Gordon Strachan interview with Henry Winter: 'I never really enjoyed the World Cups, three weeks in a room which was basically a prison cell, Sir Alex was next door coming to visit every now and then to see if I was still alive'

“I'm keeping great, thank you! Rest of the world's bonkers, but I'm fine!” And Gordon Strachan has every reason to be feeling fine. The sun’s out, Coventry City are up, and Strachan is at the stadium where “the vibe is wonderful, people are buzzing”, including his season-ticket-holding family.

And this was a non-match day. Today brings more celebration with the Championship trophy presentation at the Coventry Building Society Arena.

It will be a poignant moment for Strachan, 69. He was manager when Coventry tumbled out of the top flight 25 years ago. Strachan was under so much pressure during the season that he even got lost.

Walking in a Strachan Wonderland

Waking up the morning after one defeat, Strachan decided to go for a walk to clear his head. He grabbed his nearest clothes, the club suit he had discarded the night before, and donned his smart shoes.

“I put the gear on at the side of my bed. I just couldn't think straight. I thought, ‘well, I’ll have a walk’.”

So he set off, suited and polished, booted, his mind still scrambled. “I live in a place called Stoneleigh Abbey. I ended up in a place called Loxley because I walked 12 miles.” His wife Lesley, came and picked him up. “I was lucky I had a phone on me! That’s the pressure of management.”

Coventry was Strachan’s first managerial job after a glittering career playing under the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson at Aberdeen and Manchester United, Howard Wilkinson at Leeds United and Ron Atkinson at Coventry. He reflects on tense managerial positions he’s had.

“You’re responsible for so many people. As Scotland manager, it’s a whole nation. As Celtic manager, it's people all around the world. As Coventry manager, it's basically the people in the Coventry area, and you understand how important it is to these people. I lived with them, drank with them, celebrated with them, and it (managing a struggling side) became a burden, especially when it's your first job.”

So there’s relief and delight to see Coventry back up. He still lives nearby and knows the painful story of Coventry being homeless, playing games at Northampton Town and Birmingham City, and struggling with owners until local businessman Doug King came in.

“My family’s got four season tickets here. My two grandchildren, my daughter-in-law and her dad come here. They've had to go through everything.

“I keep thinking about Owen, my grandson, going to Birmingham with his grandad. His grandad had to go through this for 25 years. The fans go to Birmingham, 2,000 people going to Northampton. And now you've got 32,000 people turn up every week. It's a long journey for a lot of people.”

Owen had a long journey the other night, heading up to Ewood Park to see Coventry seal promotion. “He's in trouble by the way!” Strachan laughs. “It was his Nana's birthday that Friday, and he decided he was going to Blackburn-Coventry. He's bombed down the list of people in the will! He's right down at the bottom there!”

Still, Owen’s team are at the top. “It’s absolutely fantastic, for me, it really is,’’ Strachan says. ‘You know how important it is for everybody here. It's not a really affluent city. It's a city where the vibe of the community depends on the football team.

"There’s even been sunshine as well since the Blackburn game. It helps a wee bit for me because at that time, when we did go down, it wasn't a good period for myself and supporters. It's great that people can finally stop holding their breath, breathe again and enjoy football. I don't think any club have worked harder than Coventry over the last 25 years. I don't think there's a story like that in the last 25 years.

“The club has foundations now. There were no foundations 12 years ago. Where are they playing? Who's owning the club? It’s been confusing. Who was a leader? Now they've got leadership. King bought out SISU Capital in 2022.

“Over the last four years, they've got the man at the top setting standards, all the way through the club.” Mark Robins and Frank Lampard also set standards. “Frank’s been fantastic,” Strachan continues. “But there was a hand-in-hand combination here: Mark and Frank. I know this may be heresy but Mark is up there with Jimmy Hill. He's that important to the club.”

Robins guided Coventry to promotion from League Two in 2018 and from League One into the Championship in 2020. “The Mark Robins thing is huge for me (acknowledging his legacy). Huge.”

Strachan has known Robins since 1984. “Mark used to clean my boots at Manchester United. He was an introvert. It was the same in management. That went against Mark. Mark wasn't at his best in front of the camera. Mark was at his best running a football team. And when you think of his record at Coventry, when there were big jobs coming up, he was never mentioned. It was [his] image. It was like Howard Wilkinson. Image.

“There's other people in football called ‘legends’ for staying up, for the performance in front of the cameras. You tend to forget there are real legends - Howard Wilkinson and Mark Robins - because they are so understated. We pushed them away, ‘right, we'll talk about somebody else’.

"When Coventry got promoted, a lot of thoughts should go to Mark and his staff. Frank picked up the ball and ran with it. It wasn't easy for Frank to take over from Mark. It shows a lot about Frank's attitude to life.”

Lampard is a competitive character. He’s also fair-minded and paid tribute to the work that Robins put in. “I've known Frank a long time,” Strachan recalls. “Have you ever looked at that picture when Frank makes his debut? I'm standing beside him at West Ham.”

It’s a famous picture from January 1996 of Harry Redknapp sending Lampard on at Upton Park while Strachan waits to come on for Coventry. Redknapp puts an arm round both, old and young. “I'm 39, Frank’s 17,” Strachan says. Lampard’s first touch was a clearing header.

“Frank wasn't the perfect player when he was 17, 18,” Strachan continues. “This is a guy who moulded himself into a player. Got fitter, stronger, understood what his role in the team was, what his assets were.

"Frank was a down-to-earth footballer who understood he had the talent, but his talent was no use without his teammates. He's had great days when he wins games. I've seen him in days when it’s not come off, but he's been a great team- mate.

There's the football background that his father's brought him up with: ‘you have to be a good team-mate’. Frank’s taken that into management. He's a good team-mate to his players and his staff.”

Strachan enjoys seeing British managers doing well. “Foreigners? We brought some stinkers here. We’ve had some great ones as well. Journalists are the same, fans are the same, when they hear a foreign voice, Dutch, French or Spanish, they think there's something far more intelligent in their words than we've got.

"My wife hears a French guy speaking, she’s drooling. And I’ve just said the same thing! Eric Cantona used to speak about trawlers and things like that, right? In Scotland, they'd call you Rab C. Nesbitt if you come away with that!

“We fall in love with this kind of accent coming from an exotic place, so it must be exotic football. But what are they actually saying?! We have good coaches coming through. Eddie Howe’s as good as anybody that's going. But he doesn't project himself as well as other people.”

Strachan is currently technical director at Dundee, his managerial days ending with Scotland in 2017. “When anger goes, you can't be a manager any more. Sir Alex, who I worked with for nine years, when he lost that anger, he wasn’t the same Sir Alex Ferguson. People said Arsene Wenger was the most laid-back man as a manager. Well, he got in more trouble than me with the FA! Absolutely!

“I know far more about the game right now, about systems and players, than I did when I was 40, but I do not have the anger and drive you need. I see it in some managers that the anger and drive has gone, and they still pretend they've got it.

"There's a lot of managers still going right now throughout the world who are caricatures of themselves, of that original manager 10-15 years ago. You can sniff it. Players can sniff it as well.”

Strachan argues that those who develop into leaders early inevitably run out of drive at some point. “I made my debut (for Dundee) at 15, I captained my team at 18. That drive and anger has always been tested. We had to fight for every win and that takes anger and drive.”

It gets drained. “Bryan Robson was leading us (at United), went into management and there’s a point as a manager you think ‘that drive’s gone now’.”

Yet Carlo Ancelotti is a serial winner, and he doesn’t seem fuelled by anger. “When you are constantly winning like Ancelotti, your anger is only tested so often. Ancelotti is basically ‘the freakiest’ because he’s an incredibly successful player and manager. I don't know if there's anybody else like him.”

Strachan is still pretty competitive but frequently meets more than his match. “I play golf with Kenny (Dalglish) a lot, and he's still far more competitive than me. Even at 75. I go home and think he's still beating me at 75. It's depressing. He's been beating me at football for 40 years. My competitive side has subsided. I don't take getting beat as badly as I did when I was a kid or younger manager. You need that anger and the love of the game to continue. I've lost the drive and anger. But I still have the love of the game.”

Strachan wore No.7 - and Dalglish No.8 - for Scotland at the 1982 World Cup in Spain. Dalglish was injured for 1986 but Strachan went, and didn’t enjoy the experience in Mexico. “We were unfortunate. We had three teams, Uruguay, Denmark and West Germany who were in the top 10 of world rankings. And we put up some good performances, shouldn’t have got beaten by Denmark (1-0) and West Germany (2-1 after Strachan opened the scoring).”

Scotland then drew with Uruguay, whose spoiling tactics after losing a man early enraged Ferguson. Scotland’s manager lambasted the opposition as “a disgrace”. Strachan calls it “just a farce of a game”.

“I never really enjoyed the World Cups,” Strachan recalls of his trips to Spain and Mexico, adding that barring Uruguay, “I just enjoyed the games.” He felt isolated the rest of the time.

“We disappeared and left our families for six weeks. In Mexico, you had one phone call a week. Three minutes to speak to your family. ‘How you getting on?’ ‘OK.’ ‘Kids?’ ‘All right.’ ‘We need to pay that bill.’ ‘Good, good, can we go on holiday?’ ‘Don't know when.’ ‘If we win a couple of games in the World Cup, we might be able to afford a three-piece suite’.” And then the line would go dead. Time’s up.

“In '86, I spent three weeks in a room which was basically a prison cell. I didn't have a headboard. I couldn't put my head back. There was only Mexican TV. Sir Alex was next door. He was coming to visit me every now and then. Just to see if I'm still alive!

"The only good thing about it was the games. The rest of it was torture. It's nothing like it is today. Now, because of technology, you're never away from your family, you can speak to them every day, you've got social media, you can watch television, watch films. We had nothing like that.”

Steve Clarke’s men will be well looked after. And well-motivated. “Listen, I think anybody who plays Scotland – whether Haiti, Morocco or Brazil – will be thinking, ‘I'd rather play somebody else because this team knows what they're doing. They're functional. They’re physical, hard to beat. They've got Scott McTominay to score goals, they've got a lot going for them'.

"We'll get four points easily to qualify (for the knockouts).” It’s proving quite the year for Strachan’s old teams. And he’s doing just fine.

All Together Better – To find out more about Coventry Building Society, visit thecoventry.co.uk