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Post by Andy K on Apr 22, 2021 17:53:33 GMT
As I expect many people don't subscribe to it, here is the full copy (The Athletic are welcome to sue me for copyright infringement) - it really is a superb piece though
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“Get the Flipping tune on!” Harry Beautyman says as he slumps onto a wooden bench in the away dressing room at Altrincham, looking exhausted but elated. Louis John, Sutton United’s 27-year-old central defender and resident DJ, walks across to the music box, which is balancing on a chair next to the treatment bench.
The sound of studs clattering on the floor in the tunnel, and cheers as the other Sutton players make their way through the dressing room door, will soon be drowned out.
“My love has got no money, he’s got his strong beliefs “My love has got no power, he’s got his strong beliefs “My love has got no fame, he’s got his strong beliefs “My love has got no money, he’s got his strong beliefs “Want more and more “People just want more and more “Freedom and love, what he’s looking for “Want more and more “People just want more and more…”
Everyone in the dressing room is now singing along and in the middle of it all is Clive Baxter, Sutton’s 69-year-old kitman. Baxter, who started working for the National League club as a tea-boy at the age of 10 and, remarkably, has missed only half a dozen games since, is bouncing up and down to Freed from Desire, the song that has become the soundtrack to Sutton’s season, much to the delight of all the players.
“Nanananana nana nanana nanana “Nanananana nana nanana nana “Nanananana nana nanana nanana “Nanananana nana nanana nana…”
“Go on, Clive!” echoes around the four walls as Baxter, who has a heart of gold and works for the non-League club for free, bobs up and down with his tracksuit bottoms tucked into his yellow Sutton socks and a huge grin on his face.
It is Monday morning and snow is falling outside Gander Green Lane, the home of Sutton United. In the Boom Boom Club, where a pint hasn’t been pulled for more than a year, Matt Gray is holding a team meeting ahead of Tuesday night’s league game against Torquay United, who are third in the table, one place behind Sutton.
“It’s a load of bollocks,” Sutton’s manager says, looking around the room at his players.
Gray has just asked his squad to predict how many points their promotion rivals will accumulate between now and the end of the season, with the different responses illustrating why it is futile to waste any emotional energy worrying about others.
“Nobody knows what those clubs are going to finish on,” Gray adds. “But I know if we continue to get two points per game for 11 games, we’ve got a great chance. So it’s all about us. It’s 11 games of pure dedication and desire to get the job done. To not change one thing.
“There is no outside pressure (on us). The pressure is on all of them — Hartlepool, Torquay, Stockport, Notts County, Chesterfield, Halifax and Wrexham. Look at those seven teams around us in the top eight, the expectation.”
Sutton are the only one of those eight clubs to have never played in the Football League. Formed 123 years ago, based in south London and renowned for their giant-killing exploits in the FA Cup, where they famously beat Coventry City in 1989 and knocked out Leeds in 2017, Sutton are a proud non-League club.
According to their chairman Bruce Elliott, the target at the start of each season is to reach 50 points and retain their place in the National League. When Sutton reached that milestone last month, after beating Yeovil Town 2-1, they went top of the table.
Challenging for the title and the one automatic promotion berth was never in the script — Sutton are not even full-time. The players train three mornings a week, or twice if they have a midweek game, travel to fixtures on the day, normally by train, and are expected to bring their own pre-match meal.
A little goes a long way at Gander Green Lane. Seb Brown is the goalkeeping coach and doubles up as the analyst. When Bobby Childs is not treating players in the medical room, he is taking bookings for the club’s 3G pitch. Jamie Collins, who is the third member of Gray’s coaching staff and describes himself as “a glorified cheerleader”, only comes in on a match day because he does shift work on the Docklands Light Railway.
Then there is Craig Dundas, the strength and conditioning coach who oversees all the warm-ups but takes part in them too — he is also a player. Dundas has scored over 100 goals for Sutton across more than 550 appearances and, incredibly, is still chasing the dream of turning professional at the age of 40.
“I’ve never played League football,” Dundas says. “Obviously I would be knocking on the manager’s door to give me a couple of minutes if we do go up. We were talking about how I’d probably be one of the oldest players to make their league debut. It would be an unbelievable story for me. It’s kind of what I played for, to be a professional footballer. Obviously it didn’t work out. I’ve been non-League for 20-plus years and enjoyed it, but just not made the big step yet.”
A lot of Sutton’s players are on 40-week contracts, earning around £700-800 a week on average, which means that they don’t get paid when the season is over. “A few of the boys work,” Craig Eastmond explains. “Some are PTs (personal trainers), coaching one-to-ones, stuff like that. There’s a taxi driver too.”
Eastmond is the captain and is in his sixth season at Sutton. He started his career at Arsenal, where he made 10 appearances under Arsene Wenger, including playing in the Champions League. Gander Green Lane, and everything that comes with it, feels like a long way from The Emirates Stadium, yet Eastmond looks and sounds totally at ease in these surroundings.
“You’re here for a reason and you can’t have egos,” he adds. “We don’t have the staff for, ‘Can you do this, can we have that?’ You have to do your own stuff. You get your kit for the season and we take that home. You get two sets and if it rips, you can speak to the kitman. Sometimes you might have to buy it. You’ve got to get your mind around it quickly that you’re not in that bubble any more.”
Financially, Sutton are unable to compete with the majority of clubs in the National League, where Gray says that their budget would put them in the bottom six. On the pitch, though, it is a different story, as the Sutton manager reminds his players during the team meeting before training.
Gray presents to his squad before the game against Torquay Gray puts up four charts, showing that Sutton have the best home record, the second best away record, the second-highest goal tally and the best defence. “You can flower stats up as much as you want — possession, this, that. But these are the important ones for me,” he tells his players.
The positive message feels important. Although Sutton are unbeaten in 14 league matches, they have drawn their last three and Gray can sense that some people are waiting for them to trip up. “We don’t let anything distract us,” he says to the squad. “Our heads are in the right place, we keep doing what we’re doing, we keep smiling, and we stick the music on once we’ve won another three points. We just keep churning wins out. Is everyone clear on that? Get your boots on. Let’s go.”
Asked what he imagines comes to mind for most football supporters when they think of Sutton United, Gray smiles. “A traditional cup team. A decent non-League side with funny colours (yellow and brown), not an attractive kit… nothing about us is attractive, not even the manager?” Gray says, laughing out loud, in a room across the way from his office.
“But nothing is, is it? It’s a 1960s old stand. I’ll take you down to the dressing rooms in a minute, I’ll show you what they used to be like for the Coventry game. The Arsenal money (Sutton lost 2-0 to Wenger’s side after beating Leeds) that was generated helped to redesign the changing rooms. Then there’s the pitch — no one wants to come and play on a 3G pitch here. You’ve got other managers moaning about it, saying it’s an advantage, it’s this, it’s that, it shouldn’t be allowed.
That artificial pitch has many benefits for Sutton, including the fact that they can train on it without worrying about the weather or damaging the surface. Only half of it is free on Monday morning, however, because the other half is being used by schoolchildren during the Easter holidays. It is a lovely snapshot of what Sutton United are all about but also means that Gray has to politely ask if the children can take a little break for 20 minutes at 11am so that he can run through some pattern of play work on the full area.
Aged 39, Gray had coached for more than a decade but never managed until he took over at Sutton two years ago. Looking back, he thinks that the foundations for what he is doing now were laid when he was growing up and his father and grandad would drive him around London on an evening “looking for floodlights at the local clubs, just to see if we could get in at half-time and watch the second half — Wingate & Finchley, Hendon, Edgware, whoever. Sometimes we’d watch training”.
Gray played, too. He was with Arsenal as a schoolboy before joining Tottenham Hotspur, where he spent three years and was part of the same youth team as Ledley King and Peter Crouch. “Every Friday morning, first team versus youth team, 11 v 11, George Graham refereeing it,” he says, smiling at the memory.
After an injury-interrupted season at Cardiff, Gray drifted into the non-League game, where a serious back problem forced him to retire in his mid-20s and prompted him to turn his attention to scouting (he worked for Millwall for a period) and coaching.
There is a lot to like about him and it doesn’t take long in his company to realise that he prides himself on leaving no stone unturned. For example, he talks about the amount of time that the ball is out of play in a typical match — roughly a third of the game — and stresses the importance of his players knowing exactly what they are doing, in and out of possession, during those moments.
He has a check-list on the whiteboard behind in his office — shape, goal kicks, throws, free kicks, corners — and together with Jason Goodliffe, Sutton’s assistant manager, the pair of them go through each one in turn, for and against, on the tactics board after watching Torquay play on the weekend.
Gray and Goodliffe prepare for Sutton’s game v Torquay “We’re the hardest-working and most organised team in the league,” Gray says. “Because of my budget and the size of the club, I’m not going to have the best players. I think what I’ve learnt is, if you sat me down a week before I got the Sutton job and said, ‘What’s your philosophy, what’s your style of play, Matt?’ I’d say, ‘Well, give me the squad and I’ll work one out’.”
He smiles. “I don’t like losing. I don’t want to get rolled over and I want to be extremely hard to beat. I don’t want anyone to enjoy playing against my teams. And I don’t want anyone to think we’re a soft touch. So I’ll make us extremely hard-working. But the biggest thing is people. All I want to do when I shake a player’s hand five minutes before they go out is look them in the eye and know that they’re going to run through a brick wall for me.”
For all the talk of movement patterns and possession, hard work still goes a long way in football and so does team spirit. Gray tells a story about “the Will Grigg’s on fire song” — Freed from Desire — that Sutton have been playing in the dressing room just before kick-off since the start of the season “without the lads really taking any notice”.
Gray smiles and turns his phone around to show some footage. “Then we played Dagenham away on a Tuesday night, first week in February, Beautyman scores a penalty in the 94th minute to win 2-1. Me and Jase are last off the pitch and just as we get 10 yards away from the dressing room we can hear the song. We go in the changing room and they are bouncing. So now that goes on before the game and every time we win.”
Tuesday afternoon, shortly after 4pm, and the shirts, shorts, socks and warm-up tops are all perfectly in place in the home dressing room. It is nearly three hours until kick-off but Clive Baxter likes to get things done early.
Gander Green Lane has been his adopted home for close to 60 years, ever since his father took him to watch Sutton play as a little boy. He was hooked after his first visit and jumped at the chance to be a tea-boy. “They said I’d get in for free and see all the match, but they needed me before the game, half-time and after,” Baxter says. “I also had to take the tea in for the players and that’s how it all started.”
Baxter has a story or two to tell about Sutton and smiles at the way things have changed over the years. “After the game in the sixties, both teams and the officials all sat down and had a proper three-course meal, and the volunteers and helpers who were there all did the same.”
He chuckles for a moment. “They also made sure that one of the players who lived near me at the time took me home. It was fantastic. I was made up with that!”
Baxter is unpaid but says he is living his childhood dream Sutton United is in Baxter’s blood and he has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the club. He reels off the all-star Leeds United team that Don Revie brought to Gander Green Lane in 1970 for an FA Cup tie and even now talks about the goal that Sutton had disallowed that day (they lost 6-0) with a mixture of frustration and disappointment.
Quite simply, he is devoted to Sutton. “When I got married, the only way my wife could see me was to come down to football, so I roped her in to do the catering as well,” he adds, laughing.
Perhaps most remarkable of all is that nearly all of Baxter’s work over the last six decades has been as a volunteer. Even when he was providing the catering for Sutton, which he started doing just before that famous win over Coventry, he split the profit 50-50 with the club. “A lot of it (the catering) was free,” he says.
The kitman role was offered to him 12 years ago but Baxter will turn his hand to anything to help Sutton. At the start of training on Monday, when the players were taking part in some rondos and having a bit of fun, Baxter delivered a pep-talk by the side of the pitch. He later had hold of the stop-watch for the 5-a-side games at the end and at one point in the session, when Gray was walking through some tactical work on Torquay, Baxter pulled on a yellow bib to make up the numbers and be the opposition right-back.
Sutton is his life and football is his passion, not his living. “I don’t actually get paid. But I do get expenses,” he explains. “And the players are really good to me at Christmas, they have a whip round.”
So he does all of this out of the goodness of his heart? “Yeah, well, the chairman won’t pay me,” Baxter says, laughing. “I did ask him once. I said, ‘Any chance of getting paid?’ And he goes, ‘Clive, you’re a supporter’. I said, ‘Yeah, OK’. I wouldn’t argue. I’m doing the job of my dreams here.”
Baxter’s eyes light up as he opens his arms and looks around the dressing room at all the yellow and brown shirts that are hanging up. “This is my dream,” he says.
It is an hour and a half before kick-off and the music is playing loudly in the home dressing room. Some of the players are changed, others are still in their tracksuits, sharing a joke with one another or quietly singing along to the lyrics. Gray walks in and out a couple of times before gesturing to Louis John to kill the volume.
“Right, lads. We’ll do the usual, get their team at six o’clock and have two to three minutes on them at five past,” Gray says. “Just on us, like we said yesterday, we’ve played six out of seven away from home, it feels ages since we were here against Stockport. Against Stockport we were on the front foot and aggressive, and that’s exactly how I want us to start today. I want us aggressive in the right way — second balls, dominant, quick tempo, winning that battle in the first 15-20 minutes.”
Gray turns to look at Dean Bouzanis, the Sutton goalkeeper. “Deano, tempo, as soon as you get it. If the full-backs are on, they’re out. Full-backs, Rob, John, out your feet early, hitting that box (between the touchline and the penalty area) with height. Get them turned, everything on the back foot with them. Midfielders winning the second balls, front two setting the tempo, winning your headers and then down the side. And then once we’ve won the battle, lads, I want us on the ball. I want us on the ball. Passing it and being brave on the ball. But it’s all about the start of the game. Let’s go.”
Back down the corridor, Bruce Elliott has just arrived. Elliott has been Sutton’s chairman for 25 years and supported the club since he was a teenager. He opens the door to a small bar area, which in a normal world would be busy with directors and guests at this time. There are framed photos of Sutton teams from yesteryear on the walls and, it would be fair to say, the decor belongs to that era too.
Aged 73, Elliott glances out of the window and into the car park, where the Torquay team bus is just pulling up. He instantly picks up on the fact that the bus has Torquay’s club badge on the side. In other words, they look professional. “They probably travelled overnight and they’ve been resting up somewhere,” Elliott says, smiling at the contrast with Sutton travelling on the day.
“We’re punching well above our weight,” he adds. “I don’t think there’s any doubt about that. We’ve always wanted to be playing at the top level of non-League football. But if you look at the league table, we’re competing with clubs who have been desperately trying to get out of the league. Our ambition each year is to stay in it.”
Gander Green Lane, which could host EFL matches next season Sutton were averaging crowds of 1,700 last year, when they finished 14th, and it seems too cruel to think that so many loyal fans are missing out on what is shaping up to be the most successful season in the club’s history. “That is the real tragedy of it,” Elliott says. “It’s out of our control. But supporters who have not missed a game for 10-12 years have suddenly missed a whole season. It’s very sad and quite a few of them have been quite badly affected by it. We’ve tried to reach out and do what we can as a club.”
Elliott is an accountant by trade and, according to Gray, takes great pride in the fact that nobody on the payroll at Sutton has ever received their wages a day late during his time as chairman. Sutton live within their means, helped by the 3G pitch that was laid in 2015 and is a central part of their financial model as well as being a hub of activity for the local community.
The pitch is an emotive issue for Elliott and lots of other people at Sutton, given the ramifications of promotion. If Sutton were to go up, they would find themselves in the same position as Harrogate last year, which means they would have to rip up their artificial surface and replace it with grass, in order to comply with Football League rules.
In 2018, when Sutton were in the play-offs, Elliott said that the club had “failed dismally” to convince the EFL to put artificial pitches on the agenda. Asked whether they have tried to revisit the subject with the EFL three years later, Elliott gives the impression that it would be a waste of time.
“We’ve not gone directly to the EFL, obviously our secretary has been in fairly lengthy negotiations with them about us meeting the criteria for the ground and capacity and turnstiles and floodlights and all the rest of it, and there is some work to be done there,” he says.
“The pitch, we know enough people at the FA, our league rep etc etc, to know that it’s not even on their radar at the moment. Unbelievable. You’d have to ask them why. We can only guess that it’s all to do with the old so-called artificial surfaces that QPR and Luton had all those years ago, which obviously were appalling. But I often liken it to, ‘Are you using the same computer now that you were 30 years ago?’ Of course you’re not. Technology has moved on. It’s most certainly moved on with the artificial surface, with the 3G, and you’ve seen it here — it’s an excellent surface.
“Players pick up injuries? There’s no evidence of that whatsoever. And what I find absolutely staggering is that there is no doubt that there are clubs, particularly in League Two, and probably in League One, who would give their right arm for the opportunity to get that extra income into their football club by having a 3G pitch because of the extra money it can earn you. You can use it all day every day. You have to look after it and you have to put it down in the first place. But there are some pitches, as I understand it, in League Two in particular, that are not fit for purpose.”
It is a fair point, especially when you stop and think about the fact that Champions League games and World Cup qualifiers are permitted to be played on 3G pitches, as well as FA Cup ties and Scottish Premiership matches, but not fixtures in League Two.
The bottom line is Sutton will need to spend hundreds of thousands of pounds on replacing the surface if they win promotion and lose even more than that in revenue because they will no longer be able to hire out their pitch. Although the money that Sutton would receive from the Football League will help — Elliott says that figure is about £900,000 — that doesn’t solve the problem of where the players will train or, for that matter, what happens to all the other uses of their 3G pitch.
“We ground-share with Sutton Common Rovers (a semi-professional team), we’ve got girls sides, boys sides, academy sides, disability sides, walking football — the list is endless. And the vast majority of those will have to go somewhere else,” Elliott says.
Asked whether Sutton feel duty-bound to try to accommodate those teams and players by finding another facility, Elliott replies, “Yes. We’re very strong on that. We’ve built this up as a real community football club and that would be destroyed over night. I’m sure we will find somewhere. We have to find somewhere. Because the whole ethos of this football club, and what we’ve built up over the last few years, is built around all the extra teams, all the extra usage, the community side of it, and we can’t lose that.”
It is six minutes to kick off, the officials have knocked on the door and the home dressing is full of adrenaline and nervous energy. GPS vests are going on, shin pads inserted and tape wrapped around socks.
Freed from Desire is playing and Bobby Childs, the physio, is banging one of the overhead lockers to the sound of the music. It’s game-time.
“On it, on it, on it,” shouts Louis John, encouraging his team-mates.
Gray ran through Torquay’s starting line-up before the warm-up and quickly reminded everyone what to expect from each opponent. Now it is time for one final message, lasting little more than 10 seconds, before they are walking down the tunnel.
“Lads, I heard Jamie (Collins) say it there, discipline is Flipping massive. Don’t give fouls away to put balls in our box. We stick to what we do, we play our game: energy, tempo and then quality in that final third. Fifteen unbeaten, let’s go.”
The game is fast and frantic, with hardly anyone afforded time on the ball, especially in the centre of the field. Gray’s voice is loud anyway but it sounds like a megaphone without any fans in the ground. “Go on, Tanto,” the Sutton manager shouts as Isaac Olaofe, one of his two strikers, closes down a Torquay defender.
David Ajiboye, a promising right winger, looks threatening for Sutton and sets off on a couple of darting runs, but it is Torquay who come closest to scoring in the first half. Bouzanis makes an instinctive save shortly before Jake Andrews rattles the crossbar.
Gray, Goodliffe and Collins are quickly down the tunnel and into a storage area under the main stand, just down the corridor from the home dressing room. They always have a couple of minutes to themselves at half-time to establish the key messages that they need to get across to the players in the changing room. The three of them are not happy.
There is concern that Torquay have won too many balls in both penalty boxes and an acceptance that Sutton need to make a change in central midfield, with Joash Nembhard the player to be withdrawn. After discussing their options, they decide to move Beautyman infield and bring on Junior Tiensia, who joined on loan from Millwall 24 hours ago.
Gray enters the dressing room and the players fall silent. “I’m going to talk in one minute,” he says, calmly. “But I need Harry back in the middle of the pitch, so Joash come off, Junior you’re coming on, on the left-hand side. Alright? So just get your head around that.”
The players talk among themselves again. The Sutton striker Omar Bugiel looks over at Jon Barden, the right-back. “Bards, try to throw it a little bit inside, so I can head it inside,” he says, aware that too many flick-ons have ended up running out for a goal kick.
Gray turns to face the players. “So I’ve made the change. I’ll come onto what I want more from us in a second. But the attention to detail needs to be better when the ball is dead.”
He goes on to talk about opposition throw-ins, something that Sutton spent time working on in the build-up to the game.
“Omar, what’s your job?” asks Gray, looking at the striker.
“The deepest midfielder” replies Bugiel.
“The deepest midfielder. But Little has come off you and put the Flipping ball in the box. I talked to you before the game, it’s got to be Flipping done. It’s massive. It doesn’t go back to him, because their biggest threat is putting it into our box. So make sure when the ball is dead, we don’t let them do that.
“Now, when they do take a long throw — because we can’t do anything about that — we haven’t won enough first contacts. We haven’t won enough first contacts in both boxes and we need to organise quicker.”
Gray runs through what the team changes will mean when defending some of the set pieces. “But I want us on it (the ball), Harry. I want us on it, Easty,” he adds, looking at Beautyman and Eastmond, two of the club’s most experienced players and Sutton’s central midfield partnership in the second half.
“I want us switching it to Jon (the right-back), and keep giving him (David Ajiboye) the ball. And, by the way, keep giving him (Junior Tiensia) the ball because he’s exactly the same but left-footed. Go and be positive, Junior, and just keep getting at him.”
Inside the Sutton dressing room Sutton live dangerously at the start of the second half as Bouzanis makes a couple of smart saves. At the other end, Olaofe fails to get enough contact on a header from close range and Bugiel drags a presentable chance wide. Then, with nine minutes remaining, comes the breakthrough as Asa Hall scores with a fine header to put Torquay ahead.
Gray responds by withdrawing Tiensia, the half-time sub, and introducing Donovan Wilson, another striker. Within two minutes, Bugiel drives into the area but is denied by the Torquay goalkeeper. “Come on Sutton, three minutes, two goals,” cries a voice from the main stand, presumably one of the board members.
Gray and his players would settle for one goal now, and for a split-second it looks as though it might come. Wilson, running onto a pass from Ajiboye, scampers clear only to be cynically brought down. Beautyman’s free kick will be virtually the last free kick of the game. He needs to score, but the midfielder’s shot sails over.
As the players file back down the tunnel and into the home dressing room, the disappointment is everywhere you look. Water bottles are thrown to the floor in anger, there are complaints about penalties not awarded and the chances that were spurned. More than anything, there is a deep sense of frustration that Sutton didn’t do quite enough on the night.
Gray sets foot in the changing room, listens to a few raised voices and then calls for quiet as he stands at the front. He speaks in a measured way. “I don’t like talking after games, lads. You know me from day one, I don’t talk when we win and I ain’t going to overly go into it now,” he says.
There is a pause before he looks across at Junior Tiensia. “Junior, I apologise — that is completely my fault. I have made a mistake, I take tonight on the chin, I should never have done it to you (played him so soon after signing). You came into the club yesterday, I’ve seen you play I don’t know how many times over the last three years, but even so you don’t know what you’re coming into with how we play, what we do and what I need from you on and off the ball; you’ve seen one training session yesterday. Don’t read anything into it (being substituted). I’ve learnt a Flipping massive lesson. Unfortunately, you’ve had to be the brunt of it. So please keep your chin up, you didn’t deserve that. OK?”
Tiensia nods and Gray looks around the rest of the dressing room. “Like I said to you before, lads, I’ll be quick to point the finger and tell you openly and honestly if you haven’t done it. But first and foremost, I’m looking at myself. So how can I sit here and talk to any of you, as a team or as individuals, when I actually need to go and look at myself. Once I’ve done that and talked to Jase and the staff, and watched the game back, I’ll come in and tell you what I think. But the reality is, we’ve lost a game of football. When we go and look at the league table, whether that’s tonight or tomorrow morning, we’ve lost five games in 32. And we’ve lost one in 15. And that is a fact.
“I’m absolutely gutted tonight on many, many things. Gutted. And so should we all be. So whatever you do tonight, just have a little think about yourself. And then we’ll come in and talk as individuals and talk as a team when we’re back in on Friday. Because every time when we have lost on our previous four (occasions) in the league, we’ve bounced straight back.
“We go and get three points on Saturday and we’re back on the road. I said in the meeting yesterday, 11 games to go and it’s in our hands. And it is. Ten games to go and it’s still in our hands. So we stick together, we dust ourselves down, we stick our chests out, we come in Friday and do all the hard work that we’re going to do to get a result on Saturday. Everyone got it?”
The players look crestfallen but nod their heads. “Good,” says Gray, who turns around, walks out the dressing room, back down the corridor and unlocks the door to his office, where the window is open and Torquay’s players can still be heard celebrating.
Over the next 24 hours, Gray speaks to Tiensia and Nembhard. Neither player will be involved against Altrincham on Saturday but there are no hard feelings and the conversations are cordial. Players get substituted. Players have bad games. It’s football. Move on.
More disappointing is that Bugiel, who has done such a good job of leading the line for Sutton this season, turned up for training on Friday with a slight hamstring problem. He joins the injury list, forcing Gray to make a change up front, where he has decided to go with a new strike partnership at Altrincham.
The team travel by train from London Euston at 11:20, arriving into Stockport, where they are picked up by a coach to make the last leg of the journey — about 20 minutes — to Moss Lane.
Baxter, typically, was up at the crack of dawn to sort out the kit and equipment. He met Brown, the goalkeeping coach and analyst, at King’s Cross, where they parked the van and went through the usual rigmarole of trying to convince a taxi driver to take them around the corner. Some cabbies take a look at all the luggage, think about how little money there will be on the meter at the end of the journey, and decide there are better customers to pick up.
At least the sun is shining by the time they all get to Altrincham. That’s the good news. The bad news is that Hartlepool have thumped Wealdstone 7-2, to extend their lead at the top of the table to four points, albeit having played four games more. Torquay don’t have a game, which in a way adds to the pressure on Sutton to get a result.
Holding a piece of paper in his hand with a few notes on it, Gray looks around the dressing room at his players. “Every time we’ve lost a game this season, we’ve had a reaction,” he says. “A positive, positive reaction with the characters that we’ve got in this dressing room.
“I want us to be us — loud, aggressive, dominant, compact without the ball, pressure, in their faces, and then when we’ve got it, the front four, with Harry going to join in, five… we’ve got Flipping goals in us. But it’s all us, starting the game right, warm-up loud, bright, on the front foot. And I’ll talk more when we’ve got their team. Good luck.”
“Come on boys!” shout the players.
Space is tight in the changing room, especially when two exercise mats are put on the floor. As the dressing room door swings open, it narrowly misses Ben Goodliffe’s head as the central defender lies on his back, going through stretching routines.
Not that Sutton are complaining; this is non-League football. Gray calls the players into the shower area two at a time — full-backs, wingers, central defenders and so on — where he has a tactics board propped up on the pipework. He talks to his players briefly about team shape with and without the ball, essentially little reminders of what he went through the day before at training.
Sutton’s players are run through the tactics in the showers Mindful that Altrincham like to pass out from the back, Gray wants Sutton to encourage the ball to be played to their opponents’ left side, where both the central defender and the full-back are right-footed. “We’re offering that to go on his weaker left foot,” he says to his two strikers, who are also expected to press but also position themselves to prevent Altrincham’s deep-lying midfielders from picking up possession. “If it goes back to the keeper, whoever is nearest goes. Put pressure on the keeper. As soon as you see one go, the other one fills the hole.”
Gray likes all his talking to be finished before the warm-up, which goes well apart from the fact that the open terrace behind the goal means that Sutton will travel back to London a couple of footballs short. “We’ve lost two,” Brown, the goalkeeping coach, says to Baxter as he returns to the dressing room.
The clock is ticking now and the players are in the zone. “They’ve got nothing to play for. It’s a jolly up for them,” says Collins, alluding to Altrincham, who start the day in 14th place.
“Good habits today,” adds Goodliffe, the assistant manager, shouting instructions over the music. “Good habits all over the park.”
Freed from Desire is playing again, Collins is banging his hand against the dressing room wall and Sutton are ready to go.
Positive, full of energy and pressing high up the pitch, Sutton dominate Altrincham from the kick-off. The home side cannot gain any sort of foothold in the game and it is no surprise when Sutton take the lead after only seven minutes. The goal is a beauty, expertly swept into the top corner by Rob Milsom after he was brought down on the edge of the area. Shortly after the half-hour mark, Donovan Wilson makes it 2-0 with a low drive after running onto Milsom’s fine pass. Sutton are in total control.
“Good half, lads,” says Beautyman as he walks into the dressing room at the interval. “But it’s only a Flipping half. Let’s expect a reaction.”
Although Gray is happy with what he has seen, he is anything but complacent. He returns from talking to Goodliffe and Collins in the shower area and highlights three individual areas where Sutton can improve before adding, “Easty (Eastmond), they haven’t played out from a goal kick yet but I wouldn’t be surprised if he says, ‘foo it, let’s have a go now’.”
Gray looks at the rest of the players. “Just make sure we don’t do any silly fouls. And that leads onto the referee – time-wasting? No. Professional? Yes. Not taking the piss. Doing everything at a decent speed but we ain’t taking the piss with the time, so that the ref starts getting the hump, they start getting on him, and suddenly he’s giving a free-kick that probably ain’t even a free kick and the ball’s coming in our box. So make sure we manage the game professionally on that.
“The last point: wide players, as soon as we get it — because this is the widest pitch in the league, by the way — can you give us that (steps back), back foot, open out. So that’s you, David, not being arse-up against the full-back all the time. Half-turn, can you get it.
“As soon as those full-backs are tight, boys, the ball down the side is on all the time. It’s our out. We’ve scored the goal with Donovan running in the corner, setting it back, touch, goal, because it’s so wide. Rob, you’ve put three or four unbelievable balls down the side.
“Right, we’ve done the job for a half. It’s how we start this second half. We’re aggressive in our compactness and then when we go and press. And then with our quality, and a ruthless Flipping edge in that final third, we go and make it three. Let’s go.”
It doesn’t take long for that third goal to arrive. Tobi Sho-Silva, who does an excellent job deputising for the injured Bugiel, spins in the penalty area and drills home. Wilson then grabs his second and Sutton’s fourth after the Altrincham goalkeeper gets himself in a tangle trying to pass out from the back, just as Gray predicted.
The game is over as a contest with 25 minutes remaining but Gray is relentless, barking orders from the touchline throughout. He makes a few subs during the second half, including bringing on Dundas, the 40-year-old strength and conditioning coach.
As the final whistle blows, Gray, his staff and the players embrace one another. Beautyman is one of the first back into the dressing room, Freed from Desire is playing at his request and Baxter is doing his thing.
Baxter grins after the victory over Altrincham “Crisis over!” shouts Goodliffe, with more than a hint of sarcasm in his voice, as he bounds back into the dressing room. Gray follows behind him and shakes hands with each player in turn. There is no need for him to say anything today. All the talking was done on the pitch.
Back outside, Milsom takes a seat on the bench in the away dugout. Aged 34, the left-back has spent the vast majority of his career in professional football, playing in the Premier League for Fulham, as well as turning out for Aberdeen and Rotherham. Milsom was outstanding against Altrincham and I wonder where the motivation comes from for someone like him to carry on performing like that at this level, bearing in mind he was playing at Old Trafford against Cristiano Ronaldo, Carlos Tevez and Paul Scholes at the age of 22.
“There’s a few things really and some things that people probably don’t know,” says Milsom, sounding a little emotional. “My dad passed away when I was 19. He never actually got to see me play a first-team game. I wear No 24 because that was his birthday, and so I want to do it for him. He drove me here, there and everywhere when I was a kid, making so many sacrifices. So I just think all I can do is repay what he did for me as a kid. Also, I’ve had two career-threatening injuries. I made my debut for Fulham at Old Trafford and six days later I did my ACL (anterior cruciate ligament), so I want to try to prolong my career as long as I can.”
As the sun disappears behind the stand on the far side, we carry on talking until Gray comes out and mentions that Milsom, who is still wearing his playing kit, is in danger of missing the train back to London if he doesn’t get changed soon.
The pair of us smile at the sound of the music that is still coming from the away dressing room and the image of Baxter bouncing around like a teenager. “There’s amazing people within this club,” Milsom adds. “Clive, the kitman, he’s been here a hell of a lot of years. To get promoted, what it would mean to him, and what it would mean to a lot of the guys working at this club day in and day out, would be incredible. And that’s another one of the reasons that drives me on.
“You go in there and Clive is absolutely buzzing we’ve won. He’s jumping up and down, and I love to see that. It means the world to him. He’ll literally do anything for you and he doesn’t get paid for it. It’s those sort of people that make these clubs special.”
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