HATCHET JOB
Megson: I’m blacklisted
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GARY MEGSON believes that he is being poisoned out of a return to top-level management.
The West Brom caretaker boss faces Tottenham today but knows he could be out of work in an instant.
Megson has got the managerial buzz back but fears he is the victim of a smear campaign.
He said: “I’ve agreed on three jobs and the day after in two instances, and three days later in another instance, it was withdrawn. Make of that what you will.”
The 58-year-old, who has nearly 700 games as a boss under his belt, is not after the West Brom job, with Alan Pardew and Sam Allardyce now looking to be in a two-way fight to succeed Tony Pulis.
But he harbours a deep suspicion somebody’s got it in for him.
Asked if he thought someone was putting poison down for him, Megson said: “You could say that, I couldn’t possibly comment.
“But you see who gets the job instead and you think, ‘His record is not as good’. There’s a lot of good managers not working, myself included. “Once you’ve been manager for a while people have preconceptions of you that in my case aren’t particularly how I am. “I’ve taken over clubs that in the main have been in a mess and managed to turn every one round – apart from Nottingham Forest.” Megson insisted he is not staking his claim for the West Brom job after being called back to The Hawthorns, where he was previously in charge, by his big mate Pulis in the summer. He added: “I don’t want to sound arrogant but in terms of finance I don’t particularly need to work.
“I would like to work but I just stopped doing it and thought, ‘If anybody wants me they know where I am’.”
With Pardew (top left) and Allardyce (below left) scrapping it out, Megson is concentrating on trying to get a result at Wembley.
He added: “You just have to do your job properly while you’re doing it, knowing that in an hour’s time it could be, ‘Thanks, that’s it’.
“All I can do is deal with the Tottenham game. We’ve got some good players who haven’t been getting the results.
“The buzz of being back in the dressing room is there, the banter – it’s the stuff that you miss.”