Warnock article

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Kenilworth said:
Not from Knotty Ash, then?
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Nah mate, the only "Diddy man" I did was when we used to slide on flattened snow and ice in Winter, in the 70's, and "bobbed down" as you slid, and we called it a Diddy Man.

Nigel Poncenby Smallpiece was always my fave as a kid.
 
More than a few successful managers are narcissistic, Mourinho, for example. Doesn’t bother me, it’s what they get out of the team on a Saturday afternoon. Takes all sorts.
 
Fanny magnet said:
Yeah you've done well
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Not as well as when Adkins was our manager, when I managed a full season and my only contact with the great man was through the brilliant work of WHF and his amazing bullet pointed translations.

I should coco said:
Same here.

So when I'm lying in my bed, thoughts running through my head and I feel the love is dead....
I'm loving angels instead
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I did hear Angels all the way through when going to the Winding Wheel in Chessie circa 2003 (week of the Forest play off game) and calling in a boozer after the gig to find a stripper doing extraordinary things with a wine bottle to the warblings of the Robster. Never bothered with Chardonnay since . . .
 
Grecian2000 said:
Not as well as when Adkins was our manager, when I managed a full season and my only contact with the great man was through the brilliant work of WHF and his amazing bullet pointed translations.



I did hear Angels all the way through when going to the Winding Wheel in Chessie circa 2003 (week of the Forest play off game) and calling in a boozer after the gig to find a stripper doing extraordinary things with a wine bottle to the warblings of the Robster. Never bothered with Chardonnay since . . .
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Chardonnay was a bit of a dog then?
 
Really like all this bit. Obviously slightly rosy about large parts of his time here, but in terms of ideals, what's not to like? He's pretty much described Wilder's United (minus the footbaths & boys in shorts).

“There is not a bad egg in the camp. It is not dissimilar to when I was at Sheffield United – we are all together. I said to the players before the season, ‘Listen lads, I’m after my eighth promotion – and the other seven, the squads still have reunions’.

“All of them – Huddersfield, Notts County, Scarborough, Plymouth. I told them they would have a reunion, too, because they are the same type of group.”

That strong, close-knit unity has been a consistent part of nearly four decades of success, although often long balls and uncompromising physicality come to mind when one discusses ‘The Warnock Way’.

This one stereotype more than anything wipes the smile away from the face of a man who is generally more than happy to laugh at his own peculiar idiosyncrasies.

“We have got to the top of the table but we’ve entertained as well,” Warnock insisted. “Blackie is a big one for stats, and we have 15.6 shots per game, more than any other team in the Championship; the most shots on target; the most shots from inside the box. I used to love it after games at Sheffield United. Derek the kit man would bring me a cup of tea and I would sit back in a little slipper bath and think about all those young kids like I used to be, with short trousers, going home with their dads talking about ‘that’ shot, ‘that’ tackle, ‘that’ goal, ‘that’ header. Excited, and not being able to wait for the next game.

“That is how I want my football. I am going to enjoy my team as much as I can and hopefully the fans will too.”
 
Magic Hat said:
Give the guy some credit. Cardiff are top of the league and Colin is going for a record 8 promotions so i think the press will have asked for the interview not him. All you Warnock haters need to think about the seasons before and after his tenure. As for you Tyler you are an angry little man aren,t you, seek treatment before it eats you away son .
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I must admit, I don’t like the guy because he’s a self-obsessed arrogant so and so who was embarrassing at times and a poor ambassador for our football club. But, I respect his ability to motivate average players to do well. And he’s still doing it.
 
Sean Thornton said:
More detail please.
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It's absolutely scurrilous.

When I was working in Solihull it was strongly rumoured that Lee Hendrie was giving Steve Bruce's daughter a seeing to. A possible coincidence that both Hendrie and Bruce were seen with facial and hand injuries was naturally turned into a midnight wrestling bout on the Bruce family lawn.

Hendrie has strongly denied ever being involved with Bruce's daughter. But both Blues and Villa fans point out that as he was married at the time he would say that.

It's the Birmingham equivalent of "who pinned Vinnie to the wall?"

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/football/2005/apr/09/newsstory.sport3
 



I feel about Warnock the same I do about Geoff Boycott. I admire his achievements. For long periods, when he's not acting the cunt, I kind of find myself warming to him. Then he acts the cunt again.
 
Wow at this thread. Yes Warnock is cringe at times. But my god he gave us (me, anyway) some very good years supporting United. If you want to express anger/hatred towards ex-United managers there's a awful lot more places to start than Neil Warnock.

Another thing; the stuff he spouts at new clubs about the fans etc. it's all part of his style of getting togetherness at the club and an early way of getting the fans on side. And it works - they fall for it. But because he's a Blade, we, as Blades fans, notice it. It riles us.
 
Don't mind saying that I enjoyed the Warnock years, a ragamuffin team getting into the Premiership. However, as daft as it sounds, I found last season, with CW and AK taking us out of League One, 100 points, Billy Sharp being the country's top scorer, to be my favourite season of all time. Maybe just because it is closer in memory, who knows?

CW and AK have transformed/galvanised this club in dramatic style. We fear no one, and another promotion is a credible goal.
 
PeteBlade said:
This thread has reminded me, did Warnock's autobiography ever get delivered to you, pommpey ?
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Yes, as a matter of fact:

The following extracts are from his book. His words, not mine. And as they are yet unchallenged, by anyone at the club, they should be taken on face value - i.e. uncorroborated

(with acknowledgements to the author and publishers, and the administrators of this site)

On Portsmouth (page 282)

“Our start to the season turned a few heads. At the end of November, Portsmouth asked if they could speak to me. They had just parted company with their French manager, Alan Perrin, after a fairly disastrous spell in charge. I talked to Peter Storrie, their Chief Executive, and Milan Mandaric, the chairman. I met Milan somewhere near Oxford, halfway between Sheffield and Portsmouth, I suppose, and I was very impressed with what they had to say. I enjoyed talking to Milan. I liked him.

They offered me a three-year contract on top money in writing. It threw me into a dilemma. We were going well at the club but we had got beaten 4-2 at Leicester on 26 November and it should have been more than 4-2. I looked around the squad and I thought, I’m doing miracles here. That was the strength of the squad on a bad day. It was a reality check for me.

I was ill that week so I sent someone down on my behalf to speak to them about terms. I wanted it all sorting out that week because we were playing Sheffield Wednesday at Bramall Lane on 3 December and I couldn’t go into a match that important with the Portsmouth issue hanging over me. One way or another, I wanted it resolved before the Sheffield derby.

I told Kevin McCabe about Portsmouth’s offer.

‘You’ve got to stick it through here,’ he said. ‘This is your club. We are up there now. You have got to see it through.’

I showed him the fax with my offer from Portsmouth. It was more than twice what I was on at Bramall Lane.

‘I’ll sort you out,’ Kevin said. ‘If you get us up, I’ll make sure you are not far off that next season.’

Some of the lads asked me to stay but, to be fair to Craig Short, he remembered what had happened at Notts County when I had got the offer from Chelsea and the lads had begged me to stay. He had had that on his conscience for a while. He told me he thought I ought to go to Portsmouth.

But things didn’t go smoothly. George Best, who was a close friend of Milan Mandaric, had died on 25 November and his funeral had been arranged for the same day as the Sheffield derby.

Milan, quite understandably, was preoccupied with that. I spoke to him on the Wednesday and he said he was going to Best’s funeral on the Saturday and he would leave the announcement of my arrival until the Monday.

‘That’s no good to me Milan,’ I said. ‘Not with Sheffield Wednesday at home on Saturday. I couldn’t do that to the players.’

‘So what shall we do?’ Milan said.

‘If you want to leave it until Monday, I think we should call it a day,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to leave my team in the lurch and I don’t want to leave Kevin McCabe in limbo.’

I would have been able to take charge of the game against Wednesday but I don’t want to do that if I knew I was going somewhere else. That’s just not me. My head wouldn’t have been right. On top of that, the kids had found out what was going on and Amy (his and his wife’s then-very young daughter) was getting morally blackmailed in the playground with people telling her there was no way her dad could leave. People were ringing us, people were walking up the school driveway with the kids and talking to me. It was emotionally draining for all of us. Sharon (his wife) said she would support me but she made one very good point.

‘You’ve always said you’d like to come back to Bramall Lane with William (their youngest son) to watch games when you’re not manager anymore,’ she said. ‘But of you left the club when they were top of the table and they didn’t go up, you wouldn’t be able to go back because they’d always blame you.’

I phoned Milan.

‘I don’t hold it against you or anything, Milan,’ I said, ‘but I’d rather call it a day. We’ve got a big match on Saturday and I want to get my head round that. It’s your club and you can do exactly what you want.’

When I had finished speaking to Mandaric, I called Kevin McCabe. I told him I was going to stay put. He told me I wouldn’t regret it.

And I didn’t regret it. I resented it when Kevin McCabe didn’t keep his word and I wished I’d had the money that Portsmouth had been offering me but I didn’t regret it. How could I regret immersing myself in the battle to get my club, my home town club, promoted to the Premiership against all the odds with one of our fiercest rivals, Leeds United, chasing us all the way.”

My observations on this.
  1. There’s no denying Warnock was tempted by Milandric’s offer. Who wouldn’t be with over twice the wages you are being offered. It deserved at least to be listened to.
  2. Warnock definitely did have a rush of shit to the brain over the offer. Perhaps Mandaric’s dicking about saved him from a critical decision. Looking at Pompey at that time, it was always a team destined to end in tears. One might assume Warnock knew this.
  3. Warnock cites the Wednesday match. Despite all the turmoil going on, we still won that game with a goal from Alan Quinn.
  4. Warnock showed McCabe the deal. One would also assume this was to say to McCabe, ‘look at what Portsmouth are offering.’
  5. McCabe told Warnock he’d up his deal the following season and said he wouldn’t regret staying. Nothing about further contract conditions, mind.
  6. Warnock didn’t regret staying and says that McCabe didn’t keep his word.
  7. Warnock says that his family had a lot to do with the final decision being made.
On the offered contract and his relationship with McCabe

“A couple of days after the end of our promotion season, I got a letter from Kevin McCabe congratulating me on my achievement. It said he was taking up the option in my existing contract which meant he offered me 20 per cent more than I'd been on in the Championship. That was a nominal figure that had been in my contract but I'd assumed that if I got the club up to the Premiership, the club would pay me Premiership wages on a new deal. I was wrong about that. The letter said I'd be able to earn a lot more with bonuses if I kept the club up but, even with that bonus, I'd only just about reach what I had thought should be my basic wage. As an example of their attitude towards me, I was still on the same bonus for winning a game as I had been in 1999.

Kevin knew I was in a weak position and he took advantage of that. He knew I didn't want to leave. He knew I was desperate to manage the club I had supported as a boy in the Premiership. I worked so hard to get them up that I didn’t want to walk away once I got them there. He was right about all that but I felt I was being shown l lack of respect I for what I had done. He was abusing my love for the club. I was only basing my pay requests on what Paul Jewell, Steve Coppell, Alan Curbishley and Iain Dowie had been earning. I knew what wages they were on and I wasn't even seeking parity with them. What I was asking for would still have left me the lowest paid manager in the Premiership but Kevin wouldn’t entertain it.

I wondered then whether Kevin wanted me to leave. I asked if l could have more on my basic. I said he could take it off my, bonus for staying up. I got another letter from him. It said they had agreed to give me an increase and that they would take it off my bonus. I had hoped they might recognise that I was upset and reconsider their original offer. They didn't. They just tweaked it. They moved some numbers around. So now I was in a situation where I was on a smaller bonus for trying to keep the club up, than I had been for getting them promoted to the Premiership. It was small-time thinking from a chairman who said he wanted Sheffield United to be a big club. I'm sorry if it sounds spoilt, but I felt insulted. I thought it was disrespectful. It gnawed away at me. I knew a promise from Kevin had been broken. I felt betrayed.

I felt that if anyone else had done what I had done at Bramall Lane, they would have been able to write their own contract. If anyone else had done what I had done, they would have been treated like a king at the club. But the fact that I was a Sheffield United fan, which should have been in my favour, worked against me. I couldn’t get the respect that people like Paul Jewell and Aidy Boothroyd got for similar jobs at other clubs. So I went to see the, chairman and I told him how disappointed I was, especially after all the conversations we had had around the time of Portsmouth's offer.

'I should be on a lot more than what you've offered me,' I told him, 'but I'm not going to let it affect me now. I'm going to put it to bed, get on with the contract you have offered me. I will do my damnedest to keep us up and I don't want to talk about money again.'

And that was how it stayed for most of the Premiership season. I was only on a one-year contract again, which was hardly a statement of faith in my ability from the club. Then, in April, I got an offer of a new contract from Kevin. It was presented as it two-year contract on condition that Sheffield United were a Premiership club, and there was only six months' notice included in it. In football, that means it was a six-month contract. I don't know why he did that. If that was his idea of motivation, it flopped. It didn't motivate me. If anything, it demotivated me. Things hadn't been quite the same between us as they were in the early years. Kevin had moved abroad as a tax exile some time in our promotion season and I had less contact with him. He’d also been heavily involved with our Chinese connections which were taking up even more of his time. When he is away it is even harder for him to see what is going on and it’s amazing how many people tittle-tattle. You get a lot of gloom and doom merchants bending his ear. I felt he had listened to a lot of nobodies. I also blamed myself for not making more of an effort to make sure I contacted him. We drifted apart more than we should have done.

The way the new deal he offered me in April was constructed, we'd have to finish high up in the Premiership in 2007-08 for me to earn the money I should have been on two years ago. I know you can only spend so much. I’m certainly not complaining about my lot in life. I know I'm a fortunate man. But in any walk of life, you want to be paid what you are worth. You want to be paid the going rate.”

My observations:
  1. Is 20% commensurate with the offer from Portsmouth and McCabe’s promise to up his wages in order the following season? There was also the spike ‘if he kept the club up’, which was a statement of intent by McCabe.
  2. The initial contract was one year. As Warnock says, it is hardly a resounding statement of faith in his ability and the faffing about with bonuses to up the basic wage was somewhat insulting.
  3. In April comes the two-year contract offer, again ‘if he kept SUFC in the Premiership’. Prescient words, given what was to come.
On the last day

“I got back to my office and my best mate, Paul Evans, was waiting there for me. Sharon, Amy and William were there, too. Sharon had been crying and the kids knew why she was so upset. lt wasn’t just the football. Not just because of the result. Twenty minutes or so after the game had ended, Sharon and William were sitting in my office when the film actor, Sean Bean, who is a Sheffield United board director, burst in with his girlfriend. He was obviously the worse for wear. He wanted to know where I was. Sharon told him I was doing a press conference and I'd be back soon. So Sean Bean started swearing at her and my five-year-old son. 'It's your fucking husband that got us relegated,' he said, pointing at her. 'He's a fucking wanker'. That's Sean Bean, the tough guy actor. Some kind of tough guy, eh, reducing a five-year-old kid and his mum to tears. Kevin McCabe apologised to me when he learned what had happened and said he wouldn't tolerate that kind of behaviour. He would consider taking action regarding Sean's position as a director. Well, I won't hold my breath. I was livid to begin with. I wanted to go and find him but Paul told me not to waste my time with him. He might be a film star but he wasn't in my eyes that afternoon. At a board meeting once, he made a big show of how he wanted to make an important point about something he had spotted to improve the club's fortunes. We all waited expectantly. 'Do you think Captain Blade has served his purpose and should be removed?' he said as if he'd unearthed something vital. 'I think we should get rid of him.' That was it. That was all he wanted to talk about. The team mascot. The fluffy thing that stood on the touchline. Captain fucking Blade. That was the extent of his contribution. The next day, I flew to see Kevin McCabe in Brussels. I had a lot of text messages on my mobile from other managers. A lot were highly critical of Sir Alex. You'd be surprised at the identities of a couple of the senders. I spoke to Kevin and I thought we'd resolved everything amicably. Then a couple of days later, after we'd held a joint press conference to announce my departure from the club, I heard he'd done an interview on Radio Five Live. 'Neil Warnock is a great motivator,' he had said, 'but we can reflect now maybe he wasn't quite right for our Premiership ambitions. but he gave it his all.' I thought his words were a disgrace. I rang him up straight away.

We've been friends for twenty years and friends don't say things like that. It was almost as if he was saying he hoped I didn't get another job. It was disrespectful and patronising. It was typical of Chairman's Syndrome. They always, always, have to have the last word. Anyway, I asked him what he had been thinking when he'd said what he'd said. He sounded flustered. He said he'd been misquoted and he apologised to me. I told him I'd checked it and he hadn't been misquoted. He still insisted his remarks had been taken out of context. He said he'd write to every paper that had reported his remarks and ask them to put the record straight and he would phone the radio and TV stations, too. 'Don't bother,' I said.”

Final observation

Whilst the whole book is a bid 'Partridge' and 'needless to say, I had the last laugh', there still remains a telling vacuum of information from the club's side about the details of Warnock's departure. I didn't then, and still don't believe it was an agreed resignation, more over a 'if we drop, you're gone' arrangement, and conveniently by 'not renewing his contract' which to anyone is a sacking. The tale above does say some things which are contentious and it seems pledges were overlooked. It spells out NWs over-reach with regard his position as a PL manager and the recognition but ... and it's a telling 'but', it says a lot for the upper levels who in hindsight, could have done better with a bloke who did give the club and its supporters some fucking fantastic times. He wanted recognition for that, and whether you like him or not, it was the best period to be a Unitedite since Bassett. Up to Wilder, we have not even scratched the surface of that muted glory, which must have given NW some schadenfreude, which is embarrassing for KM and the club. The final bit about Sean Bean has also not been challenged, so one must assume this is a credible account until told otherwise. Either way, it's a fucking disgrace.

I've no doubt this is gonna open up a new phalanx of opinion-formers. Can I request people base their comments on the content above and leave the 'Warnock/McCabe is a cunt' stuff for elsewhere, please? If you want more detail, buy the book. It's on Amazon.

pommpey
 
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pommpey said:
Yes, as a matter of fact:

The following extracts are from his book. His words, not mine. And as they are yet unchallenged, by anyone at the club, they should be taken on face value - i.e. uncorroborated

(with acknowledgements to the author and publishers, and the administrators of this site)

On Portsmouth (page 282)

“Our start to the season turned a few heads. At the end of November, Portsmouth asked if they could speak to me. They had just parted company with their French manager, Alan Perrin, after a fairly disastrous spell in charge. I talked to Peter Storrie, their Chief Executive, and Milan Mandaric, the chairman. I met Milan somewhere near Oxford, halfway between Sheffield and Portsmouth, I suppose, and I was very impressed with what they had to say. I enjoyed talking to Milan. I liked him.

They offered me a three-year contract on top money in writing. It threw me into a dilemma. We were going well at the club but we had got beaten 4-2 at Leicester on 26 November and it should have been more than 4-2. I looked around the squad and I thought, I’m doing miracles here. That was the strength of the squad on a bad day. It was a reality check for me.

I was ill that week so I sent someone down on my behalf to speak to them about terms. I wanted it all sorting out that week because we were playing Sheffield Wednesday at Bramall Lane on 3 December and I couldn’t go into a match that important with the Portsmouth issue hanging over me. One way or another, I wanted it resolved before the Sheffield derby.

I told Kevin McCabe about Portsmouth’s offer.

‘You’ve got to stick it through here,’ he said. ‘This is your club. We are up there now. You have got to see it through.’

I showed him the fax with my offer from Portsmouth. It was more than twice what I was on at Bramall Lane.

‘I’ll sort you out,’ Kevin said. ‘If you get us up, I’ll make sure you are not far off that next season.’

Some of the lads asked me to stay but, to be fair to Craig Short, he remembered what had happened at Notts County when I had got the offer from Chelsea and the lads had begged me to stay. He had had that on his conscience for a while. He told me he thought I ought to go to Portsmouth.

But things didn’t go smoothly. George Best, who was a close friend of Milan Mandaric, had died on 25 November and his funeral had been arranged for the same day as the Sheffield derby.

Milan, quite understandably, was preoccupied with that. I spoke to him on the Wednesday and he said he was going to Best’s funeral on the Saturday and he would leave the announcement of my arrival until the Monday.

‘That’s no good to me Milan,’ I said. ‘Not with Sheffield Wednesday at home on Saturday. I couldn’t do that to the players.’

‘So what shall we do?’ Milan said.

‘If you want to leave it until Monday, I think we should call it a day,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to leave my team in the lurch and I don’t want to leave Kevin McCabe in limbo.’

I would have been able to take charge of the game against Wednesday but I don’t want to do that if I knew I was going somewhere else. That’s just not me. My head wouldn’t have been right. On top of that, the kids had found out what was going on and Amy (his and his wife’s then-very young daughter) was getting morally blackmailed in the playground with people telling her there was no way her dad could leave. People were ringing us, people were walking up the school driveway with the kids and talking to me. It was emotionally draining for all of us. Sharon (his wife) said she would support me but she made one very good point.

‘You’ve always said you’d like to come back to Bramall Lane with William (their youngest son) to watch games when you’re not manager anymore,’ she said. ‘But of you left the club when they were top of the table and they didn’t go up, you wouldn’t be able to go back because they’d always blame you.’

I phoned Milan.

‘I don’t hold it against you or anything, Milan,’ I said, ‘but I’d rather call it a day. We’ve got a big match on Saturday and I want to get my head round that. It’s your club and you can do exactly what you want.’

When I had finished speaking to Mandaric, I called Kevin McCabe. I told him I was going to stay put. He told me I wouldn’t regret it.

And I didn’t regret it. I resented it when Kevin McCabe didn’t keep his word and I wished I’d had the money that Portsmouth had been offering me but I didn’t regret it. How could I regret immersing myself in the battle to get my club, my home town club, promoted to the Premiership against all the odds with one of our fiercest rivals, Leeds United, chasing us all the way.”

My observations on this.
  1. There’s no denying Warnock was tempted by Milandric’s offer. Who wouldn’t be with over twice the wages you are being offered. It deserved at least to be listened to.
  2. Warnock definitely did have a rush of shit to the brain over the offer. Perhaps Mandaric’s dicking about saved him from a critical decision. Looking at Pompey at that time, it was always a team destined to end in tears. One might assume Warnock knew this.
  3. Warnock cites the Wednesday match. Despite all the turmoil going on, we still won that game with a goal from Alan Quinn.
  4. Warnock showed McCabe the deal. One would also assume this was to say to McCabe, ‘look at what Portsmouth are offering.’
  5. McCabe told Warnock he’d up his deal the following season and said he wouldn’t regret staying. Nothing about further contract conditions, mind.
  6. Warnock didn’t regret staying and says that McCabe didn’t keep his word.
  7. Warnock says that his family had a lot to do with the final decision being made.
On the offered contract and his relationship with McCabe

“A couple of days after the end of our promotion season, I got a letter from Kevin McCabe congratulating me on my achievement. It said he was taking up the option in my existing contract which meant he offered me 20 per cent more than I'd been on in the Championship. That was a nominal figure that had been in my contract but I'd assumed that if I got the club up to the Premiership, the club would pay me Premiership wages on a new deal. I was wrong about that. The letter said I'd be able to earn a lot more with bonuses if I kept the club up but, even with that bonus, I'd only just about reach what I had thought should be my basic wage. As an example of their attitude towards me, I was still on the same bonus for winning a game as I had been in 1999.

Kevin knew I was in a weak position and he took advantage of that. He knew I didn't want to leave. He knew I was desperate to manage the club I had supported as a boy in the Premiership. I worked so hard to get them up that I didn’t want to walk away once I got them there. He was right about all that but I felt I was being shown l lack of respect I for what I had done. He was abusing my love for the club. I was only basing my pay requests on what Paul Jewell, Steve Coppell, Alan Curbishley and Iain Dowie had been earning. I knew what wages they were on and I wasn't even seeking parity with them. What I was asking for would still have left me the lowest paid manager in the Premiership but Kevin wouldn’t entertain it.

I wondered then whether Kevin wanted me to leave. I asked if l could have more on my basic. I said he could take it off my, bonus for staying up. I got another letter from him. It said they had agreed to give me an increase and that they would take it off my bonus. I had hoped they might recognise that I was upset and reconsider their original offer. They didn't. They just tweaked it. They moved some numbers around. So now I was in a situation where I was on a smaller bonus for trying to keep the club up, than I had been for getting them promoted to the Premiership. It was small-time thinking from a chairman who said he wanted Sheffield United to be a big club. I'm sorry if it sounds spoilt, but I felt insulted. I thought it was disrespectful. It gnawed away at me. I knew a promise from Kevin had been broken. I felt betrayed.

I felt that if anyone else had done what I had done at Bramall Lane, they would have been able to write their own contract. If anyone else had done what I had done, they would have been treated like a king at the club. But the fact that I was a Sheffield United fan, which should have been in my favour, worked against me. I couldn’t get the respect that people like Paul Jewell and Aidy Boothroyd got for similar jobs at other clubs. So I went to see the, chairman and I told him how disappointed I was, especially after all the conversations we had had around the time of Portsmouth's offer.

'I should be on a lot more than what you've offered me,' I told him, 'but I'm not going to let it affect me now. I'm going to put it to bed, get on with the contract you have offered me. I will do my damnedest to keep us up and I don't want to talk about money again.'

And that was how it stayed for most of the Premiership season. I was only on a one-year contract again, which was hardly a statement of faith in my ability from the club. Then, in April, I got an offer of a new contract from Kevin. It was presented as it two-year contract on condition that Sheffield United were a Premiership club, and there was only six months' notice included in it. In football, that means it was a six-month contract. I don't know why he did that. If that was his idea of motivation, it flopped. It didn't motivate me. If anything, it demotivated me. Things hadn't been quite the same between us as they were in the early years. Kevin had moved abroad as a tax exile some time in our promotion season and I had less contact with him. He’d also been heavily involved with our Chinese connections which were taking up even more of his time. When he is away it is even harder for him to see what is going on and it’s amazing how many people tittle-tattle. You get a lot of gloom and doom merchants bending his ear. I felt he had listened to a lot of nobodies. I also blamed myself for not making more of an effort to make sure I contacted him. We drifted apart more than we should have done.

The way the new deal he offered me in April was constructed, we'd have to finish high up in the Premiership in 2007-08 for me to earn the money I should have been on two years ago. I know you can only spend so much. I’m certainly not complaining about my lot in life. I know I'm a fortunate man. But in any walk of life, you want to be paid what you are worth. You want to be paid the going rate.”

My observations:
  1. Is 20% commensurate with the offer from Portsmouth and McCabe’s promise to up his wages in order the following season? There was also the spike ‘if he kept the club up’, which was a statement of intent by McCabe.
  2. The initial contract was one year. As Warnock says, it is hardly a resounding statement of faith in his ability and the faffing about with bonuses to up the basic wage was somewhat insulting.
  3. In April comes the two-year contract offer, again ‘if he kept SUFC in the Premiership’. Prescient words, given what was to come.
On the last day

“I got back to my office and my best mate, Paul Evans, was waiting there for me. Sharon, Amy and William were there, too. Sharon had been crying and the kids knew why she was so upset. lt wasn’t just the football. Not just because of the result. Twenty minutes or so after the game had ended, Sharon and William were sitting in my office when the film actor, Sean Bean, who is a Sheffield United board director, burst in with his girlfriend. He was obviously the worse for wear. He wanted to know where I was. Sharon told him I was doing a press conference and I'd be back soon. So Sean Bean started swearing at her and my five-year-old son. 'It's your fucking husband that got us relegated,' he said, pointing at her. 'He's a fucking wanker'. That's Sean Bean, the tough guy actor. Some kind of tough guy, eh, reducing a five-year-old kid and his mum to tears. Kevin McCabe apologised to me when he learned what had happened and said he wouldn't tolerate that kind of behaviour. He would consider taking action regarding Sean's position as a director. Well, I won't hold my breath. I was livid to begin with. I wanted to go and find him but Paul told me not to waste my time with him. He might be a film star but he wasn't in my eyes that afternoon. At a board meeting once, he made a big show of how he wanted to make an important point about something he had spotted to improve the club's fortunes. We all waited expectantly. 'Do you think Captain Blade has served his purpose and should be removed?' he said as if he'd unearthed something vital. 'I think we should get rid of him.' That was it. That was all he wanted to talk about. The team mascot. The fluffy thing that stood on the touchline. Captain fucking Blade. That was the extent of his contribution. The next day, I flew to see Kevin McCabe in Brussels. I had a lot of text messages on my mobile from other managers. A lot were highly critical of Sir Alex. You'd be surprised at the identities of a couple of the senders. I spoke to Kevin and I thought we'd resolved everything amicably. Then a couple of days later, after we'd held a joint press conference to announce my departure from the club, I heard he'd done an interview on Radio Five Live. 'Neil Warnock is a great motivator,' he had said, 'but we can reflect now maybe he wasn't quite right for our Premiership ambitions. but he gave it his all.' I thought his words were a disgrace. I rang him up straight away.

We've been friends for twenty years and friends don't say things like that. It was almost as if he was saying he hoped I didn't get another job. It was disrespectful and patronising. It was typical of Chairman's Syndrome. They always, always, have to have the last word. Anyway, I asked him what he had been thinking when he'd said what he'd said. He sounded flustered. He said he'd been misquoted and he apologised to me. I told him I'd checked it and he hadn't been misquoted. He still insisted his remarks had been taken out of context. He said he'd write to every paper that had reported his remarks and ask them to put the record straight and he would phone the radio and TV stations, too. 'Don't bother,' I said.”

Final observation

Whilst the whole book is a bid 'Partridge' and 'needless to say, I had the last laugh', there still remains a telling vacuum of information from the club's side about the details of Warnock's departure. I didn't then, and still don't believe it was an agreed resignation, more over a 'if we drop, you're gone' arrangement, and conveniently by 'not renewing his contract' which to anyone is a sacking. The tale above does say some things which are contentious and it seems pledges were overlooked. It spells out NWs over-reach with regard his position as a PL manager and the recognition but ... and it's a telling 'but', it says a lot for the upper levels who in hindsight, could have done better with a bloke who did give the club and its supporters some fucking fantastic times. He wanted recognition for that, and whether you like him or not, it was the best period to be a Unitedite since Bassett. Up to Wilder, we have not even scratched the surface of that muted glory, which must have given NW some schadenfreude, which is embarrassing for KM and the club. The final bit about Sean Bean has also not been challenged, so one must assume this is a credible account until told otherwise. Either way, it's a fucking disgrace.

I've no doubt this is gonna open up a new phalanx of opinion-formers. Can I request people base their comments on the content above and leave the 'Warnock/McCabe is a cunt' stuff for elsewhere, please? If you want more detail, buy the book. It's on Amazon.

pommpey
Click to expand...

You made false claims that Neil Warnock was sacked.

I told you this was clearly false, I provided evidence in the form of various newspaper articles that backed this up. And words from Warnock himself.

You disagree on the basis that "you thought" you'd read in his book that he was sacked.

You've now got the book.
It doesn't say that (if it had, no doubt I'd have heard about it before now).

You were wrong.

Nothing to see here, move along.
 
If your contract runs out and it's not renewed you aren't sacked.

No one uses the term when a players contract ends.

I've also been in Warnocks company when he tells a slightly different story about Beans swearing etc and who was there at the time. Oddly enough pretty much the same version as Sean Bean has told. Which includes the bit about NW wanting to go looking for him.
 
PeteBlade said:
You made false claims that Neil Warnock was sacked.

I told you this was clearly false, I provided evidence in the form of various newspaper articles that backed this up. And words from Warnock himself.
Click to expand...

Newspaper articles, over Warnock's own account? Okay, if that's what you want to believe. I disagree.

You disagree on the basis that "you thought" you'd read in his book that he was sacked.
Click to expand...

And there's nothing there which disproves it either. If he didn't keep United up, his contract wouldn't be renewed. To anyone, that's a sacking.

You've now got the book.
It doesn't say that (if it had, no doubt I'd have heard about it before now).
Click to expand...

Well, you hadn't read the book anyway, which is his own personal account. I take it you'd have 'heard' from the newspapers? Again, you fail to answer anything about why Warnock's account is still unchallenged.

You were wrong.
Click to expand...

Not really. If you want to maintain he resigned, fill your boots. I think you are wrong.

pommpey
 
pommpey said:
Newspaper articles, over Warnock's own account? Okay, if that's what you want to believe. I disagree.



And there's nothing there which disproves it either. If he didn't keep United up, his contract wouldn't be renewed. To anyone, that's a sacking.



Well, you hadn't read the book anyway, which is his own personal account. I take it you'd have 'heard' from the newspapers? Again, you fail to answer anything about why Warnock's account is still unchallenged.



Not really. If you want to maintain he resigned, fill your boots. I think you are wrong.

pommpey
Click to expand...

:D. I didn't think you'd be capable of admitting you were wrong, even though you said you would do if the book didn't say he was sacked. Which it doesn't.

Newspaper articles AND interviews with Warnock himself, but whatever.

But YOU think differently. So ok. :tumbleweed:
 
PeteBlade said:
:D. I didn't think you'd be capable of admitting you were wrong, even though you said you would do if the book didn't say he was sacked. Which it doesn't.
Click to expand...

I've provided the account, as I said I would. Nowhere in the book does Warnock say his intent was to resign. This is regardless of 'press interviews'. Would you not think he'd square that in his account?
But YOU think differently. So ok. :tumbleweed:
Click to expand...

Well, we both think differently.

pommpey
 



pommpey said:
I've provided the account, as I said I would. Nowhere in the book does Warnock say his intent was to resign. This is regardless of 'press interviews'. Would you not think he'd square that in his account?


Well, we both think differently.

pommpey
Click to expand...

You've provided it only because I prompted you.
You said it would prove he was sacked. It doesn't.

You're the only one who thinks he was. Not backed up by any evidence.
 
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