Souness’s idea of history is a work of fiction

MANAGERS like to brag about the players who narrowly slipped through their fingers.

You tend to hear these tales whenever they have a book to sell and Graeme Souness (right) is at it now, recalling how he passed on the chance to sign Peter Schmeichel for Liverpool before he joined Manchester United’s glory train.

“I was trying to ease out Bruce Grobbelaar and that was proving a hassle, plus I had just signed David James, so I thought I could do without a rookie keeper,” is his way of saying how different history might have been had he kept James in the reserves and gone for the Dane.

The problem is Schmeichel joined United in August 1991, 11 months before Souness signed David James. So the story is wrong. When it comes to the tiresome tales about “the ones who got away”, it’s a given that history is being rewritten. I’m just not sure, Graeme, if it’s the best selling point for a book of non-fiction.