I wake and look at yesterdays headlines tucked (almost hidden) inside the back page of The Sun, when it should have been on the front page when you look at all the tripe the Editor allows to be shown. However, Luis Suarez sent out a message that told us everything we need to know about Roy Hodgson’s managerial skills. There is one thing that you avoid going into a match (especially a match of this magnitude) and that is talk about the opposition and Roy gave the Uruguayan “superstar”, and this time you can believe the the word, unlike our “nearly” players. The England boss doubted this tag on Luis Suarez, but no matter what you think of a player, as a manager, keep it to yourself, unless he’s in your dressing room. Roy, a man very well known as ‘intelligent’ absolutely blew it and Luis responded in the best way possible. And here was his second response, the first being, “doing the talking with his feet and his head and not his tongue”.

ROY SAID I WASN’T WORLD CLASS…WHAT DOES HE THINK NOW?

If he was a headmaster of a school he’d be called in front of the Board and asked to explain such ridiculous behaviour and I doubt very much if he’d have an answer that was good enough. Let me give you an example: I recall one Friday morning before training Dave Sexton calling our squad of fifteen or sixteen first team squad of players to the centre circle of Stamford Bridge and he was although not happy very controlled when saying, “When you are playing a match like this there is one thing you don’t do, and that is give teams like Leeds United more ammunition by publicly slating them. They are going to be tough enough without you saying in the newspaper that we are going to show them this and that. You have made this match all the more difficult.” What I liked about Dave on this particular day was the way he did not, for a change, point the finger at any one individual (it was usually me, Osgood or both) he simply put his case across to best effect. I know that if someone is doubting my ability, like Revie before my West German debut, I go out there doubly determined to prove them wrong, and that is what I did, I played against Franz Beckenbauer, his team-mates and Don Revie all wrapped up in one on that wonderful evening at Wembley. This is what happened to Luis Suarez (although I hear you thinking ‘He did not need any winding-up’) and his response was not only fantastic but personal against Hodgson, which you can see by the headline. In a nutshell RH F***** up big time, and we got the backlash of bad management. In psychological terms you build up the opposition, which you might see sometimes, saying how great they are, and that keeps it calm. It is much like calling Mike Tyson’s mother an old s*** as you climb in the boxing ring, I don’t think that is a good move, unless you want to end up in  the Intensive Trauma Unit?

Roy is the most intelligent manager England have had since George Raynor was ignored, along with Jack Charlton, however this was diabolical management leading up to the most important match since England played Germany in that World Cup semi-final under Bobby Robson. Result: Luis Suarez was wound up like a Genuine Snide watch, as Arthur Daley might say, and we paid the price, and the FA, and that idiot Greg Dyke, reward him by backing him for the European Championships. I truly believe that the only man who could get England out of this mess is Terry Venables, the man who did the business in management at both club and international level, I saw Terry the other week at the Football Writers Player of the Year Awards Dinner, where nobody could get a hold of Suarez on that night either – he was tucked up in bed.

I don’t know if ‘El Tel’ would accept the job, but offer it him anyway, which is the only way you’ll find out. He looked in great shape and his inner confidence alone rubs off on you, even if everything he touches turns into Gold, quite the opposite of yours truly. But most of the time you make your only luck – just ask Sir Alex – and Venables can boast doing that wherever he has been except in court with Sir Alan Sugar, which was the trouble in the first place after the European Championships of 1996. I would not mind if those at the FA were squeaky clean…there are more crooks in Soho Square than in Scotland Yard and the House of Commons put together, hold on, maybe not?

Give Venables the job!

I am not creeping as I am thinking of asking ’El Tel’ to write the foreword for this book, like he did a passage for me in The Working Man’s Ballet and I know after reading it he’ll love it and be very positive and put pen to paper.  Thanks Tel. After all I heard something he wrote yesterday from my friend Peter Millard, and that was Venners said I was the reason he finally hung up his boots, after playing against me. In his piece in The Ballet he did mention about our tussle at Shepherds Bush in the FA Cup fifth round in 1970, when our fabulous Chelsea team beat his average QPR team 4-2. I hope by the time you get to this part of the book you have read Terry Venables very ’hard hitting’ foreword?

There are compliments and compliments and the two I hold closest to my heart were the following: Bill Shankly came into our Victoria Ground dressing room after a match against his brilliant Liverpool team to shake my hand, saying, “I thought that I’d seen the greatest performance of all time by Peter Doherty, but you just surpassed it with the greatest 90 minutes I’ve ever seen. “Well done son”.

The other was from my manager, mentor and great friend the late Tony Waddington when he told the ‘Press Gang’ at White Hart Lane, after we won their for the first time in Stoke City’s 100 year history, “Alan Hudson will play for the World XI before he plays for his country”,  and lo and behold someone up there actually listened, that someone was my old mate, Don Revie, the man who hated me as much as he hated Chelsea itself.

It was a long day yesterday and a long time since having a day out with my Uncle George, the man who was at my side all through my 1997/98 ordeal from dressing me in the mornings to pushing me around in my wheelchair through the streets of the part of London that looked so much different since coming out of my coma. Being pushed past Terry Neil’s Sports Bar in Holborn Viaduct seemed stranger as the last time I saw him was when leaving Arsenal in a gust of wind. If leaving London for Seattle was the second most important part of my life (signing for Waddington being the first) then in playing terms, my time at Arsenal was quite the opposite. However, my love for that club, those lads and that stadium, Highbury, remains in tact, even though my form was absolutely torn to shreds by the oddest of injuries and how it all came about. There are several things that haunt me and I blame myself, but there are also several things that are completely out of your hands and this was one of them. I was playing at Stoke City, and on this particular Friday in training I did double the amount of abdominal exercises than I usually do the day before a match, but up till this moment we had no match the following day, so I thought I’d do extra. After showering I walked into the main office and was told to telephone a number regarding ‘Guesting’ to play in a match at Stamford Bridge (a friends Testimonial) and the next thing I knew I was on the M6 to London. I was in great form and wanted to play because of this (when you’re in bad form you’d say ‘no’) and forgetting I had done extra sit-ups (abdominal exercises) I therefore played.  After about 70 minutes of this game it felt as if someone had stabbed me in the gut, though I played on thinking it was some kind of stitch? The result: I played for eighteen months for Arsenal with this knife in my gut, although it was a little different from the one in my back, stuck there by Terry Neil. Ouch!