Kevin McCarra talks to David Pleat (Luton) and Stuart McCall (Bradford) about their memorable last-day relegation escapes
Everyone knows what salvation looks like: it wears a beige suit and a pair of off-white slip-ons. David Pleat must be a little tired of having a long career reduced to that one trademark image, but he will have to put up with it for ever. His jig on the Maine Road pitch after Luton's 1-0 win over Manchester City in 1983 blowtorched all self-consciousness away in the delirium of survival. Escaping relegation is one of the most intense experiences football can offer. Someone will feel just like Pleat tomorrow, even if the dance steps differ.
Every detail of Luton's escape still throbs in his mind. His squad were hurried out of the ground because the City fans were protesting over their club's fall from the old First Division. "Their chairman Peter Swales said to me, 'We will never recover'," said Pleat. "I told him it would be far easier for them to get over it than it would have been for Luton." The Kenilworth Road club were shaken even to be in that situation.
"On the penultimate weekend," Pleat remembers, "a lot of results had to go against us to push us into trouble, but four teams in our part of the table all won. After that we had a midweek match at Old Trafford that I gauged we couldn't win and I played two of our younger players there." Luton were beaten 3-0 by Manchester United, but by then his mind was more on readying everyone for Maine Road.
"You begin by telling the players that they can't feel sorry for themselves, that they are the ones who have got us into the shit and that it is their wives and children who will suffer if we go down. Then, on the Thursday or Friday, you start building them up again so that they feel unbeatable by kick-off."
This season more managers and players yearn for such a thrilling, late reprieve than ever before in Premiership history. Four clubs dread the drop tomorrow and the anguish escalates because each of them has made strenuous efforts without hauling themselves clear. Norwich, Southampton, and Crystal Palace have all won at least one of their last three games and West Brom took a morale-raising draw at Manchester United.
There is no seclusion to be enjoyed in this hard-fought and highly publicised struggle. Stuart McCall was pleased to be free of that sort of attention five years ago, when Bradford City had almost been forgotten. "Nothing was expected of us," said the former midfielder. "We had been cast adrift."
The club would become record-breakers of a kind by retaining Premiership status with the meagre total of 36 points, but 10 of those had to be dragged out of the last five fixtures. Even then, Bradford were aghast to lose their penultimate match at Leicester 3-0.
"I knew a few of their lads," recalls McCall, who now coaches at Sheffield United. "I had played with Tony Cottee at Everton and Matt Elliott was a team-mate with Scotland. I said to them before the game started, 'Don't bust a gut. There's nothing in this for you.' Well it turned out that Cottee scored twice and Elliott got the other. Neil Lennon even sat on the ball - it really pissed me off."
McCall was certainly cured of expecting any form of mercy or aid. Valley Parade was not much of a haven either. The manager Paul Jewell was at odds with the chairman Geoffrey Richmond and would resign in the summer. "Once the squad had gone and he had to spend the afternoon in the office, he wasn't too happy," said McCall.
On their last afternoon of the season Bradford had to get a better result against Liverpool than Wimbledon achieved against Southampton. Gerard Houllier's team should have been motivated by the need of three points that would have qualified them for the Champions League but they were defeated 1-0 by David Wetherall's goal. Elsewhere, Wimbledon were overcome 2-0. "There was a lap of honour and everyone was very happy, but it wasn't like getting promotion," McCall remembers. "It was a feeling of relief."
At the Dell, Wimbledon had been undone by an insidious complacency that could not be shaken off even as their situation deteriorated. Michael Hughes, who will captain Crystal Palace tomorrow, was then with Wimbledon but a broken leg left him an onlooker and he kept an eye on events from a seat in a bar. "We didn't think Bradford would beat Liverpool, so it didn't really matter if we lost to Southampton," he said. "Looking back it was wrong to think that way. It was a double whammy to find out Bradford had beaten Liverpool and we were going down. It was something we had never envisaged the whole season. We had never really been in trouble because we made a decent start, but then we had a terrible run and ended up down the bottom.'"
His disbelief does not, all the same, compare with the malaise that was to grip and ultimately destroy Wimbledon. Luton, following the joy at Maine Road, would stay in the top flight for nine further years, but that was unusual. For many clubs, that sense of security is never attained.
Bradford collapsed in the season that followed the triumph over Liverpool. "By Christmas we knew we were on the slippery slope," said McCall. "The chairman himself has called it a 'mad six months'. We bought Benito Carbone and paid him 40 grand a week at a time when Ryan Giggs, Roy Keane and Paul Scholes weren't earning that. I'm not criticising Benni because he did his best, but we had got by the year before through being organised. When we were only getting 30 per cent of the possession, though, there was nothing Carbone or Dan Petrescu could do for us."
Last weekend Bradford ended the campaign 11th in League One. Whoever prevails tomorrow had better not suppose they have attained a place of permanent haven. The manager who hauls his side to safety ought to be pensive about the times ahead. That, all the same, is not how he will feel at full-time. There will be no future to fret over, just an exultation to obliterate all fear.
