Why Did Steve Coppell Resign?
On 6 October 1996, Manchester City’s six-week wait for a new manager finally came to an end. A staggering 35 names had been linked with the vacancy following the sacking of Alan Ball, but City chairman Francis Lee was confident he now had his man.
In his first press conference as City’s new manager, Steve Coppell exuded confidence as he spoke with relish of the challenge ahead. Bright and articulate, the 41-year-old had taken Crystal Palace to the top flight in 1989 and the FA Cup final in 1990—with only modest resources.
Money was tight at City, who were now in 14th place in the second tier of English football. But Coppell told reporters he was "excited about the potential" of the club, and appeared to be aware of the size of the task that awaited him. Luckily, he appeared to be in it for the long haul. "I’m an animal who tends to roost wherever he stays," he informed the press. “I was at United and Palace for nine years apiece, and I hope that City is a long-term rather than a short-term move.”
Just 33 days later Coppell quit—a decision that not only shocked City fans, but those closest to him at the club. "There was no indication whatsoever that he was going to walk away from the club," said Eddie McGoldrick, whom Coppell signed from Arsenal for £300,000 on Oct 25. "Everything seemed fine, so it was a total shock, especially for me. Steve was just beginning to turn things around and get his way, gradually stamping his authority on the football club." Even more shocked was Coppell’s assistant, Phil Neal, who recalled:
"He just came to us in training and said: ‘You take the first team. I’m going. I just looked at him and said: ‘WHAT?’ It was a bolt out of the blue and he didn’t explain his decision at all."
It wasn’t long before the rumour mill was in full swing, fuelled by a new-fangled invention called the internet that football fans were starting to embrace. They were centred on Coppell’s physical appearance at his final press conference, one which shocked assembled reporters. In Blue Moon Rising, BBC Greater Manchester Radio journalists Andy Buckley and Richard Burgess give a first-hand account of his physical deterioration:
'Coppell, looking pale and gaunt, twitched nervously as he sat down next to his chairman...Glancing up just briefly, he barely paused as he read out a pre-prepared statement word for word.'
Paul Hince, the former City player-turned-reporter went even further: “He looked physically ill. Really ill. He had lost a great deal of weight in a short time, and I’m not talking about a pound or two. He looked almost skeletal.” In Stuart Roach’s Steve Coppell: On a Wing and a Prayer, Hince reveals more detail:
“We were told that there was no point asking a question because it wouldn’t be answered and that, coupled with how ill he looked, was what led to rumours that there was something seriously wrong with him. All sorts of rumours started to circulate, not least AIDS. Our news desk reporters were phoning all the AIDS hospitals and asking: ‘Can you put me through to Mr Coppell?”’
As the AIDS rumours began to spread so too did the assumption that Coppell must be gay. And with one small leap of the imagination, rumours that he was having an affair with a City player took hold.
On his first day at City, Coppell had been cautious about the need to rebuild. “I don’t know if I’ll be dipping into the transfer market yet,” he told reporters. “I want to see what talent I’ve got here before I start spending money.” But he quickly discovered that talent was in short supply. In the opinion of Hince: “The whole team needed to be rebuilt.”
Worse still, Coppell soon realised that City’s resources were stretched to breaking point. In the week he resigned, the club announced record losses of £2m for the year, while the debt had ballooned to £26m. The perilous financial state was a result of the shocking neglect during Swales’ last years as chairman.
When Francis Lee and his consortium took charge of City in February 1994, they were astonished at the level of neglect at the club. One of the items on the agenda at Lee’s first board meeting was the need to spend £15,000 repairing the boiler which provided hot water to the changing rooms. The boiler had been in need of repair for three years and some of the visiting teams had complained about having to wash with cold water. “I went down to have a look at it, and there were bits of sticking plaster all over it. It looked like The African Queen,” Lee told the Guardian's Bill Borrows. But that was the least of the his worries.
The Taylor Report, published in January 1990 in the wake of the Hillsborough Disaster, required clubs to have all-seater stadiums by August 1994. Yet no money had been put aside to rebuild the Kippax stand, a project that would cost £11.5million that summer. The rights to the club badge had been sold to a person who had also been paying an annual flat fee for control of the souvenir shop, worth just £60,000 a year to the club in 1994. Lee quickly commissioned a new club badge and took back control of the souvenir shop (after it was redeveloped it made an estimated £2.5 million-a-year by 1998).
The club were on their overdraft limit and owed money for transfers that had been spread over two or three years with ridiculous clauses for extra payments. “If Keith Curle had been picked for England on a regular basis he would have bankrupted the club,” Lee told Borrows. “We had to give Wimbledon (his former club) a certain amount of money, tens of thousands, every time he won a cap.”
As a result, proven Premier League players Paul Walsh, Terry Phelan, Tony Coton, Garry Flitcroft, Keith Curle and Niall Quinn were sold. Alan Ball’s replacements, which included Gerry Creaney (signed from Portsmouth for £400,000 cash plus £700,000-rated Walsh), Martin Phillips (£500,000 from Exeter) and Nigel Clough (£1m from Liverpool) were proving far from adequate.
Desperate for investment, a whole host of would-be investors smelt an opportunity. In July 1996 the Sunday People claimed Norwegian fish food and shipping tycoons, Kjell Inge Rokke and Bjorn Rune Gjelsten, were preparing a bid. That month a consortium represented by banker Stuart Barclay, former City player Jim Melrose and accountants Coopers and Lybrand approached the club with a reported £70m investment proposal on behalf of an unnamed Arab investor (rumoured to be Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Tala, who had bailed out EuroDisney). The News of the World meanwhile claimed that a racing tipster organisation called the "Winning Line" had written to MCFC to apply for the 30% stake owned by Stephen Boler and Brenda Swales, widow of Peter Swales, and to take an option on the remaining shares.
In September, Lee revealed he had made confidentiality agreements with six possible investors in the previous few months, but nothing had come of any of them. Rumours of potential investors include a group of current shareholders in Manchester United, newspaper owner Eddie Shah, and Wigan owner Dave Whelan (who strongly denied it), while Sheffield United chairman Mike McDonald claimed he had been approached three times about investing in City. Talks were held with Chester City chairman and Manchester United season-ticket holder Mark Guterman over a £35 million takeover (Guterman, who sold Chester's ground to supermarket chain Morrison's after becoming chairman in 1995, took the club into insolvency in 1998).
And the stories kept coming. A London-based consortium headed by "football consultant" Alex Finn claimed it wanted to invest £15 million into and install Chris Waddle as manager, while Carlisle chairman Michael Knighton revealed that he was asked to join a consortium interested in City but turned them down. In the month of Coppell’s appointment City were in preliminary discussions with four groups, including tentative talks with Conrad International, who had failed in their attempt to take over at Leeds earlier in the year.
On the day of Coppell’s arrival, the Sunday Telegraph’s business pages carried this assessment of the club’s plight.
‘Manchester City has debts of more than £10m, a spiralling wage bill with player inflation of more than 25 per cent and falling revenues after being relegated last season. Each week the side barely breaks even and has suffered the ignominy of being unceremoniously bundled out of the Coca-Cola Cup by lowly Lincoln City. Manchester City trades on John Jenkins's Ofex market, and is one of the more liquid stocks. There are 12.5m shares which were listed at 62p but are now priced at 115p, giving Manchester's second side a market capitalisation of just £14.38m, less than 5 per cent of the value of its neighbour. The original plan of Francis Lee, City's chairman, was to bring former glory to Maine Road before going for a full listing. But the club is in turmoil and must stop sinking before it can start floating.'
According to Hince:
“The story at the time was that he’d given Coppell six matches to assess the team; Steve must have gone and told him what he wanted and Francis looked at it and said ‘you’re not getting it.’”
There were rumours that Watford’s Kevin Miller, Coppell’s first choice for a new keeper, was deemed too expensive at £2m, as was £1m-rated Iain Feuer at Luton. Mark Schwarzer proved a more realistic target at £250,000, but after spending a week at City he opted for Bradford.
If problems at work weren’t enough, Coppell was also experiencing difficulties in his personal life. According to PFA boss Gordon Taylor, Coppell placed huge importance on his family life:
“Steve was very much a family man. A lot of football things used to happen on a Sunday but Steve wouldn’t attend. He was always adamant that Sunday was the time with his family, especially his son.”
But Coppell’s family life was now disintegrating. After moving up to Manchester, his wife Jane remained in Surrey with their 10-year old son. According to Harry Harris, who helped write Coppell’s autobiography, Touch and Go:
“During that time at City he was going through a divorce, and he was terribly upset at not seeing his son every day.”
Added to that was the strain of dealing with a hands-on chairman. Although Harris did not detect any awkwardness in his relationship with Lee, Dave Bassett, who had turned down the City job, believed it had been a factor. “I was aware that Francis Lee would be too powerful and too demanding for Coppell’s personality which would result in wearing him out,” Bassett told Roach. “I reckon Franny Lee would have driven him mad”.
Coppell had never managed a club with such high expectations, and intense media scrutiny, as City. According to Roach: “City’s expectations were hard for Coppell to live up to, while his own expectations of the support he was to receive looked unlikely to be met”.
“Looking back he looked like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders,” defender Kit Symons recalled. “He lost a lot of weight, went really gaunt and he didn’t look good. He was normally such a healthy-looking feller.”
City had now slipped down to 17th in the league, five places off the relegation zone. According to Hince, there was a rumour that Coppell told Lee that City were going to go down with the resources they had available and vowed, “You are not taking me down with you”.
Roach concluded:
"Coppell wanted out, there and then. But Lee and his board were wary about treating the British football public to yet another City circus. They told Coppell he was free to leave, but only if he publicly shouldered the humiliation of his departure. Desperate to get out as soon as he could, Coppell agreed and, in my view, he had regretted his agreement ever since."
In a 2012 radio interview with GMR, Lee revealed that he got a phone call from a distressed Coppell the evening before his departure. After sending a car to chauffeur him to Lee’s home, Coppell spent the evening explaining his predicament to the City chairman, who feared his manager might be suicidal. The following morning Lee announced the manager had quit on “medical advice”, while Coppell, “looking pale and haunted, read a prepared statement which revealed that the pressures of the job had ‘completely overwhelmed him and made him ill’". Lee later offered Coppell a severance payment of £30,000, even though he was not obliged to. Coppell wrote back declining the offer, "because I haven’t earned it".
About the only man who wasn’t shocked by his departure was Alan Pardew, who played for Coppell at Palace. “If he is not happy, if he doesn’t feel right and doesn’t think it’s working, he will be man enough to walk away”, Pardew said. “I was at Barnet at the time and, although I never knew what happened, I just remember seeing him on the TV and thinking, that is so Steve.”
In Alan Ball’s autobiography, Playing Extra Time, the chapter dealing with his time at City was called 'My Mistake'. It is clear that Coppell too had realised he had made a big mistake coming to the club. The twin pressures of being trapped in a job he didn’t want, while watching his family life disintegrate 200 miles away, was taking its physical toll.
And the only way out of his personal hell was through the front gate.
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