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Kraft durch Freude
Article in today's Mail.
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He was born in Sheffield and raised in Sheffield, he supported Sheffield United as a boy and then managed Sheffield United for eight years, so when it came time to title his autobiography, Neil Warnock understandably chose: Made In Sheffield.
Sitting in a swanky Italian restaurant in Knightsbridge on Tuesday, Warnock said: 'I wish I had come to London sooner; London has almost been like a drug, I honestly feel at times that I am on a high.'
It was a statement Warnock once would not have imagined making and given that the front page of Wednesday's Northern Echo raged 'Robbed: Our cuts pay for rich South', the North-South divide in England retains its punch. Yet here was an identifiably northern man singing a hymn to London.
And it was sincere. Warnock was 62 a fortnight ago but he looks and sounds much younger. He is refreshed and relaxed. The sourness at Sheffield United's controversial 2007 relegation has drained from him, it seems, and even being in charge of a club as unpredictable as Queens Park Rangers - Warnock became their ninth manager in four years when he joined in March - has not made him twitchy.
But the fact that QPR are four points clear at the top of the Championship, with a game in hand, and have just lost their first League game of 20 this season is the main reason why Warnock laughed and smiled as he picked the bones out of his fish - and his career.
Asked about the billionaire hierarchy at Loftus Road, which has got through Paul Hart, Jim Magilton, Paulo Sousa, Iain Dowie and Luigi De Canio in the past two years alone, Warnock replied: 'I know it sounds silly but I'm not that bothered now.
'I get on with the job and if they sacked me, I'd get another job tomorrow when you look at the managers around. I wouldn't worry about being out of work like I did when I was younger.'
Bernie Ecclestone confirmed on Thursday that he has taken his Rangers shareholding to 'about 62 per cent' by buying out Flavio Briatore, and said: 'I am here mainly to support what Neil is doing.'
Warnock expects no alteration to his authority. He deals mostly with Lakshmi Mittal's son-in-law Amit Bhatia. Mittal owns 20 per cent.
'When you have gone 19 games without defeat, there is not a lot they can say really,' said Warnock.
'I work for Amit Bhatia, who I trust, and the others are fans really. Flavio is a big fan really. It is just that he is portrayed in the wrong way. Like the thing he said about always having dreamed of having (Marcello) Lippi as manager when we get to the Premier League. I know he wouldn't have meant it like that. I suppose when you are younger, you would react to that. I don't regard that as interference.'
Thirty years on from Warnock's first job at Gainsborough Trinity, where there was an attempt at meddling, Warnock added: 'I look at Harry Redknapp. Harry's never managed better, that's why he'll be the only man for the England job. I feel I've never managed better in my life. I couldn't do it at my age if I wasn't. I have to curb the hours, I do get tired here and there, which is natural. But I know football is a drug.'
Drug. That was the term Warnock used regarding London, too. Via Sheffield United's Tevez-related relegation and then Crystal Palace's administration, Warnock has ended up at QPR and in south London life. Bursting with enthusiasm for the capital, Warnock told a tale from his regular thinking-time bike rides around Richmond Park.
'I go off the beaten track on a two-hour bike ride,' he said. 'I stop after about an hour and have a glass of water and feed the swans on the pond. I have five or 10 minutes rest there. That's going down this track where the horses go and that's where I came across him, this stag. I stopped. He didn't move. I thought, "He's got to move, hasn't he, a bloody deer like that?".'
'I started talking to him about this game. I said, "Bloody hell, we've scored some good goals". I shouted to him, "We've had a bloody great time, what about you?".'
'His head's gone up and he was looking at me and you could see him thinking, "What the **** are you talking about?". I got too carried away in the end, went too close and he backed away and disappeared into the bracken. You couldn't tell he was there any more. He must have thought I was a right nutter.'
A picture of the stag is on Warnock's phone, proudly displayed. He does not 'give a damn if people think I'm loopy', he is too busy enjoying himself. Running through his book was a seam of bitterness at injustices real and perceived that began with his mother's early death when he was 13.
Warnock still cannot eat after 10am on matchday and still feels physically sick before each kick-off, but he also spoke of being 'more relaxed' within his own skin.
'I wish I had come to London sooner. I thought Sheffield United was my dream job because they were my club. I supported them as a boy. But Crystal Palace opened my eyes. I owe everything to Crystal Palace fans. Absolutely. I came down to London on the back of a relegation and they were absolutely out of this world and they welcomed me and my family.'
Tributes to Covent Garden, London cab drivers and the theatre follow. And to Loftus Road. There Warnock presides over 'the best team I have ever managed in my career, for talent', a side in which Adel Taarabt glides like the ghost of Stan Bowles and personifies another change in Warnock.
Taarabt is the 21-year-old Moroccan midfielder signed from Tottenham last summer. Warnock went to Marrakesh to clinch the deal but Taarabt did not show up at the hotel he had recommended. Warnock stayed five days. Now he has made Taarabt captain of a QPR side containing Shaun Derry, Clint Hill and others.
Warnock informed those types why he was doing so. He also gave them another specific instruction on Taarabt - he is not to be passed to in his own half.
'I still try to put in the values we had at Sheffield United, the hardworking values, which you've got to have,' said Warnock.
'But the individuals here? I would never have wanted a Taarabt in the past. Pull your bloody hair out.
'I see now, as I go higher, you have to have ability to win you games, you've got to win games. You can work hard all day, but you need the spark, something that is different.
'Taarabt would win games in any league in the world, but he will also lose you games if you don't have a plan on how to use him. He has no responsibility whatsoever. The players aren't allowed to pass to him in our half.
'I told them that. I decided pre-season. He's liable to do something we haven't thought about.'
The aim this season is promotion. Then Warnock plans for QPR to stay up, something Sheffield United's 38 points did not ensure.
To him it is clearly unfinished business. A man who splits opinion, he remains motivated by the doubts, and more, of others, but there is a new element at QPR.
'It is partly excitement for me now with your Ecclestones. I know once you whet people's appetite like that, they will support you more. So if we could get up, he would help me to make my job easier to stay up, which is what I want to do before I pack in.'
After last Friday's first League defeat of the season against Watford, it is the first step back on that road on Saturday, back up north, to Leeds. Twenty years ago, Ken Bates offered Warnock the manager's job at Chelsea when he was chairman. Warnock didn't feel ready for London then. But he is now and he said he will be ready for Elland Road, where Bates is now in the chair.
'I love the stadium. Bloody hell, there'll be 30,000 there for the game. They'll all be on your back, hostile. It's just how I think football should be.'
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