Neil Warnock: The pantomime villain who players would run through walls for - The Athletic 12/4/22


By Richard Sutcliffe

“Bloody hell, Rich, who’s lost their job now? Every time I see your number flash up on my phone, my first thought is, ‘What job does he want to see if I’m in for or not?'”

This was Neil Warnock, speaking just before Christmas. It wasn’t, in fact, a vacancy I’d called him about. Though I could understand why one of football’s most controversial characters thought it might be.

So many EFL jobs come up that seem a perfect fit for the man with more promotions than anyone else in the game, including four to the top flight. Not least because geography is rarely an issue, despite Warnock and wife Sharon having been based in Cornwall for the best part of 20 years.

The quickest of glances at a CV covering more than 40 years as a manager reveals London, south Wales, Teesside, Lancashire, Devon and the east Midlands as stop-offs in a career that officially came to an end at the weekend after 1,603 games in the dugout to go with those record-breaking eight promotions.

His decision to finally call it a day was not a surprise. He’d as good as said Middlesbrough would be his last job when inviting The Athletic into his office at the Riverside after September’s 2-0 win over Sheffield United.

Even allowing for how we’d laughed in the past about Warnock having “more comebacks than Frank Sinatra” after first mooting retirement in the early 2000s, this time it felt real.

Not to say that the fire did not still burn from within. This much was clear during that pre-Christmas phone call. A couple of openings, including one not far from his native Sheffield, had either come up or, according to football’s bush telegraph, would do so very soon.

Warnock backed himself to be able to sort out the clubs in question if the call came. But it never did, hence Saturday’s confirmation that retirement beckoned. “I’ve had a good run,” said the 73-year-old.

Too right. From those early steps in management with Gainsborough Trinity, a job he combined with running his own chiropody practice in Tinsley, through to that final game in charge of Middlesbrough last November, Warnock left an indelible stamp on football.

Plenty in the game won’t miss him, of course. Referees, for one. Rival supporters riled by his pantomime villainy in the opposition dugout, another.

But, maybe even those who relish using the moniker “Colin” — it’s an anagram thing — will grudgingly admit football would have been poorer without him these past few decades.

His popularity endures at the vast majority of those former clubs. A little over a fortnight ago, Warnock was back in Scarborough, the town on the Yorkshire coast whose club he took into the Football League via the first of those eight career promotions.

The enduring affection, 35 years on from that Conference title-winning season, was clear to see when Warnock was introduced to the 1,600-plus crowd at half-time during a goalless draw with Matlock Town.

Visits to Cardiff, Plymouth and Huddersfield would surely elicit a similarly effusive welcome from the locals, along with any stop-off at Notts County, the club he led from the third tier to the top flight via back-to-back promotions.

Likewise, QPR and Sheffield United, where he had 385 league and Cup games at the helm — fittingly, for this boyhood fan, the highest tally of his career by some distance.

Those successes were hard-earned. Warnock rarely took on a job when the club was flying. Sheffield United, for instance, were hugely in debt and at a low ebb. The game preceding Warnock’s appointment in December 1999, had seen just 8,965 come through the Bramall Lane turnstiles. And this was in the second tier.

What followed was a thrilling rollercoaster ride that took Sheffield United to two cup semi-finals and a play-off final in the same memorable season before finally unlocking the door marked “Premier League” in April 2006.

That automatic promotion came after holding off the challenge posed by Kevin Blackwell’s Leeds United only added to the sense of satisfaction, the pair having fallen out spectacularly a few years earlier.

Warnock had been left angry by the manner of his then right-hand man’s 2003 move to Elland Road and the two men barely spoke for some time.

As many in the game know, Warnock can harbour a grudge. Rafael Benitez, for instance, should not expect a Christmas card any time soon after playing a weakened Liverpool team during the 2006-07 run-in that ended with Sheffield United relegated from the Premier League, Warnock believing Fulham’s win over the Anfield club on the penultimate weekend played a big part in his team’s demise.

Gary Megson — “I never got on with him, never will” — and Stan Ternent are similarly cast on the naughty step in perpetuity.

Others, though, have been welcomed back into the fold. None more so than Blackwell, who has been an integral part of Warnock’s successes since rejoining his old boss in 2015. The pair remain as tight now as they ever have been.

El Hadji Diouf, having previously been likened to a “sewer rat” by Warnock, was another, the mercurial Senegal forward joining him at Leeds and even subsequently being described as “my matador” by his manager.

Speak to many of those who have played under Warnock and they will often cite this ability to quickly move on from even the biggest of bust-ups, especially on a matchday, as a big factor in why his teams have had such a strong team spirit.

No matter what has been said between player and manager on a Saturday in the heat of the moment, by Monday morning all is forgotten and the focus firmly on looking forward.

His bollockings are legendary, of course.

Warnock’s willingness to let the TV cameras into the dressing room earlier in his career shone a light on a management style that can perhaps be best described as “confrontational”.

On one rain-sodden April afternoon at Shrewsbury Town, his promotion-chasing Huddersfield side, trailing 2-0 at the break, were soon on the receiving end.

“Any injuries?” was the manager’s sarcastic opening gambit. “How can there be any injuries? Silly fucking question, eh.”

What followed was nothing short of a tirade. Two Town players are accused of being “soft as shit”, while another who had gone AWOL for a Shrewsbury goal is told, “You were in fucking Latvia!”

It was his final line, however, that underlined the common touch that many players were able to tap into. “We are third in the fucking league, we have 2,000 fans getting pissed on over there and we haven’t got as much passion.”

Huddersfield may have been unable to turn things around that afternoon at Gay Meadow, but just six or so weeks later, Warnock and his players were celebrating promotion at Wembley after beating Bristol Rovers in the play-off final.

Days off have been another big motivational tool down the years, dangled like a carrot in front of the players. During QPR’s ultimately successful promotion push in 2010-11, the post-match elation of rescuing a point at Derby County via two stoppage-time goals was being tempered slightly by fitness coach Carl Serrant explaining to the players the schedule for the international break that had just begun.

“Fuck that!” interrupted the manager suddenly. “Lads, see you a week on Monday. You’ve been brilliant so far.”

When the players finally returned after their week off, Warnock had another offer surrounding the next international break. “Get me three wins in these six games before then,” he said about a break that was by now around a month away, “and you can have another week off.”

Within eight days of the restart, Rangers had the requisite three victories and were well on their way to lifting the Championship title.

The flipside to this time off was how hard the squad would be worked when in. Even the prospect of a game 24 hours later couldn’t dissuade Warnock from ordering his players to train at full-tilt, including challenges that on a Saturday would have brought a yellow card or worse.

Creating the right dressing-room atmosphere isn’t always easy. But Warnock managed it better than most, those man-management skills having been honed throughout a career where he had learned, through necessity, how to handle the unexpected.

At Scarborough, the logistics of remaining part-time in that first season after winning promotion to the League meant only seven players had arrived at Torquay United for an evening match when the team sheet had to be submitted an hour before kick-off.

The last of his absentees, a nappy salesman who’d had a work appointment in Preston at 1pm, made it by 15 minutes. Warnock’s side still won 1-0 to go top of the old Fourth Division.

Later, at Huddersfield, young striker Andy Booth arrived one Monday morning with a mystery back complaint that meant he couldn’t train. Warnock was sympathetic until he found out, via a loose-lipped fellow diner at a club awards night a few days later, that Booth had on the Sunday hit an unbeaten 165 for his local cricket team in an innings that lasted four hours.

Needless to say, Booth was given an almighty dressing-down, albeit one that was later used as an ongoing gag by the manager for the rest of the squad to enjoy.

Warnock loved getting one over his players. Such as the night when he took the Sheffield United squad ten-pin bowling and then persuaded everyone to put £20 in the pot for a winner-takes-all game.

What the manager had omitted to mention when making said offer, however, was that he had taught ten-pin bowling as a teenager and kept his hand in. He even had his own bowling ball. “He wiped the floor with us,” lamented former defender Rob Page, the Wales manager, to The Athletic in February.

His methods didn’t work everywhere, of course. A year at Leeds saw little, if any, progress made. Bury went down from the second tier on his watch, too. Usually, though, Warnock’s arrival would trigger an upturn in fortunes.

Keeping Rotherham United up after taking over in February 2016, with the club seemingly having one foot in League One, remains one of his proudest achievements.

That the run of six wins in eight unbeaten games that ultimately kept Rotherham up included a 1-0 triumph over Wednesday only added to Warnock’s sense of fulfilment. He’s always loved nothing more than winding up United’s Steel City rivals, even though he was once offered the manager’s job at Hillsborough.

After his Crystal Palace side had beaten Wednesday at Selhurst Park via a stoppage-time winner, he called up BBC Radio Sheffield’s post-match phone-in and posed as a regular punter.

“Neil from London” quickly got to the point, questioning why the away fans had left in such a rush at the final whistle, especially after spending the previous 90 minutes abusing the home manager.

He displayed a similar level of mischievousness after Wednesday reached the 2017 play-offs and were drawn against Huddersfield, who lost 3-0 to his Cardiff side on the final day of the regular season.

First, he interrupted David Wagner’s post-match press conference by banging on the door of the media room and shouting “Let me in for five minutes, I want to get this done so I can go home!” Then, after the German had graciously given up his seat, Warnock said, “All the best with them lot next week, I’ll be with you. Sheffield Wednesday, come on David.”

“Can you give me advice?” replied Wagner with a big smile.

“Aye, I’ll tell you how to do ’em!”

Great copy for those of us looking to fill the following day’s sports pages, something he helped this reporter do on umpteen occasions in my previous job at The Yorkshire Post. Even when there was very little happening.

We might have had a ten-minute phone call. Or I might have ventured to the training ground, be that United’s then newly-built Shirecliffe base, Leeds’ state-of-the-art set-up — “I could come here on my holidays!” he said about Thorp Arch a week into the job — or even the much more modest surrounds at Rotherham.

Regardless, if my questions hadn’t elicited a story worthy of leading the back page, he’d invariably ask, “You’ve not got much there, have you?”

A disconsolate shake of the head would be his cue to deliver a timely exclusive on anything from a prospective new signing to a damning few sentences about a rival.

I know from talking to many others on the reporting circuit that I’m far from alone in being helped out by a manager who realised the value of a positive relationship with the media, even in an age when many clubs and their army of press officers try to keep contact to a stage-managed minimum.

For that and the many, many laughs he’s given me over the years, I will miss the touchline presence of a man who once said he hoped opposition fans would mark his death by “chanting ‘Warnock’s a wanker’ over and over again, for a whole minute'”.

Happy retirement, Neil.

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