Inside Football

retired_jd159 · 12-09-2004, 12:00 AM

MF OK so you're a surprise choice as manager, you sell the club's talisman within a couple of weeks of taking the job - what you really needed then was a cracking start to the season...

RB (laughs) Absolutely Matt. That was what I really wanted. Didn't get it of course. The first game was away at Man City and to be fair they thumped us. It was 4-0 and we were lucky to get nil. We followed that up with a home game against Blackburn and that was no better. 4-1 that time and the crowd....well they were not on my back exactly but you know when you are in the dugout you can sense the mood and I knew they might turn on me if we didnt turn things around. And of course I knew I had no chance of bringing in any new players so I had to get the squad playing out of their skins. I also knew I was going to have to take more risks.

retired_jgirl87 · 12-09-2004, 03:55 AM

Are you famous or something!!

Seriously, a very good start and a different approach to a story if the "interview" style is going to continue. :thup:

BarryLFC · 12-09-2004, 09:29 PM

good luck, sometimes it's hard to live up to legend...God knows I've tried!

retired_jd159 · 12-09-2004, 09:41 PM

MF What risks do you mean?

RB Well with Smitty gone, I had to rely on Viduka for goals. And I have to say, I thought that was a gamble. I have never known a player as lazy in all my time in the game. And I don't mind saying that publicly because I told him the same thing to his face dozens of times before I realised I was wasting my breath and sold him. But I'm getting ahead of myself there - that was the following year.

It was a big worry because the defence was pretty weak and I thought I was going to have to go down the Kevin Keegan route - letting in 4 is fine if you can score 5. But I needed someone else up front and that was the other risk. I decided to promote Simon Johnson from the reserves. He'd been on loan at Hull the season before and hardly set the world on fire - something like 2 goals in 12 starts, but I thought there was something there. He had the talent but needed the confidence and I thought putting him in the team might do that. I know a lot of people are going to be thinking it was more luck than judgement with Simon but I know the truth. I did see talent there. Mind you I had no one else so I'd have had to pick him even if he'd been useless.

MF He was far from useless as we all know now. Let's just digress a little away from the story of that first season. Tell me what made Simon such a good player.

RB Well he was hardly the orthodox centre forward was he! A gust of wind could have blown him away, but he compensated for that with fantastic technique, incredible pace and a real knack for drifting into space. And given a glimpse of the goal he'd score. And in a way that made the partnership with Viduka work quite well. Mark was no great runner, but he held the ball pretty well and he wasn't selfish. Both of them ended the season with about 12 or 15 goals each. Not sensational but given that they were playing in a struggling team, it wasn't bad.

MF The fans took to him though?

RB Oh yes, he was Player of the Year probably 3 or 4 seasons in a row. And after that first season his scoring really was unstoppable. In the next five seasons he must have scored 120, 130 goals for the club. I felt like he was my boy - he's a great lad is Simon, and when he got called up for England, I'm not ashamed to say I was quite emotional about it. And he had a great debut too. Granted it was only Moldova but coming on as a sub, scoring one and setting up another is not a bad debut.

MF So what happened? He was looking like a sensation in his mid 20s, but then it just seemed to fizzle out.....

RB Well I think thats a bit of a harsh judgement Matt. You can actually pinpoint two things that contributed to the decline in his fortunes. 2009 I think it was, yes it must have been. We'd made a reasonable start the season and things were going to plan for Simon - he'd scored 5 or 6 goals by the end of September but then he did his groin in training. He'd had a few niggles with it before and the specialist felt that it needed surgery this time. That was the end of the season for him.

The following season he came back into the side of course but it was a different team. Davide Moscardelli had moved on and so had Lionel morgan. For probably 3 seasons those 3 players had been dynamite together. Lionel was a fantastic old fashioned left winger and he seemed to be able to put a cross onto Davide's head from anywhere. And Davide - well what a classy striker he was, but really unselfish too. A bit like Thierry Henry really - he scored plenty but the number of assists he made fo Simon was amazing. So anyway, Simons coming back from a big injury, and the two players he had an almost psychic connection with have gone. That and I think a little bit of wariness on his part about doing the groin again meant he just didn't do it the next season. Well I say that. People forget he scored 17 goals in Europe that season and just remember that he couldn't buy a goal in the league.

And then of course towards the end of that season I left. Ruud Gullitt took ober at Leeds and he just didn't fancy Simon as a striker. Played him out on the right a few times but really he's been a squad player ever since. So that was the end of his England career too. It'd be easy to say that he didn't fulfil his promise but his record for Leeds is something special I think.

Raptor · 12-09-2004, 11:24 PM

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><font size="-1">quote:</font><HR>Originally posted by HD:
good luck, sometimes it's hard to live up to legend...God knows I've tried!

<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

What's this legend you're trying to live up to?