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189 pages

English

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Brian Horton is one of the most respected managers in English football. As a player, manager and assistant, he took part in over 2,000 games - in Britain only Sir Alex Ferguson can claim more. Horton's career started in the World Cup summer of 1966 and ended over half a century later. His playing career began unceremoniously when Port Vale bought him from non-league Hednesford for the price of a pint of shandy. But later, as Brighton captain, he became a club legend, skippering the Seagulls from the Third to the First Division. He continued this success at Luton and Hull, before managing the Yorkshire side. Horton further distinguished himself as boss at Oxford and then Manchester City, keeping the Citizens in the Premier League for two thrilling seasons. Spells at Huddersfield, Brighton, Port Vale and Macclesfield followed before Brian was catapulted back to the Premier League at Hull City as assistant manager to Phil Brown. He continued to work with Brown at Preston, Southend and Swindon until his retirement in 2018.

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Inglaterra

England

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Publié par	Pitch Publishing Ltd
Date de parution	24 août 2020
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781785317439
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0500€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Brian Horton, with Tim Rich, 2020
Every effort has been made to trace the copyright.
Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316685
eBook ISBN 9781785317439
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Contents
Foreword by David Pleat
Sold for a Pint of Shandy
Valiant
Seagull Special
Alan Mullery (manager, Brighton and Hove Albion 1976-1981)
Mark Lawrenson (Brighton and Hove Albion 1977-1981)
Hatter
David Moss (Luton Town 1978-1985)
Tiger
Dennis Booth (Hull City 1980-1988)
The Maxwell House
Mark Lawrenson (manager Oxford United 1988)
David Moss (assistant manager, Oxford United 1988-1993)
Citizen
Uwe R sler (Manchester City 1994-1998)
Terrier
Andy Morrison (Huddersfield Town (1996-1998)
Wandering Seagull
Valiant Again
Silkman
Tiger Two
Paul Duffen (chairman Hull City 2007-2009)
Here, There and Everywhere
A Life in Football
Val Horton
Matthew Horton
Lucy Horton
This book is dedicated to my wife, Val, and my children, Matthew and Lucy. To their partners, Emily and Simon. To Lucy s stepdaughter, Imogen. To Val s son Simon and grandchild Layla. It is also dedicated to all the players and staff I have worked with throughout my career.
Foreword by David Pleat
H AVING been fortunate to spend a wonderfully enjoyable career as player, manager and director of football, I have met many hundreds of characters in the game; the great, the not so great, the talents, the wasters, the good, the bad and the ugly.
I was honoured and proud to be asked to pen a foreword for this diamond of a man. He was and is without doubt the most influential person I have had the pleasure to be associated with in the game.
As a player, he was a rock, a captain courageous, an inspirational leader but, most of all, a trusted confidant on team matters while at Luton Town. He was a born leader, destined to be successful.
Somehow, I persuaded a man who had been revered at Brighton to head the project on the field at Kenilworth Road.
I signed Brian after Peter Taylor, a lifelong friend, had assured me that: He will never let you down. My assistant at the time, Ken Gutteridge, was equally adamant.
Bringing him to Kenilworth Road at the age of 32 proved to be a masterstroke as my young, exciting team of the early 1980s respected and trusted him as captain of a side that became everyone s second-favourite team.
In 1981/82, as we stormed the heights to become champions of Division Two, all in football recognised the contribution of my piratical figure, leading our imaginative team. He was the catalyst that catapulted Luton to the top flight.
Within the club, Brian was the glue. Players confided in him and trusted him as he ran the dressing room in his diplomatic style. The players would have sensed that he had my ear, too. He knew what to say and when to say it. They confided in him to such an extent because they knew he would never betray a confidence from either myself or from the playing staff.
He was a leader in every sense of the word, a man with committed principles, determined in all he did and possessed with a great will to win. At 32, he provided the example to help players at our cramped ground at Kenilworth Road become full internationals. Ricky Hill, Brian Stein and Paul Walsh were call capped for England while Mal Donaghy became a mainstay of the Northern Ireland team for many years.
Everybody reminds me of the way I danced on to the pitch at Maine Road after we had saved ourselves from relegation by beating Manchester City in 1983. They seldom mention that the first man I embraced on the pitch was Brian Horton.
His performances had so often made a difference to our club. We had relegated Manchester City but as I told their distraught chairman, Peter Swales, immediately afterwards if they went down, Manchester City would go back up because of the sheer size of the club. If little Luton Town were relegated, I feared we would never return to the big time.
As a wing-half, used centrally, he could tackle, pass precisely and was superb at providing cover when it came to clearing up danger. A fierce competitor, he ran a fine disciplinary line - more than once a referee looked petrified when encountering the Horton stare after he had been punished for a midfield challenge. He almost seemed to make the referee feel guilty!
It was a nailed-on certainty that he would go on to manage over 1,000 games, to become a member of an exclusive group. All his qualities as a true leader came to fruition in management. When Don Robinson, chairman of Hull City, asked me for a view on Brian s suitability to lead his club, I told him with 100 per cent confidence that he could sleep easy at night if he took him.
His subsequent career was exceptional. Dedicating himself to the impossible job of football management, he survived falling off the managers roundabout with graft, knowledge and people skills, mainly without the resources of grander clubs.
Experiencing the highs and lows, taking the twin impostors in his stride, he worked diligently from Hull to the biggest stage at Manchester City.
A tiny fraction of players begin at the bottom, in non-league football, and rise to the top. To go on and achieve the magic 1,000 games as a manager shows a wonderful dedication.
Brian Horton was special. A leader of men, a true gentleman and an example to any aspiring young footballer. I hope the book will be a great read.
David Pleat, March 2020
Sold for a Pint of Shandy
I WAS a miner s son born in a coalfield that is now largely forgotten.
The North Staffordshire Coalfield was not vast like South Wales or Yorkshire but tight, compact and full of pits. Before the First World War, Cannock Chase produced five million tons of coal a year. Hednesford, where I grew up, was a mining town. Its football team were known as The Pitmen .
My father, Richard, whom everyone called Dick Horton, was a miner, who had a passion for horses - there was not a day that went by that he did not put a bet on one. His other passion was football and in particular Wolverhampton Wanderers.
When I was growing up, he would take me everywhere across the Midlands to watch a game but Molineux was special. We would sit on the wall behind the goal. Ron Flowers, who was my hero, Peter Broadbent and Norman Deeley were wonderful footballers.
When I first started watching them, Wolves were the best team in England. In 1959, when I was ten, they retained the league title. The next year, they won the FA Cup.
I was far too young to have gone but in 1954 they had beaten the fantastic Hungarian side, Honved, led by Ferenc Puskas under the floodlights of Molineux. It was the first time a white ball had been used in England and it made Wolves fans believe that they supported not just the best team in England but maybe the world.
If I wanted a pair of new boots, or the new white ball, my father would do a double shift at the pit. We lived on a Coal Board estate and in front of the houses there was a big field where we played. We made a football pitch on it and after a week all the white would have come off the ball.
My mum, Irene, worked as a cook at Cannock Grammar School. She was the one who ran our household. She was a very strong woman and it was perhaps from her that I got my character and determination.
My older brother, John, I don t think ever kicked a ball in his life. His passion was cars and he went on to own his own garage and became a very successful businessman.
My younger brother, Alan, was more academic than either of us and worked for the Professional Footballers Association sorting out mortgages for players.
My father was not from a long-standing mining family. His father had a business building sheds and it was taken over by my uncle - Dick s brother. When my dad was injured in the mines, my uncle asked him to work with them and I watched them demolish an RAF camp in Wiltshire and then take away the biggest pieces of wood to turn into sheds.
However, they say that once you are a miner, you are always a miner. Dad couldn t stand a working life away from the coalface and he went back down the pit. He loved pit life, the miners talk. Most nights he would put on his collar and tie and go down the pub to continue the conversations.
He died in a tragic accident. John owned the King Ford franchise in Stoke and sponsored many of the Stoke City players as well as Mark Lawrenson when he was at Liverpool.
John lived in a large house in Staffordshire and, after he had retired, Dad would come and work in the garden or help him with odd jobs around the house.
The house had a sweeping staircase that curved upwards. Dad wanted to climb up a ladder to clean a window but John s wife was about to go out and she said: Don t go up without me holding the ladder. It s not safe. When she came back, she found my father dead at the foot of the stairs. He had gone up the ladder and fallen.
Much as my father loved mining and miners, he did not want any of his sons to follow him down the colliery shaft. When I was 15, I was taken down the pit. I was by then desperate to make it as a professional