Keeping it REAL
The Class of ’92 are f inding life at non-league Salford as tough, tiring and thrilling as the Premier League
IT is a cold, spring night in the heart of Liverpool at a football ground bordering Huyton, where Steven Gerrard grew up, so Paul Scholes is in unfamiliar territory. But he is reluctant to leave. Most of the rest of his party have gone but he lingers as the final minutes are played out, with the score 0-0.
It has been a frustrating night for Salford City, the club Scholes co-owns with former Manchester United team-mates Ryan Giggs, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Nicky Butt. A draw here at Prescot Cables means automatic promotion will become only an outside possibility.
Salford are attacking the far end of the ground and the view is obscured but, with 90 seconds remaining, the ball breaks for substitute Gareth Seddon about 10 yards out with only the goalkeeper to beat. And even from Scholes’s long-distance view the ripple of net is immediately visible as the ball beats the keeper and Seddon turns away to celebrate.
Scholes, too, punches the air, his face beaming as it once did when he scored a last-minute goal against Manchester City in April 2010.
‘We had to win,’ he says, a look of real relief in his eyes. This must compare to watching United in a title run-in. ‘It’s the same,’ he replies nonplussed, before reconsidering. ‘Tonight it has been worse.’
Salford City are the team in the Evo-Stik League First Division North (four tiers below the Football League) who have happened upon five of the biggest names in English football as owners.
The former United players, otherwise known as the Class of ’92, are products of the Premier League era which has propelled the game into a celebrity culture. Here, though, they seem in their element and none more so than Scholes. Earlier Phil Neville was with him. ‘This is going to ruin my week, this is,’ he mutters as another chance is wasted.
This is near the base of the football pyramid: clearly the players are a lot better than Sunday League footballers but the culture is a long way from Old Trafford.
Scholes sits in one corner with a friend, while Phil Neville, across the table with his father, Neville, informs him that they will be pairing up with One Direction at a forthcoming ProAm Golf Day so Scholes might need a stylist to keep up appearances. Scholes pulls a face while the rest of the group laughs at his expense.
Meanwhile, the Prescot committee members quietly discuss a promising first half. The Salford owners are scarcely given a second glance, though there is the occasional photo to pose for. Although Salford are top of the league and still battling Darlington for automatic matic promotion with a week eek to go, the season has s been anything but a smooth ride.
The original manager Phil Power was sacked in January and left complaining that the decision was delivered by chair- man Karen Baird, with th the owners failing to contact him. Both Gary and Phil Neville say they did contact him to talk through their reasons but the offer was refused.
‘That was a low moment and not something we want to do often because there are good people at this level and you don’t want them to lose their job,’ said Phil Neville. ‘This season has been a massive learning curve. The biggest lesson we have learnt is we have to take a step away from the playing and coaching side. Let the managers manage and players play. At this level, they’re the experts, not us.’
The club are now managed by the duo of Anthony Johnson and Bernard Morley, who won promotion from this league last season with Ramsbottom United. When Power was in charge, Scholes and Phil Nevi Neville attended training and helpedh out with session sions but, under the new m managers, that has c come to an end. ‘We had become the meddling owners, everything we didn’t want to be,’ said Phil N Neville.
Gary Neville takes u up the story. ‘Phil and Pa Paul became quite invo involved in the first three or fourfou months and we found thattha what might have been seen as a positive didn’t work out that way,’ he said. ‘The players would hear different voices — one week they would be there, the next they’re not there. With coaching, it’s about consistency and repetition. What was seen as being assistance for the previous manager and creating a buzz just didn’t work.
‘The sadness of it all is that we did lose a manager earlier in the season and it was not something that we wanted to do. It was not something that we felt good about.’
There have been other adjustments to the non-League level.
‘You never win away games at night in midweek,’ said Phil Neville. ‘Players are tired after a day’s work; often they’ve rushed to the ground sometimes without eating properly; naturally they fade in the last 20 minutes.’
Captain Christopher Lynch works a night shift loading gas bottles, physically demanding work, and usually has to come off after 70 minutes in evening games to go to work. The owners have tried to address the fatigue problem for this match. The team met in a hotel for salad, pasta, chicken and salmon a few hours before the match; the last-minute winner a reward for that approach.
‘At the start of the season we had a perfect vision that we’ll have the manager now for the next 20 years and we’ll have a set of young players and they’ll see us all the way to the Football League,’ said Phil Neville.
‘But as time has gone on, we’ve learnt from speaking to teams that have come through the divisions, like Fleetwood, Fylde and AFC Wimbledon, that you have to be ruthless.’
If there has been a loss of innocence, there is at least a better understanding of an owner’s lot.
‘You can understand how, when emotions are running high, owners can make bad emotional decisions like bringing players in on big money and putting yourself under financial pressure,’ said Phil Neville. ‘I can see how it runs away with you. When you lose a couple of games you think: “Oh, we need a new player. Let’s just push the budget out a little bit and we’ll make it back here.” But you never make it back.’
Gary Neville added: ‘When we jumped into this we thought this is going to be a big challenge and a lot of people are going to be looking at how this goes.
‘But actually, no matter what happens, if we’re still in the First Division North watching this level of football in five years’ time, we’ll be disappointed because we won’t have progressed, but we’ll still be happy every week.
‘It brings us back down to earth. We might be coaching with England or United or doing a Premier League game or Champions League game in Barcelona. Then three days later you’re at Brighouse away or Ossett Town and there’s a tea lady at half-time in the committee room saying: “Do you want a cup of tea, love?” And there’s some Mr Kipling cakes and you think “That’s nice. I’ll have them”.
‘It’s just real. People at this level do it for the passion of their clubs and their communities.’
And though Giggs and Butt haven’t been able to attend as much, because of their coaching duties at Manchester United, Scholes and Phil Neville clearly feel the same.
‘At the start we asked ourselves why we were doing it,’ said Phil Neville. ‘But when you come down to training, go to matches and mix with the supporters, it just feels real.
‘There’s a simplicity about football at this level. It’s exciting to watch. I know we want the game to be played in a beautiful way but there is also something beautiful about the style of football at this level. The roots of English football are actually in the Evo-Stik League.’