When he finishes informing the queue of trialists their fates, Graham Roberts emerges from his office to join us in the press room, his white hair shining as though illuminated from within. As he explains his ideas, it soon becomes clear why he was appointed the new manager of Clyde last month. The former Tottenham, Rangers and Chelsea defender exudes boldness, he comes wrapped in a bright sheen of self-possession, and he talks the talk with exuberant bravura. He has the bolshiness of a salesman, and his products are himself, his club and his ideas.
Clyde had only two signed players when he took charge, so two weeks ago he issued an open invite for people to attend trials. More than 2,000 jammed the club’s switchboard, from youngsters recently released to a bricklayer who fancied a career change. Roberts and Joe Miller, the former Celtic winger who is his assistant, have spent the past five days sifting the wheat from the chaff. It is the way local youth and amateur teams select their squads in the summer, not the way established football clubs do. But it was only last month that Clyde reached an agreement with their creditors to become debt free. They are resource free, too, with a budget as frail and delicate as a spider’s web. So Roberts flung open the doors to see who would walk through.
“I’m telling you, we’ve found eight gems,” he says, insistently. “My argument with these people who’ve been knocking us is where are these boys going to go? They just go to waste. It took two or three days to get, what can I call them, the pastries out. But we’re bringing 16 back on Monday for two weeks pre-season training and the enthusiasm they’ve got, the ability, is frightening, absolutely frightening.
These players can become Scotland’s future, trust me. We’re not saying we’re going to take anybody by storm, what we’re saying is that we’re willing to give them a chance. I can’t believe people are saying this week’s been a waste of time. If I’m still here next year, we’ll be doing it again.”
As a player in Scotland, Roberts could never escape the day in 1987 when, as a stand-in goalkeeper for the dismissed Chris Woods, he conducted the Ibrox crowd during an Old Firm game. He was arrested for breach of the peace for that incident, but was found not proven.
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So what should we make of him as a manager? Clyde, a club that seemed to lose its essence when it relocated from Glasgow to Cumbernauld 10 years ago, need a profile to attract investment and supporters. Roberts claims that an increase of 600 on the gate would double his budget and in his dynamic resourcefulness the club has found a loudly effective voice. He is a town crier and his words have rung out resonantly. Television cameras have visited Broadwood all week and seldom has a day gone by without Clyde being mentioned in the newspapers. Why? Just listen to him.
“When I took over at Yeovil, they were £900,000 in debt. When I left them, they were £100,000,” he says. “We had pre-season friendlies, games against Everton and Liverpool, and worked the debt out. Myself and Joe are working very hard to bring extra money in through sponsorship and I’ve got a lot of friends who’re willing to put money into this football club. When I took over at Yeovil, they were bottom of the league and had 600 people watching. Within nine months we had 4,000 watching us, because we played good football and we won. You’ve got to give the paying customer something to enjoy, it’s the entertainment business.”
Manchester United will play a friendly at Broadwood next month — “I’ve heard through the grapevine that the likes of Van Nistelrooy and Rooney will be coming,” Roberts claims — and they have approached Rangers and Celtic for games. But what will happen on the field? Clyde now have four players on their books, including Miller, who at 37 has registered to play, but only the passage of time will reveal to us if there is substance beneath the flourish of Roberts’ words. As a player, he won the FA Cup twice and lifted the Uefa Cup with Spurs, and before falling out with Graeme Souness at Rangers he won the title and the League Cup. His management experience, though, is restricted to non-league football, where he won championships with Yeovil, Carshalton, Boreham Wood and Chesham, while taking Enfield Town to the FA Trophy final. Roberts has spent the last two years running a soccer school in Marbella, but always hankered after a return to management and applied for the Partick Thistle job when Gerry Collins was sacked in 2003.
So what can we expect from his team? It will be full of youth players, he tells us, because other managers are “frightened to give them a chance”. In reality, though, it is out of necessity that Clyde are taking the course they are on. The club is remaining full-time, but the wages paid will be meagre. “I always believe that if you give players a basic and they can double it if they win their games, there’s an incentive for them,” Roberts adds.
Yet the First Division is no place for naivety to thrive and although it is too easy to allow scepticism to colour your thoughts, a sense of foreboding is hard to quell. Even an experienced, wily manager steeped in the coal dust of the Scottish lower divisions would greet this challenge with a sharp intake of breath. In the past three seasons, Clyde have finished second, second and third, but this campaign might be one of fleeing from the bottom rather than chasing the top. Though Roberts, inevitably, exclaims otherwise.
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“No pressure is there?” he laughs. “If we finish in the top four we’ll be happy, but when we kick-off the season, we’re looking at winning the league. We will take this club where it wants to go. That’s how we are. We love football, we love being on the pitch. I don’t worry about other people and what they’re thinking. I don’t know how they can knock you before you have a go. The old days have gone, it’s youngsters now. Look at Tony Mowbray, what he’s done (at Hibernian). We will play like them, we’ll play attractive football at this club.”
Roberts talks of one day managing in the Premierleague, maybe even with Clyde. For now, though, it is hard to see his vision as he does. Yet you cannot deny the vibrancy of his ambitions.