They wanted to jump on their own bandwagon. Bobby Charlton had never made it as a manager. Bobby Moore hadn't either. I think they never stopped trying to put me in the same category. That was the road they went down with me.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
We were having a trial game against Leeds, and Jack Charlton was the boss of Middlesbrough at the time.
Charlton are a team who play well on the ball, but they found it hard to break us down, they didn't really have an out and out chance in front of our goal.
I just didn't want to walk away from football without knowing what it meant to be a manager, or even wondering what it was like to be sacked.
I never had the slightest desire to be a major league manager, and all knew it. But Ban Johnson, Bob Hedges, and Jimmy McAleer persuaded me that the Browns were in a sort of a jam, and it was up to me, as an old standby, to do what I could.
The reason I became a manager was to have full control over training. If you are a coach, you are bound by what the manager wants you to coach. The other reason is that I just like the company of football people.
That first group of Manchester players allowed me to enjoy coaching at a very young age that motivated me to do it. If it wasn't good, I might have made a career change.
I've left Boro in the Premiership, which was always what I wanted to do. Actually that's not quite true. I took them to three cup finals, where they'd never been before. But I had set my eyes on being the first manager in their history to deliver a major trophy.
We did not have anyone like a manager, who could guide us and make it happen.
It has been an honor and a privilege to have had the chance to come back to Liverpool Football Club as manager.
Now Jack Charlton wasn't wrong, I was a bad footballer.