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CONTENTS
For KB, who made it happen
and
for Laura, always.
PROLOGUE
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
I forget who said that – possibly Bryan Robson. I’d ask him, but last I heard he was rounded up and forced to perform hard labour in the phlebonium mines on Gralka IV. He’ll be disappointed with that.
But either way, it’s true. You go through a great deal in your life and in my seven or so decades I’ve maybe seen more than most. Some things I’ll treasure: my Liverpool days, my time in Germany, taking over at Newcastle. But then there are the things I’d sooner forget: that header at the ’82 World Cup, falling off that bloody bike on Superstars, giving Paul Ince my phone number (seriously, there are only so many times you can tolerate receiving a breathy phone call at three in the morning as Incey says, ‘Gaffer – it’s happened again.’). And, of course, the lowest of the low: 1995–96.
Everyone likes to harp on about how my Newcastle lads threw away the league title that season, chucked a twelve-point lead in the bin and allowed Man United to pip us on the final day. But the thing that I’ve always said – and I absolutely stand by this today – is that if the league season had finished in January rather than May, we’d have won the title.
