It is now 7.35am., and I have been writing on and off since 9am., when bringing you my thoughts on the latest Sounders performance. I went for a lunchtime stroll (limp) and on my return logged into Wikipedia and found what you have just read and like some of you, for the very first time. I am in total shock at not only the lies but the behind the scenes politics that ruined the club, yet still believe it needed being reborn, but in not such a way. But that could only happen with time and TV which brings sponsorship. In those times and since, there has never been anyone in the game bigger than Pele in Brazil, Cruyff in Holland, Moore in England and Beckenbauer in Germany, so let’s clear that up, and in todays MSL the League would literally go through the roof, and to think LA and San Jose had George Best, possibly the greatest of all time, a Northern Irishman who should have been in New York with the rest of those who who say they come from the Emerald Isle. You’ve met them.
Bruce Anderson showed his ignorance in that first meeting when letting the media know that Alan Hinton would no longer be coach. Why? Because the team (players) had not enough emotion and no ‘Slam Dunks’, can you really believe that such a man, who has absolutely no CV in our game can come out with such trash? How can Hinton’s team record such an amazing season without emotion? In my couple of years in the ‘House on the Hill’ where a couple of those players lived nearby, the Sonics won the NBA twice on the spin and here we have a man, who might just say that Denis Johnson, Freddie Brown, Jack Sikma and the rest of those players had “no emotion”, as Del Boy would say, “Can you Adam and Eve it”.
As for me personally, my problem is that I wear my heart on my sleeve (a terrible problem, which is incurable) and those who know me know that I don’t lie (only to my wife) which I am not proud of, but that is like most of the human race, However, in the end I got the sack (cut) through being too damned honest. I played when I was injured knowing after the Hinton scenario meant that I was next because it was nothing to with “Americanization” of the club or sport, it was money. Both Calloway and Anderson lied and conned their way through this period.
Before I comment on the incident in Canada I must clear up my marriage problem, as I grew up in London at a time of the Swinging 60s and 70s, those times of The Flower Power, Mods and Rockers, Mary Quant, mini-skirts and hotpants, and Maureen knew that I was caught up in such times. That said, she knew me. I never knew her, and was blinded by her beauty. When she stole my children on my return to England looking for work I was devastated. After all, Anthony had not even got out of his play-pen and I was enjoying seeing him grow on our patio in our ‘House on the Hill’ when after the complete shock of the Anderson takeover and my demise, I jetted back looking for another club. You must understand at the age of thirty-two and with a chronic ankle injury, not forgetting my latest hamstring problem your days are numbered. So, it was left to Allen to become the ‘Man of the House’ at the ripe old age of 10. Allen had settled well after a sticky start at Eastgate Elementary, where those young boys and girls saw him as an alien with his black mackintosh and shoes. He came home one day and it was decided quite simply that he needed the Baseball jacket and pumps. Here is my favourite part of his matruing in Seattle, keeping in mind thea Nike story, I came home from training one day and parked outside our double-doored garage. It was a beautiful Seattle day. I walked through the garage and as I was about to turn the handle of the outside door which took me up to our reception, for the want of a better word, I noticed something a little odd. I must have had a hundred pair of Nike boots lining my garage walls all in orange boxes, but I had never seen them with price tags on. I took a closer look to find that they were priced around five bucks. ‘That’s not bad if you can get them at that price’, I thought.

I walked through to the kitchen and Maureen’s face was a picture but nothing like the one so beautifully sang by’Bread’ called so appropriately ‘If’.
If a picture paints a thousand words
Then why can’t I paint you?
The words will never show
The you I’ve come to know
If a face could launch a thousand ships
Then where am I to go?
There’s no one home but you
You’re all that’s left me too
And when my love for life is running dry
You come and pour yourself on me
If a man could be two places at one time
I’d be with you
Tomorrow and today
Beside you all the way
If the world should stop revolving
Spinning slowly down to die
I’d spend the end with you
And when the world was through
Then one by one the stars would all go out

Then you and I would simply fly away

Well, that was not my wife, Maureen. As for me, I was like a volcano ready to erupt, only with laughter. For me, Allen had arrived. He was the ‘Del Boy’ Trotter of Seattle. I stood holding onto the sink as her words came out like the Dragon she turned out be “He is selling your boots to all of his schoolmates and all you can do is laugh”, which I had by now.  “Is it funny?” I was lost for words and all I could think about was how many pairs had he sold? You see, our family is pretty well known for its eccenrtic sense of humour and if you did not get it you were not a part of it, which obviously I was finding out, Maureen wasn’t. “I have had to telephone round to all of their parents telling them to bring the boots back and I’d refund them.” Of course she’d refund them, but not out of her purse. Anyhow, Allen had now became a part of a different kind of folklore at Eastgate Elementary School. As for Maureen it was just another opportunity for her to plot her splitting the family. For her taking my kids I take serious consideration about her receiving one of those bullets. That is two down and four to go.

How this came about was in the midst of a mini-cris in my life, after being diagnosed with Prostate cancer and after everything else which had gone wrong over the past couple of yesars I hit a brick wall with my writing. I have two books finished but unedited on my machine, one called ‘Don’t Shoot the Taliban…You Wake the Locals’ aand another named ‘A Kiss of Death’ both very much interesting and must be published. However, I was considering beginning a book named ‘Six Bullets’ which I think you have picked up on by now. I have it in my head and, as I say, have hit that wall, until I returned fron Seattle and becoming very emotional. Hence, this book, which has given me back my hunger and desire to write. Today is the second day of the greatest National Hunt Racing Festival on the Planet and incredibly, an Arsenal supporter (Frankie Dettori) bred a runner called Dodging Bullets. I stood in the Golden Lion with my friend Peter Millard, the brother of Tony, and as I looked up at the TV screen I saw the horse which had me go into my little black book and wrote two words: DODGING BULLETS. I then walked to the gents toilets as the tape went up. Peter had backed a horse called SPRINTER SACRE so I said nothing to him until Dodging Bullets passed the post in great fashion, winning by two lengths. If ever there was a tip for a horse this had to be the one. However, once again, there would definitely be no dodging mine, unlike that driver who failed to finish me in the Mile End Road, I would not employ such an idiot. Very quickly, on the event in Canada, that must have been Ray Hudson of Fort Lauderdale or someone wearing a Seattle number 4 copy shirt, because it certainly was not me. However, it was me at my home and I did hold a Press Conference for Anderson coming out public and saying “Alan Hudson was not competitive”. How can one not be competitive if he had won the FA Cup and European Cup Winners Cup, been selected his country for the World Cup, and was runner-up for the annual Sports Writers ‘Footballer of the Year’ awards all before his 19th birthday, which would be like saying Mark Spitz was also not competitive and today, neither was Usain Bolt, the worlds fastest man over 100 yards. And let’s not forget, after coming off a three year international ban, I played against the World Champions, West Germany, and against all of the odds, with the manager (Don Revie) playing me in the hope that I would fail, I gave a Man of the Match performance in a 2-0 win in front of 100,000 supporters at Wembley Stadium. That was in 1975, five years after missing that World Cup in Mexico through injury, the ban, and the change of management, who was very anti-Chelsea players having been beaten by us in the 1970 FA Cup final.