Chelsea are good, but the 1979-80 Liverpool side I played in were more than a match for anybody

White Hart Lane is a funny sort of place. Outside the Spurs ground it’s like downtown Mogadishu; inside there’s a main executive suite named after loyal but unremarkable defender Gary Mabbutt. Now, what’s that they said about the beautiful game?

Today, however, there’s an unprecedented degree of glamour in the Mabbutt suite. Black-suited Liverpool legend Alan Hansen is here to talk about football management, rather apt given his recent role in computer game LMA Manager 2006: he does the gaffer’s voice-over in trademark Scots burr. Not that the suave Hansen has ever managed a football team of any description in real life, you understand, but more of that later.

Rewind to 1977. As a mad keen Liverpool fan I hear Hansen’s name for the first time. My old man is reading about Bob Paisley’s new signing – a young defender from Partick Thistle – in the Liverpool Echo. He isn’t happy. In fact, he is cursing Paisley for wasting Liverpool’s money. This wasn’t the sort of player Shanks would have signed. We weren’t going to win anything with kids like Hansen.

His cups runneth over

Three European Cups, eight league championships, two FA Cups, four League Cups and other assorted silverware later, it’s fair to say the Scotsman, now 50, more than proved my old man wrong. Hansen eventually became one of Liverpool’s greatest ever defenders and captains, playing until 1991, when a knee injury forced him out of the game. His partnerships with Phil Thompson and Mark Lawrensen were the stuff of legend. He was unflappable on the ball, majestic moving forward and a superb reader of the game. Overall, his career and glittering collection of honours are stunning – surely among the best ever in the British game. Not, I suggest, as we start talking, a reputation he’d want to risk by going into management himself...

‘I don’t think it’s a question of risking anything,’ fires back Hansen as we look out on to the perfect, empty White Hart Lane pitch. ‘What happens with football is some people live for the game. I never did that. I was quite happy to leave it and I don’t miss football in the slightest. I do miss the dressing room, the camaraderie, though.

‘Some of the other guys I played with such as [Kenny] Dalglish and [Graeme] Souness lived and breathed football. I always knew they would go into management and stay in it. No, I don’t think it’s a question of risking anything, because you’re going into a different entity. Playing is very different to management; they’re not very close. If you become a manager who’s ultimately unsuccessful, [it doesn’t] affect what people think about you as a player.’

To be fair to Hansen, he made it clear from the start that he never wanted the top spot at any club. He instantly ruled himself out of the Liverpool job when Souness resigned in 1994, whether or not he was part of any shortlist. The biggest club that asked him to take the hot seat was Manchester City, and that was five years after he had hung up his boots for good. By then, he was making his mark on Sky, and then the BBC, where his astute observations stood out from the pub-bore drivel that so often pollutes our screens.

From pitch to putt

Hansen is also a big golf fan. He was a talented player as a youngster and still plays now. He also enjoys a punt on it.

‘If I’m playing golf with Kenny [Dalglish] or Gary [Lineker], I always have some kind of a wager. You don’t play golf without having a wager. We don’t play for fortunes. It’s not really about the money; it’s about the winning. I don’t get beaten a lot.

‘Gary and I have had a bet on the spreads, too, just on the majors. We’ve only had one or two bets, but we lay them. In the majors you can buy [a player’s] finishing position at 27 or 28. Sometimes a lot of good players miss the cut. You’ve got to see who’s struggling at that moment in time. I never win, though!

‘I don’t bet [at the bookmakers] on football. I used to enjoy stud poker when I was 18, but I haven’t played it too much since. Most of the lads in the great Liverpool dressing rooms liked a punt on the horses or the snooker, but not big money.

‘(On Match of the Day) we have a sweep on a Saturday and we try to predict the scores. It’s horrific. Although when Aston Villa played Everton at Villa Park last season, I think the visitors were 5/4 and they hadn’t won there since 1986. We looked at that and thought what a great bet that was. Everton were one up early on and they could have been ten up! And it was the same week in which Man United had thrashed them in the Cup.’

So Hansen has an eye for a winner, as you’d expect. What does he think of the theory that the truly great managers generally have mediocre playing careers? People such as Paisley, Shankly, Ferguson, Wenger and Mourinho? Hansen turns round and peers straight into my eyes. My mouth goes dry.

‘You’ve certainly got a point...’ he says after a pregnant pause. ‘I’m not so sure that’s always the case, but it seems to be consistent with the great managers in English football. Why that should be I honestly don’t know, but certainly a lot of the great managers were average players.’

Knowing when to quit

I remind Hansen of Martin O’Neill’s goading comment that ‘it’s easy to sit in a TV studio and pontificate about the game’. The glare returns. Hansen can’t recall the ex-Celtic boss saying that and glides the interview expertly on to my next question. I ask whether managers are like gamblers – most of them not knowing when to quit. I mention Ferguson and Souness.

‘Again, they live and breathe it,’ he counters, refusing to be drawn on the poor performances at Manchester United this season. ‘Some guys can’t do without it. Coaching, training, playing – it’s a big hook for them, that’s why you see some guys get to the age of 75 and they still want to manage.’

If Hansen isn’t the most savvy, media-literate ex-footballer around, he’s certainly one of them. He turned down a place at Aberdeen University to join Partick Thistle and 15 or so years on TV have served him well. For instance, I’ve got a question about the odds he’d give on Alan Shearer replacing Souness in a bloodless coup at Newcastle United this season, but I physically can’t ask it. The scar on Hansen’s head seems to be telling me not to go too far. He saw off an 18- year-old Diego Maradona at Hampden Park; he’ll have me for dinner.

Instead, I move on to how we should define a great manager. By his ability to move a team onwards and upwards with limited resources, perhaps?

‘I think that’s part and parcel of it,’ nods Hansen. ‘Some of the great managers who could win European Cups with moderate players and moderate teams were extra special – just look at Brian Clough. The current Chelsea manager – even with all the money and players he has – still has to get them to play hard and work for each other, and that’s an art. You can get the best 11 players in the world, and they can play like strangers and be useless. You’ve got to get the very best out of your players.

‘It’s fair to say Mourinho has already been a good manager for five years,’ he adds. ‘But it’s only after ten to 15 years that you can see just how good they are. [Rafael] Benitez has also shown himself to be a good manager. Anyone who wins the Champions League is special; anyone who wins it with an average side is extra special. But the real test is the Premiership. Thirtyseven points behind Chelsea isn’t good enough. Benitez knows that and he’s trying to put it right. Chelsea are good… [but] the 1979-80 Liverpool side I played in were more than a match for anybody.’

Defender of the helm

Hansen has a reputation for being a smooth TV operator, but a common criticism is that while he’ll get tough with individual players, particularly over bad marking, he’s more reticent about the forces that run the game.

I test the theory, asking whether in the light of poor performances against Wales and Northern Ireland, Sven Goran Eriksson has revealed himself to be a managerial fraud. Strong words, perhaps, but surely it’s no surprise that the only people publicly backing the Swede are older, out-ofsorts players, such as Beckham and Tord Grip, and FA suits?

The silence is deafening. Pinteresque. He’s staring straight ahead, focusing on the halfway line. ‘Not in the slightest,’ he eventually answers, swivelling round, fixing a suspicious gaze that seems to pass straight through my head. ‘What happens if you’re England manager is that people are going to expect things. Because [Eriksson] has so many quality players, the performances against the Welsh and Irish – and Austrians – were below par. What he needed to answer the critics was a good result, and he got that against Poland. After that, England go into the next game with renewed confidence, and if they play well again, he hasn’t got a problem.’

Surely he can’t really believe that, can he? Not Alan Hansen, the man who played under Paisley, the most successful manager in the history of English football. And, come to think of it, how come Paisley never got a knighthood – or even an offer of the England job?

‘I honestly don’t know. Maybe they thought he was so settled at Liverpool he would never leave.’

I slide in a last quick question about Wigan Athletic’s Paul Jewell, possibly the top Premiership manager this season. ‘Jewelly’ was on the books at Anfield for a spell at the same time as Hansen, although he was only a bit-part player. But did he display any leadership talent at all at a young age?

‘Nah!’ snorts Hansen, with a tight smile on his face. ‘He used to clean my boots. He was a multi-talented player who probably didn’t have enough pace. He never looked like a leader... he was a bit of a joker as I recall. He was only there for two or three years. He was good at cleaning the boots, but I never paid him!’

You can’t help but wonder what if management, rather than media, had been Hansen’s post-playing career? What more would we have learned about the man? Could he have saved Liverpool from decline? Or maybe true football fans are just too demanding of their heroes.