Intervju med Grayson i dagens "The Guardian". Ikke noe revolusjonerende nytt, men ga ihvertfall meg gode "vibber!
Football
Leeds United
Saturday interview
Grayson grabs chance to lead his boyhood club up promotion pathSimon Grayson explains to Daniel Taylor the lure of Elland Road and the dream of recapturing the glory daysDaniel Taylor guardian.co.uk, Saturday 17 January 2009 00.05 GMT Article history
Simon Grayson, the manager of Leeds United, takes his team to Brighton this afternoon. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/Public Domain
Drive through the picture-book village of Boston Spa, cross the River Wharfe and follow the signs for Thorp Arch and you eventually come to a long, winding driveway that could easily be missed were it not for the electronic barriers and intercom systems. It looks like something from a James Bond movie but this is actually Leeds United's practice ground; once you get buzzed through the gates and see all the modern office blocks, the neat lawns and perfectly trimmed hedgerows, it is difficult not to wonder why the group of players training on the far pitch are currently grubbing around for points in the old third division.
"You look at our facilities and you'd think they belonged to a Premier League club," says Simon Grayson, the latest man assigned to resurrecting the club. "You probably wouldn't think it possible that the club could go from playing in a Champions League semi-final to administration and two relegations. But it proves that no team has a God-given right to be in the Premier League. Manchester City, Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest have all been in this division. And now Manchester City are the richest club in the world. You look at them trying to sign Kaka [now]. At least it gives us hope."
Grayson is in his fourth week at Leeds, having left Blackpool to take over at the club he supported as a boy. To his disappointment, it has been an acrimonious switch, with his former employer threatening legal action and lodging an official protest with the Football League.
Leeds have been on their knees for longer than they will care to remember and Grayson's job will be to restore some honour. "That's the challenge," he says. "So many managers have tried to get the club back to where it deserves to be. Can I be the one to do it?"
The manner in which Grayson led Blackpool to their first spell of second-tier football since 1978 suggests that Ken Bates has appointed one of the brightest young managers around. Plus there was an emotional pull for Grayson, having grown up in Bedale, north Yorkshire, with posters of the Leeds team on his bedroom walls.
His father was the games teacher at the local school and despite showing enough potential in cricket to play for Yorkshire schools, the young Grayson dedicated himself to football. While his brother, Paul, pursued a career in cricket and is now head coach at Essex, the elder sibling started training with Leeds at the age of 10. At 14 he had signed schoolboy forms and, within three years, Billy Bremner had given him a first-team debut.
But things did not work out. Grayson drifted, playing once more in the next four years. Shortly after his 22nd birthday, they cut him adrift. "I remember the day as if it were yesterday," he says. "Howard Wilkinson had taken over from Billy and he told me straight, that the club had accepted an offer of £50,000 from Leicester City and that was it. I picked up my boots, left the ground and I remember thinking it would be my last time there as a Leeds player. It was heartbreaking, to be honest."
So there is unfinished business for Grayson even if, in hindsight, leaving Elland Road turned out fine. "Within 12 games of stepping out of Leeds United's reserves I was playing in a Wembley play-off final in front of 90,000 people. I thought, 'This is more like it'. But that was just the start. I still don't think people realise what good players we had at Leicester."
Under the management of Martin O'Neill, Grayson became an integral part of a side who won the club's first trophy since 1964. "How do you describe Martin O'Neill?" he ponders. "You can't. I've tried to pick up a few things from him but he was a one-off. He just had something special – an aura. When you saw him walking out for training, by God, the training levels would increase. He didn't always take training but then you'd see him in the distance. Action stations. He'd have a stopwatch in his hand and he'd say, 'Right, if you're not round that pitch, that tree and that goal in 30 seconds you're doing it again'. And we'd make sure we did it. He just had that aura. You could see a bit of Brian Clough in him."
Grayson was twice player of the year at Filbert Street, and O'Neill was horrified when he lost him to Aston Villa. "The day I left I rang him up to say thanks for everything," recalls Grayson. "His secretary basically told me to eff off. Martin had wanted me to stay and he felt I'd deserted him. But in my first six months at Villa he tried to buy me back three times. Which tells you something about the man. I know if I ever need anything I can always pick up the phone and ring him."
O'Neill, incidentally, once called Bates a "football cretin". Yet the Leeds chairman's appointment of the 39-year-old Grayson looks a shrewd piece of business given the way he has set about establishing himself since starting his coaching badges at Blackpool. Grayson was so dedicated that in his spare time he would help out with the youth academy at Blackburn, another of his former clubs. He was then asked to combine playing with coaching Blackpool's reserves and in November 2005, with the Seasiders in relegation trouble, he was invited to take over as caretaker. Grayson led them to safety, winning the job permanently.
"We lost the first three matches of the following season and everyone was suddenly thinking, 'Hmm, is he the right man after all?'" he recalls. "After 10 games we'd won only once and I was under pressure. But I always felt I was getting a team together that could do something if I was given the time. We started winning and once we got into that habit, what happened next was special for everyone."
It culminated with Blackpool winning the last 10 matches and sealing promotion in a playoff final against Yeovil. The pity for Grayson is that his time should end with bad feeling. "If I was going to leave Blackpool I wanted to do it in a good way, thank the fans and everybody at the club. I think I did a good job. But I couldn't turn down being the Leeds manager. Everyone in football – outside of Blackpool anyway – understands that this is a bigger club and that it's a step uphill in my career.
"You just have to look at the number of fans we take to every away game. It doesn't matter how big the allocation is, we will always sell out. There were 33,000 people at my first home game, which was more than the majority of Premier League clubs got that day. There's no other club that I would have dropped out of the Championship for. This is Leeds United."
