Graham has been approached by clubs both here and abroad but maintains: I don’t think I want to start at
Posted in General on 15. Oct, 2010
Graham has been approached by clubs both here and abroad, but maintains: “I don’t think I want to start at the bottom again I’ve done that. I want to take over something that whets my appetite, where I’m thinking, ‘Right, if I can get that right there, hey, we could really do something’. The question is: where is one with those possibilities?”Looking fit (he works out three times a week and plays tennis regularly) and primed to return to the fray, he insists that he will travel anywhere for the right job. For a man who was renowned for his extraordinarily high success to value-for-money quotient when it came to acquisitions, he would relish the kind of budget that some managers and coaches, here and abroad, have enjoyed in recent years “When I was at Leeds the budget was very small In many ways it backfired on me, this reputation I had Everybody wanted a Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink for £1.6m. Chairmen thought, ‘We can get success on the cheap, let’s get after him’.
In two and half years’ there, I think I spent roughly £14m on 10 players.”Yet, there are sceptics who submit that, Graham, who has just turned 58, is yesterday’s man; that he and others of that generation lack modern ideas, lack hunger. “A myth,” he snorts, pointing to Bobby Robson, who is approaching 70. “The ingredients needed to be a success nowadays are not much different from 20 or 30 years ago. All my teams have always had hunger.”Still, the perception now is that top managers will emerge from a younger brigade. Like his former captain Tony Adams, who some regard as a natural successor to Wenger. “At the present time I don’t think so,” says the man from Bargeddie “Tony’s taking a degree, studying hard.
He’s not even been back to Highbury, I don’t think.”Graham adds: “You just never know. When I was a player with Frank McLintock, everybody thought he was the next great manager because he was such a leader on the pitch But I always equate it with the army. You get the generals who actually take them into battle and the field marshals sitting at the back there, reading the maps. It’s not necessarily the great captains who make the good managers Look at me Jesus, I couldn’t run. I just told everybody I used to think quickly.”He’s still doing it, to the advantage of a television station’s audience He’s good at it, too.