Driven by a fear of failure

Blackburn's manager Graeme Souness tells Roy Collins he profits from adversity

Graeme Souness can just about bring himself to admit that he was a tad out of order when, as a precocious teenager at Spurs, he gave Bill Nicholson so much grief that the great man eventually flogged him to Middlesbrough to get some peace.

But there is still defiance, if not a trace of pride, in his voice as he recalls those days because deep down, and despite all his successes, Souness still thinks of himself as a man fighting against the odds. And regrets? On that score he is far closer to Edith Piaf than Frank Sinatra.

Souness is still capable of howling at a crescent moon, let alone a full one. All it takes is a dodgy offside decision, a lack of effort from one of his Blackburn Rovers players or the suggestion that his alma mater, Spurs, are favourites for tomorrow's English League Cup final.

He says: "If you play a London team, you're always the underdogs. Tottenham are a big football club with a history of winning cups and they generate more interest than a team from our part of Lancashire.

"But we're not going there with an inferiority complex. We're going there to win and to enjoy ourselves. I certainly don't see myself as an underdog. Rightly or wrongly, I've always fancied myself in football matches and I fancy my team tomorrow."

Souness, of whom it was once said that, were he made of chocolate, he would eat himself, fancied himself so much in four years at Tottenham that he admits "driving them mad" with his insistence that he was worthy of a first-team place.

He says: "I must have been a pain in the backside to Bill Nicholson. The team sheet would go up on Friday lunchtime and I would be straight round to his office, demanding to see him. I was 17 and I would say, what's going on, why am I not in the team? And the midfield players then were Alan Mullery, the England captain, Martin Peters, who was 10 years ahead of his time, whatever that meant, and Steve Perryman, who was a couple of years older than me. But I thought I was better than them."

He appears on the point of contrition until asked how he would react if one of Blackburn's 17-year-olds acted the same way. Then he gives away his real feelings by admitting: "I would say, I think that boy has got a chance."

Souness's towering self-belief and desire to win has brought him a collection of medals. But his career is fuelled not just by what he describes as "the unique taste of success" but by the whip marks on his back from his few failures.

He has managed teams in six cup finals, four at Rangers and one each at Liverpool and Galatasaray. But, significantly, it is the one he lost in Scotland that he recalls. "One defeat too many," he growls.

His time as Liverpool manager, where he required heart bypass surgery, ended in an unhappy resignation, another chapter, like the one at Spurs, which rather than shattering his confidence, merely franked his view of the world.

He says: "You get rejection throughout your life and that shapes you eventually to what you become. No one's career is full of highs. Somewhere down the line you are going to get kicked where it hurts and it's how you deal with that.

"Spurs was the first rejection for me but it wasn't the last and I'm sure I've got a few more ahead of me. Being sacked is part of the deal when you become a manager, too. But I love the game of football that much that I believe the knocks are there to be taken and you gain experience from that and come out the other side stronger, as you do in life."

Souness is noticeably calmer since his heart operation, though still prone to moments of extreme passion. When Galatasaray won the Turkish Cup on the ground of their arch-rivals Fenerbahce six years ago, he ran onto the pitch and planted the club flag in the centre circle.

Blackburn's American goalkeeper Brad Friedel, who has followed Souness around the world, says: "We were all on the victory podium collecting our medals but after that we were being pelted with all sorts of things and we needed a police escort to get out. They are still selling T-shirts of that incident in Turkey.

"Graeme is not as incredibly intense as he used to be but he has a massive desire to win and, as a player, you always know where you are with him, which is important. He is as driven a man as I've ever seen and, if you were to take away the accent, he would be massively popular in America."

Souness, as in every other final he has been involved in, will make a conscious effort to enjoy the day, convinced as ever that it will be his last. He will insist his players do likewise though, if victory tomorrow is followed by relegation, he will consider it a season of failure.

He believes his team are good enough to finish in a healthy position in the Premiership, although he does not regard his own reputation as being on the line.

"I have nothing to prove to anyone but myself," he says - ignoring the fact that he could not have chosen a more demanding taskmaster.

Guardian Service