Peter Reid endured a torrid time with Plymouth Argyle but was honest, generous and dedicated ? and should have been treated with more respect
Underhill, the sparsely populated and ramshackle stadium of Barnet FC. Ninetieth in the English League are beating 92nd 2-0. With Plymouth Argyle already adrift at the bottom of the fourth tier in September, their manager cuts an isolated figure in the dugout. Suited, booted, with arms folded and perched on one end of the bench, an expanse of evening air separates Peter Reid from his colleagues. Alone with his thoughts, his countenance is that of a man who seems aware the jig is up.
Of the 1,849 folk present on a Tuesday night, more than 450 are there to support Argyle. Their club is pot-less and in administration, the players unpaid, demoralised and fruitlessly doing their hapless best. Relentlessly, over 90 minutes, the travelling Pilgrims chant in support of a team who have lost 11 of their past 13. Despite calls for the manager's head being resolutely conspicuous by their absence, a few days later Argyle lose again and Reid is sacked. Football at the very sharp end; a decent man turfed out with a handshake and a knife in the back.
"Peter leaves with our unreserved thanks for his contribution in helping keep the club alive during this turbulent period and he leaves with our very best wishes for the future," wrote the acting chairman, Peter Ridsdale, of a manager so devoted to a hopeless Plymouth cause not of his making that he dipped into his own pocket to pay club utility bills and auctioned an FA Cup runners-up medal from his playing days to raise petty cash. With his name a byword for turbulence at every football club with which he has been associated, we can only hope Ridsdale the Destroyer has not consigned one of English football's great characters to the scrapheap.
Contrary to his philosophical attitude in the face of inevitable defeat at Barnet, Reid has not always been so stoic in the face of a two-goal deficit. During Sunderland's final season at Roker Park, the cameras were provided with all-areas access to film a documentary entitled Premier Passions. With his team a brace down at home to Wimbledon, Reid followed his players into the dressing room, shut the door and set about breaking the record for profanity in a single minute of British television.
"That's fucking shite!" he announced in his trademark thick Scouse. "And it's not about fucking tactics and them being fucking great players, it's about fucking arsehole ? they've got more on the fucking day. So fucking get on with it!"
What could have been one of the great motivational team-talks ended as Reid stormed out of the dressing room declaring his quivering charges to be "as weak as fucking piss". His assessment was proved correct and rectal fortitude ultimately prevailed on that December afternoon on Wearside, with Wimbledon going on to win 3-1.
But for all his unashamedly old-school rollockings, Reid is remembered fondly by those who blossomed under his managerial care. "The player you remember is the manager he became, hard-working and honest," wrote Niall Quinn in an autobiography that at various junctures describes Reid, who once accompanied Quinn to a Van Morrison gig in Manchester sporting a porkpie hat, as "sincere", "decent", "sharp" and "loyal and witty in that diamond Scouse way".
In a chat with the Guardian this year, Micky Gray recalled the time Reid invited him to lie low for a few days at his house in Yarm after the boyhood Sunderland fan had missed the penalty in the shoot-out that decided the mother of all Championship play-off finals against Charlton in 1998. "He told me I'd been brilliant for him," said Gray. "It was great because I needed to hear that."
Perhaps the most iconic image of that afternoon at Wembley was captured in the moments immediately after Gray's miss, when Reid threw his arm around the shoulders of his inconsolable young full-back. After the shabby treatment meted out to him at Plymouth, he could probably do with an arm around his own shoulders. Whether playing or managing in a sport all about arsehole, Reid has rarely been found wanting. Meanwhile the Ridsdales of the world remain unable to find theirs with both hands.
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/football-league-blog/2011/sep/20/peter-reid-plymouth-sacked
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