Born to Manage by Terry Venables

Author:Terry Venables [Venables, Terry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781471129940
Publisher: Simon & Schuster UK

In quick succession we had gone from being relegation candidates to promotion challengers and FA Cup finalists. I felt we could approach the new season as real promotion contenders. I did not think we needed to buy new players, though we offloaded Ian Gillard, who had been in our Cup final side, Ernie Howe and Burridge.

My main focus was on the team, but I had other duties as MD of the club, which included listening to the moans of the opposition about the plastic turf we were forcing them to play on. Initially, the Football League were surprisingly understanding, mainly, I think, because there was nothing much they could do about our pitch and the ones at Luton, Oldham and Preston North End. The one decision they made was to ask clubs planning to install artificial pitches to advise them first. Eventually, however, they changed their minds and banned them, though Preston used their artificial pitch well into the 1990s. I noted a couple of years ago that one or two smaller clubs were hoping to bring back the synthetic surface to make their little stadiums multi-purpose to generate more cash. What we had instigated still made sense more than 20 years later. The FA have confirmed they will change their legislation to allow the use of synthetic pitches.

Other sports were beginning to use our facilities. It was good for hockey. We had a rugby union mini-tournament and two non-League football sides played matches on the same day when the weather had closed down their own grounds. These were all useful extras, but we believed the real money would come from hosting boxing matches, pop and other music concerts. It would take time for all that to be fully operational, especially as we needed a roof over the ground to maximise the opportunity, and that would cost Jim plenty.

He was up for it, and determined to see it through. His instincts told him a covered stadium with state-of-the-art facilities and with a 20,000 capacity in the west of London had to be successful. The Albert Hall is London’s grand concert hall, but it has limited capacity. Our long-term plan allowed us to cater in one night for an audience that would take the Albert Hall three nights or more to accommodate.

But for all these extra opportunities, I knew that my main focus was to produce a team capable of being successful in the top flight. Nothing would improve the outlook more than that. We could have done without having to face Kevin Keegan, making his debut for Newcastle United, in our opening game of the 1982-83 season. St James’ Park was heaving with Geordie optimism – which has never seemed to be in short supply – that day and they won. Not the best start to our promotion campaign.

We then went on a run, winning three and drawing one of our next four matches. We were top of the league well before Christmas and were never lower than second for the rest of the season, with some marvellous winning sequences.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.