Interview ~ Terry Gibson

Assistant Manager, Terry Gibson.

WWISC: Terry, how did you come to join Wycombe Wanderers?

Terry: Out of the blue, Lawrie game me a call on the day that he was appointed. Now we’ve kept in touch anyway but he normally calls on a Sunday evening and this was a Thursday at 6 o’clock. I know that he wasn’t completely happy at Wimbledon but I had no idea that he was in line for the job at Wycombe. He said, "I’ve been appointed manager at Wycombe, how do you fancy coming along and being my assistant to give me a hand?" I was chuffed even though I wasn’t looking to get back into football. I’d had three years as a coach at Barnet and now I’d started my own business now Lawrie was aware of that and I said to him on the Thursday night that because I was running my own business I had to arrange a few things that would allow me the time (even though I was desperate to say yes on the spot) to allow me to come back into football. So I had to tell him I’d give him the answer on the Sunday. I knew I wanted to do it but I had to organise my business affairs which I did and started on the following Tuesday.

WWISC: Did the performance against Fulham help you at all?

TERRY: I didn’t see it. As I hadn’t said yes I keep out of the way. Preston was the first game I was involved with. Good start, Lawrie got sent off and I was booked.

WWISC: I didn’t know that you were in trouble!

TERRY: Oh yes! I was cautioned. It was me and Paul Emblen after the game. It was a long time ago now, I had a letter but I’ve not heard anything since. It was an eventful day and we’ve had letters from the FA and the referees association both stating that TWO Preston players should have been sent off. Lawrie has been charged and as I said I haven’t heard anything yet.

WWISC: You mentioned that you’ve been running your own business, what were you doing?

TERRY: Well myself and my son came up with an idea which is football merchandising really. We do bicycles in football club colours and with the logos. We do about twenty clubs which now include Manchester Utd, Newcastle, Glasgow Rangers, Tottenham, Arsenal and Chelsea. We also do an England bike as well. We started about three years ago and it took about a year to get up and running and to get the clubs onboard. It’s just gone from there, it’s kept me busy, but the money goes out as quickly as it comes in. I’m enjoying it, I still do it in fact we were off yesterday so I was there working. I’m mixing the two up so I’m busy but it’s a long way from playing. I do a couple of hours in the morning and then shoot back home after to stroll around the shops and see what’s going on. I must admit I wake up some mornings and wonder where I am.

WWISC: Can you give us a résumé of your career?

TERRY: I left school in August 1979 and I was in the first team at Tottenham by December that year, it was literally a week after my 17th birthday. I was a Tottenham supporter as a kid and my first game was against Stoke which was over the Christmas period followed by the two games against Manchester United when Ozzie scored the winner in extra time. It was marvellous for me as I’d only left school three months earlier and I’m playing at Old Trafford in front of over sixty thousand it was an unbelievable start to my career. I was there for three to four years and left in 1983 to join Coventry, that where I think my most productive time as a goal scorer was. I’m one of those players who are more comfortable knowing I’m going to be a regular. You get all types, some players need to be kept on their toes and made aware that they could be dropped at any time. I needed to be fairly confident that I would be playing week in week out. That probably due to the start I had at Tottenham where I would be in for a coupe of games and then out for a couple. At Coventry if I was fit I was playing and I scored fifty-two goal in one hundred and four games over two and a half seasons. That was a really good spell for me and it eventually got me a move to Manchester United. I don’t regret going there for one minute; I was there for eighteen months. When I arrived Mark Hughes and Frank Stapleton were playing upfront, Norman Whiteside was already at the club and Peter Davenport signed the week after me so it was tough to get into the side. It was similar to the set-up at Tottenham which was the reason I left to join Coventry but if Manchester United want you to sign for them, you go! I did have the choice of going back to Tottenham as well. They wanted to buy me back, Luton who were also a good side at the time were interested or I could have stayed at Coventry. I knew I’d be a first team regular at Luton or Coventry but the chance to play at Manchester Utd was too much of a draw. I must admit I had a problem getting on with Ron Atkinson, he was there for the first six months and then Alex Ferguson came in and I had a year under him. It was very difficult as Brian McClaire had joined, so there was another centre forward. Alex Ferguson was as good as gold; I was there at the start of his new regime. I really liked him as a bloke and he was different class as a manager and I’m very pleased to see him doing well. There’s a funny story here as Bobby Gould took me from Tottenham to Coventry and Bob had got the managers job at Wimbledon. I had spoken to Alex Ferguson that I wasn’t very happy not getting a game and I had three years left on my contract. He said that he was more than happy for me to stay but he understood that I’d had eighteen months of not being a regular and the more players that were being brought in that it was becoming harder. He told me that if I could get anyone interested and he’d circulate my name and he said, "Tell Bobby Gould that I want two hundred grand", I said "I haven’t spoken to Bobby Gould", "Swear on your kids lives that Bobby Gould hasn’t rung you up" he replied, "I can’t do that", I said. Then he went out and rung Bobby and the deal was done. That’s how managers used to do deals but it doesn’t happen now that everybody has got a agents. But then it was phone calls here and there between managers to do the deals. To this day I still get on well with him, he’s a really nice bloke. Bobby took me to Wimbledon and I had six years there.

WWISC: You were part of the Wimbledon team with Lawrie that won the FA Cup - that must have been quite an experience?

Terry: I had left Coventry after two and a half years of struggling against relegation and went to Man Utd in the hope that we’d win something and Coventry knocked us out of the FA Cup at Old Trafford in one of my few games and then went on to win the cup in 1987. I was so depressed, it was near enough the same team as when I left and to be honest they had no chance of getting to Wembley an fact the three years I was there we never got passed the forth round and the year I left they came and beat us one-nil at Old Trafford and go on and win it. I felt almost suicidal, you join a big club and get knocked out by the old mob and then later I left and joined Wimbledon and we won it. Bobby Gould was the manager at Coventry and neither of us expected to go to Wembley and win the FA Cup. Bob was in his first year there after taken over from Dave Bassett. We both had a laugh because he’d had the sack from Coventry and then they won the Cup so it was nice for us to get there and do it ourselves. It was a very special day, just getting there was special for a club like Wimbledon let alone beating Liverpool in the final who at that time were without doubt the biggest team in the country. It was eleven years from getting into the Football League to winning the FA Cup which is incredible. Leaving Old Trafford where you were playing in front of over fifty thousand and going to Plough Lane in front of four and a half thousand, but it was so unique you enjoyed it just as much. There wasn’t many there but it was so small it didn’t matter. It was a lovely pitch and we played in a certain way that put two fingers up to everyone else and we were the most despised team for a long time. We used to play in a certain manner and we’d be slaughtered in the press for it but we didn’t care as we’d go somewhere and win one-nil the press would slaughter us because we were the ‘small’ club with players bought from lower divisions but we didn’t care as long as we kept on winning. When you look at the team there was: Dave Bessant, Denis Wise, Terry Felan, John Scales, Keith Curle, Warren Barton and of course Lawrie Sanchez. They were all looked upon as kick and rush players but as the years have proved they could play a bit as well.

WWISC: There was also that man Vinny Jones...

Terry: Fair play to him, he was an inspirational player. He wasn’t a Glenn Hoddle but he had his strengths and people have wanted that in their teams over the years, I enjoyed it a lot. It went a bit pear shaped towards the end and I left but for five years it was enjoyable. You can see that its getting harder for them every year but there are bigger teams then them struggling. Everton and Blackburn who have spent twenty five million in the last year and are still struggling. Wimbledon have just started entering that bracket and have spent ten million in the transfer market this year. They spent seven and a half million just on Hartson alone. A million and a half for Gareth Answoth from Port Vale and the same on Kennedy.

WWISC: So what do you think of our place?

Terry: Well to be honest I’ve known that this is a good club ever since it came into the league. I was coaching at Barnet and everyone in the area knew that Wycombe was a club on the up with a fantastic stadium. I must admit I didn’t know too much about the players before I came and I find it a mystery as to why we are down near the bottom and to be honest we may run out of time. With our current form I don’t understand how we ever got into this position. A couple of players have been brought in, in Sean and Jamie Bates, other than that they are the same players who have been here all season. To see some of the quality players that we’ve got, I just don’t understand it. We’d gone almost the whole season without winning an away game and now we’ve won four and drawn one. The four remaining games are a real crunch for us and they’re games that we really should win. If we win all of them we’ll be safe. With the performances that we’ve put in we should be there but what’s annoying me is the other teams results. Out of our last six games we’ve won four drawn one and lost one and we’re still in the bottom three. Most of the top sides seem to be struggling, you look at the fixtures and you think "that’s a real banker and they’ll do us a favour" and nobody is. Our weekend off was one of the worst I’ve had for a long, long time. I spent an hour and a half watching teletext and Reading and Northampton are nil-nil and when the classified came up Northampton had scored in the eighty-ninth minute and nicked the points. Macclesfield at home to Preston, must be three points for Preston but no Macclesfield grabbed the points again. We feel that we have enough games left to get out of trouble all we need to do is keep winning. I hope that we go to Lincoln with a chance of staying up the defence has been nice and tight lately we’re not letting in to many goals so we’re in with a chance.

WWISC: Who was you biggest influence in football?

TERRY: Bobby Gould! He bought me twice and maybe it’s that we’re both centre forwards but I’ve got a lot of time for Bob. Unlike Ron Atkinson, who was a complete disaster. He didn’t have a clue, training was non-existent under him and nobody knew what they were doing. He’s really just a PR man.

WWISC: You were caretaker manager at Barnet, what happened there?

TERRY: When Terry Bullivent went I was in charge for one game against Cardiff, we won that one-nil. The next game they brought in Alan Mullery as ‘Director of Football’ now I picked to team and it was nil-nil at half time. When we went in we were all sat down including me. No-one was allowed to speak and he told us how good he was and how good he was going to be, nothing about the match and we lost one-nil. Barnet was only a tiny club and there was not enough room for a manager and a director of football so the next day I packed in football and the rest is history.

Ed’s note: What a great interview to do, the man never stops smiling and is so up-beat that I can’t see how we can loose with him involved.