The Damned Utd Read Online Free

like you,’ he smiles, ‘I don’t like to think of you in trouble.’
    I finish my brandy. I ask him, ‘You want a lift tomorrow morning?’
    ‘So I can drive you back?’
    I pick my lad up off my knee. I put him down. I wink at Jimmy –
    ‘Best not keep them waiting any longer,’ I tell them both.
    * * *
    Welcome to the edge of the world. To Hartlepools –
    You can drop off the edge of the world at Hartlepools. On the beach at Seaton Carew. Bottom of the entire Football League and up for re-election again –
    Many men will never know. Many men will never understand –
    Heaven is here. Here where the Victoria Ground was cursed by a Zeppelin bomb, here where the roofs now leak and there are buckets in the boardroom to catch the rain, where the stand is made of wood and the terraces are covered in chicken feathers, where the chairman is a five-foot millionaire who made his money as a credit draper and who bugs your office and your house, and where the players are adulterers, drunks, thieves and gamblers who play in their street socks. This is heaven here –
    For you and Pete, together again and working again –
    The youngest manager in the Football League –
    You on £40 a week, Pete on £24 –
    The bucket-and-sponge man –
    ‘ We’re in the shit good and proper, make no mistake,’ says Pete. ‘We’ll be asking for re-election at the end of the season. Bound to finish bottom. Lower if we could. Something’s got to be done about this lot and done fucking quick .’
    But it’s you who paints the stand. Who unblocks the drains. You who cuts the grass. Who empties the rainwater from the buckets. You who goes round the colliery clubs. Who sits in committee rooms and stands on stages, asking for donations. You who borrows hand- me- down training kits from Sheffield Wednesday. Whose wife does the typing. You who takes your Public Service Vehicle Licence so you can drive the team bus. Who organizes the cars to Barnsley when you can’t afford a coach. You who buys the team fish and chips. Who goes without wages for two months –
    The newspapers, the photographers and the television cameras, all there to witness and record the whole bloody show. The pens, the tape recorders and the microphones, all there for that big bloody open mouth of yours :
    ‘ Age does not count. It’s what you know about football that matters. I know I am better than the five hundred-odd managers who have been sacked since the war. If they had known anything about the game, they wouldn’t have lost their jobs. In this business you’ve got to be a dictator or you’ve no chance, because there is only one way out for a small club: good results and then more good results –
    ‘ How hard it is to get them results, few people will ever know .’
    Should I talk the way you want me to talk?
    The bloody microphones and that bloody mouth of yours –
    Say the things you want to hear?
    Infecting the press. Inspiring the players. Infuriating the chairman –
    This is the start of it all. This is where it all begins –
    That new accent. That new drawl –
    Hartlepools, 1965 .
    * * *
    Pre-season. Fun and games. The 1974–75 season begins for real in sixteen days. Before that Leeds United, the League Champions, will play in three friendly matches and in the Charity Shield at Wembley against Liverpool, the FA Cup holders. The first friendly is at Huddersfield Town on Saturday, the day after tomorrow –
    ‘Enough pissing around,’ I tell them. ‘Let’s have a few games. Seven-a-sides.’
    Hands on their hips, the first team shift their weight from foot to foot.
    ‘Bloody get on with it,’ I tell them. ‘Come on, get fucking moving.’
    The team turn to look at Syd Owen, stood at the back with his hands on his hips –
    Syd shrugs. Syd spits. Syd says, ‘Hope no one gets hurt.’
    ‘Thank you, Sydney,’ I shout back. ‘Now come on! Two teams.’
    They take their hands off their hips but they still don’t move.
    ‘For fuck’s sake,’