve go. A mistake. He was a far better player, no comparison.”

And what does he make of Staunton’s appointment as Ireland manager? “He’s been around the block, gets on well with players. He’s worked with good managers - Jack Charlton and Ron Atkinson - so I’m sure he’s picked up all that stuff. He’ll do it his way. The players will like him, ‘cos he’s likeable man, he’s got credibility. And if he’s honest and straightforward, which I’m sure he is, he’s got a great chance.”

But selling ‘Stan’ was just about the least of the manager’s problems at Liverpool. Even as he was leading the team out for the ‘92 Cup Final, Souness was still recovering from triple-bypass heart surgery and, when a picture of him in hospital celebrating the team’s semi-final win appeared in The Sun on the anniversary of Hillsborough, all hell broke loose. No matter that the photo had originally been scheduled for publication on an earlier date; the controversy which engulfed Souness because of the city’s hostile attitude to newspaper - a consequence of its shameful coverage of the Hillsborough disaster - piled the pressure on one of Liverpool’s erstwhile favourite sons.

“My relations with the club, the fans and the city were damaged for ever,” he admits. “But I’ve always apologised profusely and, whenever it’s mentioned, tried to hold my hands up and say that it was in total innocence.

“And in the end - in 1994 - I wasn’t sacked there, I resigned. Talk about setbacks, that was the biggest setback I’ve had in my life. I just felt I was never going to get it back to the way it had been. I didn’t feel I could take them to where I wanted the club to be.”

While at Liverpool, he also had to find a personal battle, the most challenging of his life, when major heart surgery - and complications arising from it - shook him to the core.

“It did take a good year to get over that operation, both physically and mentally,” he says. “At 38, you think you’re the dog’s bollocks, you think you’re still 18, and then all of a sudden, this happens to you and for the very first time in your life you feel vulnerable. That was an enormous test.

“I can remember lying in the intensive care unit the second time. I was in there on my own, not sleeping, tubes everywhere, with an oxygen mask on, and you’re thinking: this must be how people die. And, for the very first and only time in my life, I was frightened.

“And then, after I’d recovered from the operation, there were times when I would be sitting on my own and I’d suddenly find myself crying, for no reason. I spoke to doctors afterwards and they said that’s common-place, but no-one had told me. It took me a year to come to terms with it: you’re cleaning your teeth and there’s that scar on your chest. Now I don’t notice it.”

But I guess you don’t feel so invincible now, I suggest.

“No”, he says, then adds with a grin, “but it’s coming back.”

After Liverpool, Souness hit the road, managing at Galatasaray, Southampton, Torino, Benfica and Blackburn, before quitting the Ewood Road club to join Newcastle United in September, 2004. And that’s where he was until February 2 of this year, when he was sacked following a 3-0 defeat by Manchester City which left the Magpies struggling in 15th place in the Premiership.

“I don’t feel I did much wrong there,” he suggests. “I think Lady Luck was not kind to me at all. With Michael Owen in your team you can win games.

“Given the nature of that job, I knew that day at Tottenham, when Michael got that injury, I knew then it was always a matter of time for me.”

He sounds remarkably philosophical about it all.

“Well, this is something you think about when you’re signing the contract on day one - I’m going to get sacked. Very few managers don’t get the sack.”

Does it hurt? Yes. But I look at Newcastle now and they will be fine, they’ve got some good players. If they’d been fit we could have had a good season. And then if, at the end of the season, they sign another three or four good players, they could be challenging for a Champions’ League place next year.”

And no prizes for guessing what Souness hopes to be doing by then.

“I started managing at 33 and I’ll be 53 in May, so I’ve been doing it 20 years. There are people who’ve not lasted two minutes and I’ve lasted 20 years. And I’ve not finished yet.”