Mark Whelan was the best footballer I’ve ever been on a pitch with. As in playing alongside. I’ve stood on a pitch alongside better - there’s the time Chelsea attacked the old East Stand and had us all over the pitch and I hid behind Robbo somewhere near the touchline for one. But as in actually played with, Mark was the best. At primary school, he could do things on the football pitch that I’ve never matched. Left-footed, but with two good feet, strong, skilful, awesome in the air, different class. He had good genes though, did Mark. His Dad had been a decent player and his uncle was a certain William Augustine Whelan, better known as Billy or Liam. Liam Whelan played 98 times for Manchester United, scoring 52. He was top scorer in the 1956-7 season, but found himself getting fewer starts as a precocious young talent, Bobby Charlton, came onto the scene. Liam travelled to Belgrade for the fateful 1958 European Cup tie v Red Star, but did not play. A nervous flyer, he is reported to have said on the runway, “This may be death, but I’m ready.” Liam perished at the age of only twenty-two.
(Liam Whelan)
Mark’s family were, unsurprisingly, a big United family. We played football on the little park on Boundary Road, West Bridgford most Sundays. One such Sunday, calling round, I was asked to come in and just wait in the room a while as the family and their guests finished Sunday dinner. Those guests being Sir Matt Busby and Bobby Charlton, the latter finding a few minutes to have a brief kick around with us on the little lay-by outside the Whelan family home.
Anyway, Mark was good, but not good enough. The family moved away and I last saw Mark at the 1980 Leagle Cup final v Wolves. He was living down south and had got in touch, asking if I could get him a ticket. Mark was sixteen, an apprentice at Chelsea, but it wasn’t going well. He seemed thoroughly disenchanted with the game. Said the best footballer I’d ever played alongside: “There’s twelve year olds better than me. They take the piss.”
All of which comes to mind when I occasionally ponder just how good the footballers we watch really are. This happens more often for me of late, possibly as I get older and reflect on whether I’ve made the most of my talents and also as I watch more lower-tier football, thinking “could I have done that?” Answer: Talent-wise, I was nowhere near. Decent school team player perhaps, a middling winger with Clifton All Whites for a while, then a career which peaked in the Ealing and District Sunday League Division Three playing the against likes of FC Martini (essentially eleven Italian waiters - quite good, lots of dramatic, stereotypical arm waving and comments about your mother) and a variety of mostly Irish teams in and around Willesden and Kilburn. We had a bit of a cup run once until coming up against some proper players in a Division One side, who mullered us about 11-0 and were really frighteningly strong. Nope, I’ve not wasted any major football talent. Golf and athletics maybe, but not football.
Watching in the lower-tiers, I realise now I’d not survive. A good example being yesterday at Gedling Miners Welfare v Graham Street Prims (Spondon, Derby, just for the record) in the United Counties League. Tier six and way, way better than anything I could have ever been. Better control, fitter, stronger. Just better. And for perspective, let’s move up a further notch and take a local side like Carlton Town, who would be so much stronger again or maybe Northern Premier League Buxton who I’ve recently seen demolish top NCEL side Sherwood Colliery in the FA Cup. These are good players.
A few years back, I was fortunate enough to know a lovely young feller, Matt Yates, who happened to be the son of Notts legend Dean. Matt was/is a terrific sporting talent. A brilliant cricketer, knocking out huge scores in adult cricket even when at primary school. He was an even better goalkeeper. He signed pro with Derby and made appearances for the under 23s and one first team appearance in that FA Cup tie when the first team were ravaged by Covid. He played regularly for England under 19s. The problem for young talents like Matt, is that it’s no good just being the best in your area over your age group. Matt had two be the best keeper Derby could find in a say ten year age range. It’s not going to get you a first team appearance being the best under 19. You’ve got to be the best in any of the club’s teams, younger and older. You’ve got to be better than any developing talents they can find, not only in this country but abroad. The days of just being the best in your locality or even in this country are long gone. There could be a lad in say Sierra Leone better than you, could basically prevent you having a career. Matt, for all his fantastic talent, is now playing at Gainsborough Trinity. Which brings us back to… how good do you have to be?
All of which means full-time professionals must be amazingly good. Which makes the online warriors slating them as rubbish just wrong. Lewis Grabban has come in for some social media stick this weekend. Top scorer, in the darkest days one of very few bright hopes and often the only player looking like he put any effort in, Grabban made a poor decision yesterday at Reading. At the end of a run, he cut in and elected to shoot when there were two players in better positions. A goal might have killed the game off and Forest brought home two additional points. Look at the photo. The options are clear. But Grabban didn’t have the photo. He was at the end of a lung-bursting run which most of us could a) never have made and b) would probably have killed us. He had a split second and his striker’s instinct. He chose to shoot. Cue the keyboard coaches. Apparently, to quote just three of many, Grabban is now “shit”, “wank” and “rubbish”. If he’d passed and one of the incoming players had blazed it over or that defender on the line had blocked their attempt, he’d have been accused of bottling it.
(Pass, Lewis!)
… Which he clearly isn’t. No player at this level is going to be rubbish. They might not be as good as fans would hope for, but they aren’t going to be rubbish. And some are going to be better or worse than others. But they’ll really not be rubbish. Grabban is a good player. His record proves it. He’s not Mo Salah. If he was, he’d not be playing for Forest. It is fair to expect well paid footballers to be competent, but there’s a matter of degree. I have no idea what Grabban gets paid. Let’s say £25k a week, which is an astonishing amount by the rules of the normal world. Obscene. But… Let’s pick a random page in the Football Leaks book. There we go, p 291, Alexis Sanchez. Contract at United, which was due to run to June 2023 until he moved on, worth a basic £391,346 a week. That’s salary plus ‘marketing rights’. However, we can add to that a loyalty bonus of £1.12 million a year, just for not asking for a transfer and buggering off. Appearance money of £75,000 per match. A £2 million bonus for getting 40 goals and/or assists. £500k for a Premier league win and £1 Million for winning the Champions league. That’s possible earnings of £25 million a year for one player, pretty close to Forest’s entire income for a whole year.
In the world outside the Premier League, we get what we pay for and that isn’t going to be as brilliant. We need to be kinder in our assessment and a little bit more aware and grown-up. Yes, I’d love to earn what a player like Grabban does, but I can’t expect him to be world-class. Any professional footballer has a talent unimaginable to 99.999% of us.
And not just talent, but bravery usually and being prepared to take a kicking. I can‘t find the source now, but clearly remember Cloughie defending young Nigel from some abuse back in the day. I think Nigel was sometimes derided as a daddy’s boy when things weren’t going so well. Clearly nonsense. Brian’s polnt being that the critics would not have the bravery or moral courage to be anywhere near the penalty area in a professional football match. And it’s a good point, one again perhaps seen more clearly in the lower tiers, where you are closer to the play and see just how brutal it can be. From our seats, perhaps even more than from the terraces, and certainly on TV or in a simulation game, it’s all so sanitised. We all seem to think we could do it.
And now I’ve got to here, I’ve lost track of the point I was trying to make, so we’ll move on…
Wrapping up with the United theme, I think. It would be remiss, having shared the Sir Matt and Bobby tale, not to regale readers with my only other encounter with a United legend. The attentive amongst regular readers might note the similarity with last week’s Jimmy Sirrel story, inasmuch as I seem to have a special talent of my own for unwittingly upsetting football legends and being put in my place by them! For unwittingly, perhaps just read ’drunkenly’.
The scene, the Windsor Castle pub in Marylebone. Famously just over the road from a bistro George Best owned. Zagger and Welsh Carl, he of the near-death experience in Genoa (see previous Des Walker themed blog) rather the worse for wear after a hard day in the office. Carl points out George at the bar. George has a bottle of red cradled in one arm and a lovely young lady in the other. Carl also observes that George has reportedly had a balloon fitted in his stomach which contains an alcohol-activated poison, the idea presumably being that this stops George from drinking. This could make George very poorly or kill him. Not on my watch! Without regard for personal safety or dignity, I leapt from the table, towards George and his attractive companion. “George. Mate. Stop.“ Stony silence. Tumbleweed. “Don’t do it. Don’t kill yourself.” Nothing. “Errr… you’re the best!” I exclaimed, confident that George would never have heard such a witty comment before. If he found it funny, he contained himself well. A Sirrel-esque look up and down. Slowly. “Son. Your concern is very touching.” This was going well. I nodded at Carl. “Now if you could just be so kind as to fuck off…” Which was me told, wasn’t it?
And then of course, there is today’s big story of the departure of Ole Gunnar Solskjaer from United. A run of poor results doing for him. Now personally, I have nothing against the man, but would appreciate him being off the scene perhaps for a while. Mere mention still brings me out in cold sweats concerning the Forest-United horror-show in the 1998-99 season. February 6th 1999. Prince was partying, United were in the ascendancy and Forest were on the slide. On the ropes really, even that early in the year. Joe Kinnear (I always still want to call him Roy) had been sacked and someone thought it a good idea to employ Big Ron. What could possibly go wrong? Answer, plenty.
United, with a rampant David Beckham pulling all the strings, were just too good. Or rather, even more too-good than everyone else in the league that season, because, actually, they were all too good for us.
The start was frenetic. The very definition of, in fact. United went ahead when Dwight Yorke converted a brilliant cross from Paul Scholes in the second minute of the fixture before Alan ‘Tank’ Rogers levelled the score on six minutes. Andy Cole put the visiting side back in the driving seat in the next minute. Things calmed down and Forest held on to half time at only 2-1 down. There was hope. Briefly. Following the restart, further goals from Cole and York put United 4-1 up. Game over. On 70 minutes, Sir Alex Ferguson decided to take pity on Forest and give Yorke a rest. He reputedly sent on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with the instructions to do nothing fancy other than to just pass it around and quieten things down a bit. Ole took these instructions as stated for about ten minutes and then clearly though “fuck it.” Neville Neville’s older son put Solskjaer in to tuck the ball away from close range. Eight minutes later, Solskjaer registered his second goal after receiving the ball from Beckham, making it 6-1 to the visitors. It would have been kind to stop there, but nope… United were having fun and Solskjaer volleyed home a Jesper Blomqvist cross for his hat-trick. Please make it stop, we cried. But no, Solskjaer hit his fourth goal of the day in stoppage time when he side-footed the ball past Dave Beasant to make the final score 8-1.
The Baby Faced Assassin had not just killed the game off, he’d gone all ritualistic serial-killer on us, neatly dismembered the corpse and buried it under the patio. “Pixie Faced Fucker”, as the BBM groaned aloud.
(Big Dave might as well have just stayed sat down after this one…)
Big Ron earned no friends in the Zagger household with his jolly-jovial take on it. “A nine goal thriller,” he laughed. Twat. He also later joked that Mrs Big Ron woke him up from his slumbers the next day, saying “Hurry up Ron, it’s nine.” “Solskjaer again?” Comedy gold.
There’s not much I can think of to be grateful to Leicester for - crisps and Showaddywayy aside - but it was a small mercy when their 9-0 win at Southampton some twenty years later took the record for the biggest Premier league away win from United, or, more saliently, took the worst home defeat record from us.
Forest were, funnily enough, relegated eleven points from safety, with a shocking -34 goal difference. We truly were crap. But, we assumed we’d bounce back as we had before. 22 years on and still counting.
Forest Team: Dave Beasant, Jon-Olav Hjelde, Craig Armstrong, John Harkes, Alan Rogers, Scot Gemmill, Andy Johnson, Carlton Palmer, Steve Stone, Jean Claude Darcheville, Pierre van Hooijdonk. Substitutes: Mark Crossley, Jesper Mattsson, Chris Bart-Williams, Hugo Porfírio, Dougie Freedman.
United Team: Peter Schmeichel, Gary Neville, Ronny Johnsen, Jaap Stam, Phil Neville, David Beckham, Jesper Blomqvist, Roy Keane, Andy Cole, Paul Scholes, Dwight Yorke. Substitutes: Raimond van der Gouw, David May, John Curtis, Nicky Butt, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer.
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