SOUTHAMPTON’S most successful manager, Lawrie McMenemy, has today released his much anticipated autobiography, entitled ‘A Lifetime’s Obsession.’ In the book, McMenemy talks about his life, from growing up in the north east and serving with the Coldtsream Guards, through to his entrance into football management through to his time with England and, of course, his amazing history with Saints.

Today, the Daily Echo presents excerpts from the book, including his strained relationship with another Saints legend, Terry Paine.

  • WHAT I had not considered when I signed my contract was that my main adversary would be Terry Paine, the one player I had believed would be my on-field champion. I knew Terry as a brilliant footballer who had been a member of Sir Alf Ramsey’s 1966 World Cup winning squad, that he was current captain of Southampton, universally revered, often feared and surely mine and Southampton’s great asset. If only it had turned out that way. Instead he was a major problem I found myself having to confront.

I was to be given the title of manager designate and it was a mistake on my part accepting what was a title that meant nothing. To the outsider, Ted would carry on as manager with me working alongside. The reality was I was in charge from the moment I put pen to paper.

  • IT WAS me who took them down and I hold my hands up to that.

There are times when I have blamed Paine for costing us relegation.

That highlights the anger I had for the man and more so as the months passed with the stories coming back to me about him being the main force in the dressing room. That’s fine until suspicion becomes proof that his presence is undermining what you, as manager, are trying to build. We never had stand-up rows, it was never face-to-face, but it gradually dawned on me, too late as it happens, that I was not his favourite person.

I think it would have happened to anybody who took over but, for me, his attitude was unforgivable. John McGrath alerted me to the dominance Terry had over the club down through the players and maybe over Ted. I had decided at the outset to have John’s experience in central defence despite the fact I knew his legs would not carry him through major matches. But with his presence, confidence and personality he would also work as one of my coaches to younger players. It would allow him to know what was going on throughout the playing side. Being a staff man also allowed him to talk more openly to me. That was his job. He started dropping little bits in about Terry. John told me how Terry, in the past, would say after training on a Friday that he was going up to Ted’s room to pick the team for the next day.

It may have been no more than bravado but it’s the sort of talk that can be disruptive in the dressing room and needed to be eradicated. It may have been his way of telling the rest of the squad he had a very close relationship with Ted, and he had.

  • WHEN I arrived he was 34 years old so his best days had obviously gone.

I have been trying to find the reason for his open animosity towards me and it was not until he commented on the appointment of Andre Villas-Boas at Chelsea in a weekly newspaper column some years ago (we both contribute to our local paper, the Southampton Daily Echo) the answer was staring me in the face. In it he stated he’d never thought much of managers who hadn’t played at the highest level. That was it. I had not made it as a professional. He simply didn’t rate me.

  • I WAS listening to a series of troubling stories about Terry Paine’s influence among the young players in particular.

I remember John (McGrath) told me how Terry would come in, say after a defeat before my arrival, when the rest of the lads would be sitting around, heads down. Paine would call across the dressing room: “That cross I put in, did you slip, or did the defender push you?”

He was saying that he had done the right thing and it was the other player who was useless. Constant digs like that can upset the spirit in the dressing room.

In disbelief I said to John: “Surely you didn’t stand for stuff like that, did you?”

He said he didn’t and maybe old pros wouldn’t but it could erode the confidence of the younger ones.

I guess they took it as normal behaviour. Paine would never try that on with Ossie. Peter effectively ended Terry Paine’s dominance in the dressing room.

  • I DECIDED not to play Terry Paine for our final match at Everton. We needed to win. Even if we did it would still mean Birmingham having to lose their final match for us to avoid the drop. Having said that, and forgetting my resentment of his attitude, it was probably a decision a manager would make anyway about a 35-year-old winger in a difficult and physically tough away game. When I told him the next day that he would not be selected he said: “Can I ask you something?”

I thought he was going to ask why I had decided not to select him.

I should have known better.

“Have I got to travel?” was his question.

I said: “Yes, you are substitute.”

Paine added: “I’d rather not.”

He didn’t travel and it was later I discovered he spent the day at Devon and Exeter races.

So there you have it. The day his club were relegated the captain was at the races. Surely if Terry cared he would have wanted to be there, though there is nothing his presence as substitute could have done at that stage to reverse our fate.

  • WE DID meet near the end of the 2013-14 season at St. Mary’s. I was a guest in the hospitality box shared between Leon Crouch and Pat Trant, two genuine supporters of the club. It was Leon’s money that kept them afloat when bankruptcy was a possibility and it was Leon who paid for a decent statue of Ted Bates to be displayed outside the main entrance to replace one ludicrous, comical statue that had been commissioned. Mike Channon was also a guest when Paine, now club president turned up in the box.

He made something of a fuss of me. There was a bear hug and his general demeanour suggested life had not been the same since we had parted company all these years ago. I was taken by surprise and pleasantly so. I said to Anne that maybe I had been harsh in my assessment of him, particularly for this book. A short time later I was told Paine had bad-mouthed me, quite deliberately to Southampton’s new chairman Ralph Krueger. He had put the poison in before he had acted like we were long lost brothers. The leopard does not change its spots!

Lawrie McMenemy A Lifetime's Obsession My Autobiography, RRP £18.99, Trinity Mirror Sport Media. On sale now from Amazon http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/1910335282/ref=s9_simh_gw_g14_i1_r?pf_rd_m=A3P5ROKL5A1OLE&pf_rd_s=desktop-2&pf_rd_r=0DT7RNDBE69NKVHSYE14&pf_rd_t=36701&pf_rd_p=867551807&pf_rd_i=desktop

Ebook also now available

Meet Lawrie McMenemy at St Mary's Megastore on Saturday (9 April) at 11.30am signing his new book.