Warnock lifts lid on life at Lane

Phil Jagielka was the last one. It was Michael Brown before that. Craig Short had been one in the past. Even Adrian Littlejohn.

Perhaps 'Brownie' was the type though – the likeable rogue – that Warnock really loved above all else in his 1,000 games- plus career as a manager.

As he says in his book out today "NEIL WARNOCK – Made in Sheffield: My Story" (published by Hodder and Stoughton, 18.99), he liked likeable rogues.

He got the midfield player from Manchester City whose manager, Joe Royle, thought Brown "was trouble".

"He had a reputation as a big-time Charlie and there was talk he'd refused to play in Portsmouth's reserves when on loan there," says Warnock.

"We got him for 400,000 and he became one of the best players I had at Sheffield United. They even let us pay the fee over three years.

"I liked Brownie. He was my favourite. I always have a favourite. Whoever it was the lads called him my son.

"I'd make a joke of it. If it was raining when I was doing a team talk, I'd take my brolly out and hold it over Brownie's head and give him a piece of chewing gum.

"He was a bit of a rogue but I thought it might make him think twice about telling me to f... off if he was my favourite. I liked likeable rogues. I liked the challenge of straightening out a player that no one else wants."

Not the sort of rogues, however, that he took two phones calls from just before a must-win game at Sutton when manager of Scarborough as they neared promotion from the Conference in 1987.

They offered him 20,000 for Scarborough to lose the game, a result that would make Barnet the favourites. His goalie, Kevin Blackwell, was offered 10,000.

The callers got short shrift. Scarborough won and did win promotion.

One player not to be straightened out was Danny Cullip, bought for 250,000.

"I thought he was a leader and a talker. Well, he was a talker alright. It was just that he didn't really say the right things. He talked for effect. Nothing was ever his fault. It was obvious he wasn't fitting in with the rest of the lads.

"After he laced into Michael Tonge one morning at training I told Danny he didn't fit in with us and ought to go. He went ballistic."

He managed to sell him to Forest, then managed by one of the men he hates most in the game, Gary Megson. "They were made for each other," says Warnock.

His hatred of Megson and Stan Ternent has been well documented and he puts his version of the origins of the dislike and of the time Ternent and Warnock's assistant with the Blades, Kevin Blackwell, came to blows at Bramall Lane.

No such problems with Rob Kozluk.

"He was one of the secrets of my success at Bramall Lane," he writes. "He was a great lad. He was the life and soul and one of his party pieces was stealing other players' mobile phones and sending texts as if from them saying things like 'Please play me, gaffer.

I’ll never forget it if you can play me this one time.

“He’d hide cars, fill players’ boots with yoghurt. Every club needs a Kozzie. I don’t think chairmen and directors realise how big a part people like him play. I love that lad. He’s given me so much pleasure over the years and he can play a bit too.”

For the first time in 40 years, Warnock hasn’t been involved in pre-season training. It gave him time to finish the book of his life, his childhood years in Frecheville touched by his mum’s progressive degeneration with multiple sclerosis before she died when he was only 13.

He explains why his allegiance was to the Blades not Wednesday whilst not many Premiership managers will have run the gamut of such jobs... insurance salesman, fruit and veg man, frozen food seller and, well documented, chiropodist. Or managed a Sunday League team (as he did with Todwick).

There’s the playing career (even a team pic of him in Swallownest Miners Welfare’s team) which included Chesterfield, Barnsley and Rotherham and then the colourful but generally successful managerial career.

He says: “As a player, I knew how it should be done but I just couldn’t do it myself but I was confident I could become a leader.”

As might be expected, he points the finger a lot and doesn’t often attach much blame to himself – but does admit he messed up the 2003 Play-off Final against Wolves .

“Part of it was my fault. I made a mistake in my team selection,” he writes. “I felt obliged to play Steve Kabba from the start because of the impact he had in the second leg win over Forest. I felt I owed him a place in the final and it would be unfair to leave him out.

“In my heart of hearts, I knew when we played one up front against Wolves we always beat them. I should have done that... but I changed to accommodate Kabba. That was fatal.”

His summer 2005 talk with Kevin McCabe that spawned the spending spree that set up promotion to the Premiership and how he came to tell McCabe of his resignation, in Brussels, 24 hours after the Wigan defeat, are recalled in detail.

Finally, there’s rather cheesy finish but we sometimes forget that football managers – like referees – are human and have feelings too.