Everton are facing a dogfight but I don’t think they can scrap
PETER REID ON KOEMAN’S WOES ... AND TRYING TO SIGN ZLATAN
IT WAS never going to be just coffee and croissants followed by a few minutes of frothy platitudes.
From the moment Peter Reid bounds into the lounge of one of Liverpool’s plush riverfront hotels, immaculately dressed and looking as lean as he did during his playing days, it is clear he is ready to talk.
‘Come on then,’ he says, rubbing his hands together. ‘where are we starting? Everton?’
The current travails of the club with whom he conquered England and Europe during a glorious spell in the mid-1980s are deeply concerning for someone who regarded losing in a Royal Blue shirt as a personal affront.
‘This Everton team is in a scrap,’ he says. ‘The team I was in could scrap. I am not sure this team can. Has this team got the character? Has this team got enough to scrap? Forget about all the nice stuff at the moment, it is a scrap.
‘There is a lack of confidence and it is showing on the park because if we are not careful we are in a dogfight and I am not sure, looking at them at the moment, that they are ready for that.’
Everton’s laboured, miserable start to the campaign is worrying him. It has also infuriated him that majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri and manager Ronald Koeman have attempted to dilute expectations. The failure to replace Romelu Lukaku, meanwhile, has left him bewildered.
‘Everyone knew Lukaku was going,’ he says. ‘so go and get one. and when the owner comes out and says lower expectations? No, you are wrong mate. as an Everton fan, expectations are higher than that, so I disagree.’
He could spend the morning dissecting what is wrong at Goodison Park but there is too much to Reid, personally and professionally, to just focus on Everton and the results that have put them at the wrong end of the table.
we have met to discuss his autobiography, Cheer Up Peter
Reid, which charts his journey from the backstreets of Huyton to the top of football as a player and manager, and the stories he tells in the hour that follows could fill another book.
How about this one — the tale of sunderland’s ambitious attempt to sign Zlatan Ibrahimovic, not once but twice. It sounds implausible, but towards the end of his time as manager there, it wasn’t impossible, as he explains.
‘I liked his physique and I liked his feet,’ Reid says wistfully about the one that got away.
‘I tried. I tried. when he was at Malmo I tried to get him but he went to ajax. we were at Roker Park, but no chance. I didn’t have that clout to attract him.
‘when he was at ajax, we’d moved to the stadium of Light so I went over, had a meeting. I thought I had a chance, but no. we offered £6million which was decent dough, but they wanted more. I saw him walk past and he smiled. But no conversation.’
Reid loved his seven-year stint with sunderland and regards it as the happiest spell of a managerial career that started with Manchester City and took him to Leeds, Coventry and Plymouth, not to mention periods in Thailand and India too.
He turned 61 in June and family life has been even more important over the past 12 months after his daughter Louise was diagnosed with cervical cancer. The emotional prologue she wrote shines a light on Reid as the doting father and grandfather.
But the desire to have one more crack at management has not left him. He assists Paul Cook, wigan’s manager, but the twinkle in his eye as he holds court shows how the fire still burns inside him.
‘I’d give it a go,’ he says. ‘To be fair I’m enjoying what I’m doing working with Cookie. I’m 61, I know a lot. But I do champion the cause of young coaches as well. Yeah, I’d like another go.
‘I enjoyed Manchester City as a playermanager (1990-1993). It couldn’t be done nowadays. Impossible. Then it was brilliant. Now it would be too intense.
‘ The media for a start. The amount of media before games is massive. Then you have the other part of dealing with football agents, chief executives, dear me. You don’t get time to put your boots on. The game has changed, it is less physical, it is quicker, the pitches are great, balls, the kits...’
Do not confuse the last statement with an old pro yearning for how it used to be in his day.
There is no bitterness towards modern football, this is just a man walking down memory lane warming with memories.
He was, after all, a brilliant footballer. In 1985, after being named PFA Player of the Year and helping Everton win the league title and European Cup-winners’ Cup, only Diego Maradona, Preben Elkjaer and Michel Platini finished ahead of him in World Soccer magazine’s Player of the Year award.
That period in the mid-1980s was a nirvana for Merseyside football, the clashes between Liverpool and Everton steeped in history and it is here, appropriately, that Reid sees fit to tell one more story about how it used to be.
‘we are playing a derby game,’ he says. ‘Gary Gillespie, alan Hansen. They are all playing. The ball goes out to (John) Barnsey. we haven’t had a kick for 20 minutes, so I smash him, it was just on the halfway line.
‘Then I hear, “Eh! You blue-nosed c***, you big-eared b*****d!”. This fella is giving it to me. so I looked in the crowd and see who it is. so I went, “Uncle arthur! sit down!” On my life! I had got him players’ lounge tickets!’ He is now roaring with laughter.
‘afterwards, he said to me, “Don’t tell your mum!” He was the nicest man in the world and he was giving it to me. But that’s Liverpool. That’s the beauty. That is a story, that is a derby game. we were two top teams. That is what football is about.’